On the bill

A release party in Stockholm

The first time trance[]control stood on a stage was a release party for the PlayStation game Wipeout 3 at Medborgarhuset in Stockholm, on 26 November 1999. The band's live page listed the DJs as Breeder, billed from London with the label Rhythm Syndicate, Rickard Nee and Parham & Seaton. Breeder was the British production duo of Simon Noble and Rowan Blades, and in the spring Rhythm Syndicate would put out its single "Tyrantanic". "The WIP3OUT Party was a complete success even though only 280 people showed up," the band wrote afterwards. It had played for 28 minutes, with its own cameraman filming.^1,2,3,4,5

Two Stockholm psytrance parties of early 2000 listed the band among their live acts. Moonflower 4, on 15 January, put it beside Human Blue, a Gothenburg goa project whose album Ice had come out on Spiral Trax the year before, and Masada. AREA-51, on 18 March, put it beside Hux Flux, added when Cosmosis cancelled, whose debut album Cryptic Crunch had come out on the British label Koyote in October, and AXiOMiS, billed as Psycadelic Virus. Whether the band played either night is not documented.^{2,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13}

Colorado

On 3 June 2000 the band played its "very first US live PA", PLURFEST 2000 – Vol. 1 PEACE in Fort Collins, Colorado. ColoradoRave.com billed it beside Christopher Lawrence, on his Empire Tour, DJ Moda of the Trancefusion label and DJ FX of Miami, with the local acts Vitamin D, Nebula 9, Fury and Loic Xion. Lawrence was the Los Angeles trance DJ whose site that year quoted the British magazine Muzik calling him America's top trance DJ; in 2006 he was No. 4 in DJ Mag's Top 100. Nebula 9 had made its live debut at a Denver after-hours party in 1992, and Vitamin D's name, a local paper later wrote, was on almost every party flyer in the city.^{14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22}

Alexander remembers about 5,000 people that night and the band as the headliner; no report from the night itself has been found. A month later the band released a new track dedicated "to the guys from PLUR Fest in Ft Collins".^23,24

Berlin and Ottawa

In July 2000 the band was in Berlin for the Love Parade weekend, booked by European Entertainment for its party Paradise City IV: two 30-minute sets on the main stage, at a party that had sold about 18,000 tickets the year before. The flyer survives only as a small copy, but the names on it are a snapshot of the techno scene around the Love Parade that year: Mijk van Dijk, Gayle San, Marco Zaffarano, Corvin Dalek, Roland Casper, Afrika Islam, Steve Mason, Thomas Schumacher and Liquid Todd, with Cologne's Warehouse DJs S.O'Neal, O.J. Hess, Sebbo and Massimo.^25,26

The bill ran wide. Afrika Islam had come up in Afrika Bambaataa's Zulu Nation in the Bronx and produced records for Ice-T; with S.O'Neal he had compiled the previous Paradise City CD, The Last Drop In Paradise. Gayle San, from Singapore, had played Universe's Final Frontier nights in London. Steve Mason's weekly show on the British forces' radio had a large following in Germany, and Liquid Todd, by his own account, had been the first to bring techno to commercial radio in New York. Thomas Schumacher's Elektrochemie LK track "Schall" entered the German singles chart that September. Alexander confirms that the band played; how its sets went is not recorded.^{27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44}

On 16 September 2000 the band played the SYSTEM 7 party in Ottawa; no line-up of that night survives. In November 2003 the band's US tour coordinator called the shows planned for 2004 its first US appearance in nearly four years.^24,44,45

Jönköping and Montreal

On 28 April 2001 the band played Cleanout Reactor at Kulturhuset in Jönköping; the organisers' site had the full line-up, but its pages were never preserved. In July it went to Montreal for Electron, a night by n.i.c.e. productions. A local listing presented the band as the leading electronic act on MP3.com and named one other headliner, Digital, an Ipswich drum and bass producer whose Spacefunk 2000 remixes came out that year. Both sets were recorded, and in July 2004 the band found the recordings in the studio and put them in the VIP Vault: 39 minutes from Jönköping, 84 from Montreal.^{46,47,48,49,50}

Docklands

Rotor's Tranceatlantic Phase 2: Re Entry at Docklands in Stockholm, on 17 August 2002, billed the band as the live act between Future Breeze with DJ Krid P., Rob Angel and Rotor's resident Andreas. Future Breeze's "Temple of Dreams" had reached No. 21 in the UK that spring, and "Ocean of Eternity" came out on Kontor six weeks before the night. The duo itself was most likely represented by its touring DJ: Rotor's resident listed the night as "with Krid P from Future Breeze", and Krid P.'s own list of gigs for 2002 has Docklands on 17 August, then South Africa, Tokyo and Osaka.^{51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63}

Daniel Amundssen filmed the set. His clips were among the first files in the band's MP3 Vault when it opened in December 2003, and a 56-minute recording of the set was there by March 2004. Near the end of it is "Fuck on Cocaine", a remix the band made for its label SHR in 2001.^44,64,65,66

