Art of Trance

British producer Simon Berry operates chiefly under the Art of Trance alias. He established the widely embraced Platipus imprint and forms one half of the forward-thinking Union Jack partnership. The resulting tracks deliver energetic exploration that stops short of obvious commercial appeal, yet they have accumulated multiple club successes and U.K. chart entries. An organic, far-flung atmosphere runs through the material, evident in selections such as “Killamanjaro” and “Easter Island,” which regularly incorporate field recordings amid driving rhythms and warm acid lines. Several EPs marked the project’s first appearance in 1993 and paved the way for the initial album, Wildlife on One, issued in 1996. Voice of Earth arrived three years later and included the enduring track “Madagascar,” subsequently reworked in dozens of versions over ensuing decades. Additional singles continued to surface alongside the mix collections Platipus Beginners Guide (2001) and Tales of the Unexpected (2005), while Retrospective (2009) gathered both studio albums plus a continuous DJ mix. Throughout the 2010s the project maintained regular single output, among them the 2011 Vangelis interpretation “Chung Kuo” and new compositions “Stratosphere” (2012) and “Firebird” (2016).