The music that shapes you early tends to stay in you, even after your taste gets broader and your own sound starts pulling in different directions. I think that is true for me with hardcore and trance especially. Those styles got into me in a way that never really left. Even now, when I hear certain kinds of melodies, certain emotional lifts, certain bits of tension and release, they still hit something old and familiar in me straight away.
That is part of why I still come back to this music so naturally. It is not only influence in the dry technical sense. It is deeper than that. Some tracks shape your ear, but they also shape your emotional instincts. They teach you what feels powerful, what feels honest, what feels alive, and what feels worth chasing in your own work later.
I could list so many tracks and artists I have enjoyed listening to over the years, But I have named a few artists below that have helped shaped the way I love the harder and melodic forms of dance music. You can search them up and see a wealth of music over the years these artists have made most of which are fantastic and really love listening to, This includes the older music to the current music today.
Hardcore got me through the front door fast
Hardcore hit me hard because of the energy first, but it stayed because of the feeling underneath it. I loved the force of it, obviously, but what really made it matter was that it could still carry emotion without losing that force. That balance still means a lot to me now.
There are hardcore tracks I heard years ago that still sit somewhere in my head because of the way they handled that mix of uplift, ache, pressure, and release. They did not just sound big. They felt like they meant it. That probably shaped my taste more than anything else, the idea that hard music does not have to be emotionally shallow to hit properly.
Hardcore has followed me from a very young age years ago, listening to artists Hixxy, Sharkey, Dougal, Dj Vibes, Mark EG, Breeze, Darren Styles and Squad E.
As the year went I also enjoyed listening to music from DJ kurt, Joey Riot, Gammer, Tecknicore, Eufeion, Fracus, Darwin, Weaver and Jakka-B.
Even the harder styles of hardcore with the likes of D-Block and Ste-fan and Headhunterz.
The love for hardcore had me hooked from day one of listening from them old tape packs years ago to later follow the artists and grow as a producer with the love for hardcore music.
Trance shaped the emotional side of my ear
Trance got into me in a slightly different way. It taught me a lot about emotional pacing, about how tension can open up into something bigger, about how melody can carry a track without needing to shout all the time. A lot of the lift I still respond to in music comes from that side of things.
Artists like Tiesto, Judge Jules, Sash, Darude, Ian Van Dahl, Paul Van Dyke and Chicane were a real part of that for me. That older trance world had a kind of scale and feeling to it that still stays with me. It was not only about club energy. It was about the sense of build, release, atmosphere, and melodies that actually meant something when they landed.
Trance tracks are impossible to ignore because they showed how huge trance could feel without losing emotional weight. Even when I am making something heavier, I think that trance instinct is still in there somewhere. The pull toward melody. The sense that emotional movement matters. The idea that a track can feel expansive without becoming empty. Those things never really left me either.
Some hardcore names left a different kind of mark
On the hardcore side, it was a slightly different kind of imprint. The emotional side still mattered, but so did the immediacy of it. Hardcore could hit fast, hard, and still carry melodies or piano lines that actually stuck with you. That combination made a big mark on me.
Artists from the UK hardcore side especially helped shape that taste. All sit somewhere in that wider picture for me because that scene carried both energy and melody in a way that never felt weak. It felt direct. It felt anthemic. It felt like it actually wanted to move people rather than just batter them.
That older 90s and early 2000s side matters as well. Some of the artists from that era had a rawness, weirdness, and identity to them that left a bigger mark than a lot of cleaner modern dance music ever could. It did not feel over-sanded-down. It felt like people were pushing for atmosphere, edge, emotion, and rave energy in a way that still feels alive when I think back on it.
There are tracks from that world that stay with you because they had real identity, the kind of hooks and emotional lift that stick in your head years later. That side of hardcore definitely helped shape the part of my taste that still wants force with feeling rather than one without the other.
Certain tracks do more than inspire, they rewire you a bit
I think some records go beyond simple influence. They change what you expect from music after you hear them. Once you have felt that kind of impact properly, the bar moves. Suddenly you are not only listening for whether a track works. You are listening for whether it actually does something to you.
That is definitely true for me with some hardcore and trance tracks. Certain records raised the standard in my head for what energy should feel like, what melody should carry, what a breakdown should open up into, and what kind of atmosphere actually stays with me afterwards. Once that standard gets set, it stays there.
My taste was shaped as much by feeling as by style
I do not think my taste was shaped only by genre labels. It was shaped by certain feelings I kept finding inside those genres. Longing. Lift. pressure. Euphoria with something bruised underneath it. Force that still had heart in it. Those are the things I kept connecting to, and I still do.
That is probably why I never fully cared for music that sounded technically right but emotionally hollow. Even early on, I think I was leaning more toward tracks that had some actual weight in them, even if I could not have explained that very well at the time.
The tracks that stay with me usually have identity
Another thing that shaped my taste a lot was hearing tracks that felt like they belonged to somebody real. Not just genre exercises, not just competent production, but records with some identity in them. You could hear that there was an actual taste behind the choices.
I think that matters because once you hear enough music that feels anonymous, the tracks with real identity start standing out even more. They do not only sound good. They sound like they came from somewhere. That left a big mark on me, and it still affects what I respond to now, both as a listener and when I am making my own music.
Older influences do not disappear just because your sound evolves
I think people sometimes imagine influence as something you graduate out of, but I do not really see it that way. The surface changes, sure. Your taste broadens, your ear gets more selective, your own sound becomes more defined. But the records that shaped you early usually stay in there somewhere.
They show up in the way you hear melodies. The way you respond to atmosphere. The way you want tension to build. The kind of emotional release you still chase. Even if I am not directly referencing older tracks, I can still hear their fingerprints in the instincts they left behind.
Taste is partly built from what keeps haunting you
I think that is maybe the simplest way to say it. Taste is not only built from what you admire. It is built from what keeps haunting you a bit. The bits of music that stay in the head, the emotional shapes that keep resurfacing, the sounds that still feel right years later even after your standards have changed.
For me, a lot of that lives in hardcore and trance. That is where some of the deepest roots are. Not because I am trying to copy the past, but because those records helped shape what I still believe music can do when it hits properly.
That is why those tracks still matter to me. They did not just influence what I listen to. They shaped what I want my own music to feel capable of.
