Soda Club

Emerging amid the mid-2000s, Soda Club ranked among trance’s more commercially oriented outfits. The British quartet—Gina, Hannah, Charlotte, and Andrea—comprised four visually arresting young women who delivered both original material, most notably the hit single “Keep Love Together,” and updated renditions of earlier tracks such as Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” and Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away.” Their versions followed progressive trance conventions, complete with the genre’s characteristic dramatic breakdowns, yet adhered to conventional pop structures. Every single appeared in dual configurations: concise edits formatted for radio and video alongside extended, club-focused remixes intended for DJ sets. The model-like members appeared in provocative videos and benefited from aggressive promotion through seductive publicity imagery. Water Music Dance issued the full-length album Anthem Alert in mid-2004 as a two-disc package, pairing one disc of songs with another containing multiple videos for the various singles. The act’s unabashed commercial orientation—four striking women styled after the Spice Girls, 1980s pop covers, visually seductive videos, and trance itself—drew sharp criticism, a response observers expected and that devoted listeners largely dismissed.