London, a float and Montreal again

On 13 June 2003 the band played London for the first time, at the Rocket Complex on Holloway Road, on a night its UK agent Nu-Trancemission brought with Marc van Linden, Sandra Flyn (billed Flynn) and Danny Slade. Van Linden's "The Last Unicorn" had been his breakthrough in 1999, and that year he and Flyn shared a 12-inch on the label Clubbgroove. The band's 89-minute recording of the set turned up in the studio in July 2004.^{67,68,69,70,71,72,73}

A month later a Danish float in the Love Parade, led by Franz Preisz with Future Club, had the band down as its live act among DJs such as Thomas Flarup and the Odense pair Fahrenheit and Innovator. The band withdrew. When it booked a float for 2004 it wrote: "We canceled on this event last year however this year we are going to do this."^74,75

In September 2003 the band was back in Montreal for Waterworld, taking the place of Blank & Jones, who had cancelled. The flyer put it in the Trance & Acid room with Indica, Lady Melodie, Mad, Axel Klein and Omni, next to a hard room of freeform and hardcore: Phosphor vs. Justrich from Winnipeg, who as the Blizzard Boys had had a mix broadcast by John Peel on BBC Radio 1 that July, Tilz from Minneapolis, Cham & Juniah, Merku from Québec City, Deepspace and Nutron. It was a crowded weekend for the local scene: Mad's own list of bookings ran to more than forty dates that year, Waterworld among them.^{76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83}

The night nearly went wrong. A computer that was not powerful enough crashed about ten minutes before the set, the band had to wait two hours and let Indica play first, and at about 5 am, when it was finally ready, the mixer's outputs had gone dead and the crowd waited five minutes in silence. Then, Alexander wrote, "ppl started screaming & cheering, and they wouldn't stop until we where finnished". The band later reported that its fee for the night was never paid.^84,76

Borås, and a parade that never came

Club Sensation at Åhaga in Borås, on 3 April 2004, billed the band with DuMonde, the German duo of JamX and De Leon, the Swedish trance duo Sonic Breeze, the Gothenburg producer Alexander Wennberg and the DJs AL, D-tale and Dave. Wennberg's own site of 2003 listed an official remix of the band's "Come to Daddy", made in 2001 for a 12-inch that never came out. "The party was a bit of a failure as the attendance only was about 250 ppl," Alexander wrote the next morning, in a hall for 4,500; Swedish law capped the sound at 100 dB, against the 117 dB the band had at the soundcheck.^{85,86,87,88,89,90,91}

For July the band announced a float in the Love Parade itself, run by Future Club, Zone Nightclub and Franz Preisz, with Future Breeze live and the DJs Reelax from Adelaide, Da Bomb and Cyglas from Munich, Centaury from Switzerland, Franz Preisz, Thomas Flarup, Fahrenheit vs. Innovator and Sid, with Calvin Clarke on percussion. On 14 April the organisers called off the whole parade, "Due to a lack of financial resources".⁷⁵

Heaven

In October 2004 the band called its night at Heaven "the first truly confirmed booking in a long time". Massive @ Heaven, under the arches of Villiers Street on 19 November, ran from 10 pm to 6 am in three rooms and a VIP area. The band played live in the uplifting trance room with DuMonde, Cosmic Gate, The Warp Brothers, Airbase and Conti. Cosmic Gate were No. 81 in DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs that year; Airbase was Jezper Söderlund from Gothenburg, the band's own city; the Warp Brothers' own bookings page had them on a tour of South Africa that week, so whether they made it is not known.^{92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100}

Next door, the hard dance room had Ed Real, Nick Sentience, Lee Haslam, James Lawson and Tara Reynolds, and the flyer's "Massive Blend Room" had VooDoo & Serano, billed for their Space Ibiza UK debut, The Sharp Boys and The Blend Team from Derby. In the VIP area were Calvin Clarke on percussion, Tasha and Dj Adam. "We had a great night," the band wrote when it was home.^{92,93,101,102,103,104}

Heaven had a second date, 17 December, billed as the launch of a new label, Massive Trax, whose first 12-inch would be the band's "Sunrise". The trance floor had DuMonde, Cosmic Gate, Agnelli & Nelson, whose "Holding On To Nothing" had gone to No. 1 on the UK dance singles chart in April, and Riley & Durrant from Leeds. The hard floor had Überdruck, whose own news page listed the night, Billy "Daniel" Bunter, Nick Rafferty and Kutski, who in 2005 joined BBC Radio 1. On the funky floor were Richard F, Jonathan Ulysses of Space Ibiza's We Love Sundays, and Reza.^{105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114}

Sacramento

The last night in this story is Massive Intent in Sacramento, California, on 8 October 2005. Announcing it in June, the band wrote that its last US performance had been PLURFEST 2000. The promoter's bill mixed drum and bass with trance and acid techno: E-Sassin from Los Angeles, with an EP on the British label Moving Shadow, Kinetik from San Francisco, Kause from London, Ontario, and Digital Rage against Cixelsyd, with DJ Dragn'fly, who counted more than 600 appearances by then, DJ Trū Believer, DJ Liquid Icer and 303Anarchy.^{115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124}