Tranceported Trance DJ Sandra Collins has scored mainstream success with her live shows and new album, Tranceport III By Sean Flinn | August 11, 2000 American Girl: Trance DJ Sandra Collins Buy stuff Visit Sandra Collins's label Kinetic Records Trance music is de rigeur the world over right now but, as a genre, it's not quite a newborn phenomenon. DJs have been spinning trance -- essentially a more aggressive, beat-driven and anthemic descendent of house music -- for well over a decade. DJs like Paul van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Dave Ralph, Sasha and John Digweed have packed clubs from Berlin to Sydney throughout most of the '90s, and helped turn trance into what has become the world's one truly global music format. You can hear trance in any club on earth now. That said, the genre is enjoying a new peak in 2000. Sasha and John Digweed pushed their most recent trance mix CD, Communicate into the Billboard top 200 in June, marking the first time that a mix CD of any sort had cracked the pop charts. And, waiting not quite in the wings, ready to capitalize on their success and score some of her own is Sandra Collins, one of the few American trance DJs with a global reputation. Her most recent release, Tranceport III (the third installment in the popular series from Kinetic Records) just replaced Communicate as the top album on the College Music Journal's electronic music chart. Collins, like her chosen genre, is neither new to the scene nor to success. She began her DJ career in Arizona in 1987, starting out as a devotee of industrial music and then gradually discovering dance music. With show business in her blood (her uncle is television producer Hall Collins of All in the Family fame; her godfather is king of comedy Milton Berle; and her mother once kept time with Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra) Collins quickly found her niche in the West Coast's burgeoning rave scene. Her stunning good looks helped her stand out, of course, but she didn't build her career on a pretty face. It was her incomparable skills behind the decks and her infectious love of the music she plays that earned her residencies at LA night spot Metropolis in the early '90s, and which propelled her to her current status as a resident DJ at Chicago's Crobar, Utopia in Las Vegas, and New York's Twilo. She also headlines trance stages at raves around the world -- and is one of only a handful of female DJs to do so anywhere. She's also shown skill at producing her own tracks. Her song "Flutterby" is now a club classic, and most recently appeared on John Digweed's celebratory Bedrock mix CD, which commemorated the one-year anniversary of his popular British night club. Following her triumphant appearance alongside British trance god Paul Oakenfold at The Roseland Ballroom in New York City, Sandra was kind enough to sit down with RadioSpy for a brief chat about her work on Tranceport III, her plans for a long-awaited album of original material, and her thoughts on the trance scene's long history and sudden rise in popularity. Sean Flinn: So you just played with Paul Oakenfold at Roseland in New York last night, in a kind of a Tranceport past and present show. How did that go? Was there a good response? Sandra Collins: Oh yeah. I was so happy with it. Following him, I was a little bit nervous, but it was awesome. Have you ever DJed alongside him before? Um, no. He's a friend of mine, and I've always gone out to hear him play, but I was very happy to play with him. That was cool. And it was at Roseland, so did a lot of people show up? Yeah, it was packed. It was a really good crowd, and they all stayed until the end. New York just gets better and better for me. It seem the trance scene is really exploding in popularity right now. Yep. It is pretty big right now, and I think the year 2000 brought that on a little bit. I mean, it just seemed that, after the year 2000 [rolled over], everybody was really focusing on trance and females DJs. What do you think is really generating this explosion in popularity? Are you noticing it worldwide, or is it just that America is just now coming around? I think it's worldwide right now. I can't really say for sure, but I'm noticing a lot of the compilations that are popular overseas seem to be geared more to trance. Let's talk about your new album, Tranceport III. Tell me about making the album -- how did you come to be selected for the project? And how did you go about assembling the tracks that made it into the final mix? Click here to read our review of the Sandra Collins's Tranceport III My friend Grant Fleming - he's the guy that goes on the road with Paul Oakenfold all the time -- he basically suggested me to the label [Kinetic Records]. And Steve Lau [founder of Kinetic and -- a bit of trivia -- a former member of alternapop band The Ocean Blue] actually, I guess, was thinking of me anyway. So they proposed it to me and I was like, "Yeah! I'll do it." I was supposed to have my track listing finished by a certain time, and I was supposed to do a double CD. Instead, I did a single CD. And when I actually went to mix it, which was months later, I was sick of the songs. They weren't flowing because I'd had to take some of them out [after we] switched it to a single CD. So at the very last minute, after we'd gotten all those tracks licensed and I was ready to mix it, I completely mixed all new records. And it was actually on a deadline -- it was due by Tuesday, and this was on [the previous] Thursday - and I was like, "Well, they're not licensed, they're all new songs. Hopefully, we can get them licensed." And we did. But I just didn't feel right with the other selection of tracks. I was just sick of them. So it was just a case of you having spun them too often, or … Yep. So how did you go about picking out the new tracks? What about them grabbed you as being right for this project? I basically looked for tracks that would fit into whole project together, as one. Not each song, but as a story. And they all just fit into this story and what I like to do. And it represents my live set as much as they can in 74 minutes. But it kind of represents the way I spin out live. When you're putting together a mix CD, do you try to give people 74 minutes of "quintessential Sandra Collins" or do you kind of do a survey of the current top tracks? I want to do what I do [live]. It's kind of hard in 74 minutes, but I think I managed OK. How long do your sets usually run when you play live? Anywhere from two to three hours. I prefer three. Sometimes an hour and a half, which I'm not too fond of. And while we're talking about assembling sets, something that's always puzzled me about DJs is: when do you find time to actually find and listen to new records? I mean, you're in the studio and on the road quite a bit correct? Yep. When do you find time to search out new tracks, and where do you go to hear new material for your sets? Do you just receive things in the mail as a matter of course from other producers or …? Yeah, I do that, and I'm in the Balance Pool [a record pool that distributes records to club and radio DJs for use in their sets] and I rarely get time to listen to my packages. When I finally do get to listen to them, it's like three weeks after I get the box and they're already out in stores by then. I'll do mail order from England or from some of the stores that I like in the state. Stuff like that.   " I think it's better to be naïve. Just not know anything, just go on the dance floor and not know anybody. Because that's when you really listen and you stop thinking. " What sort of music do you find that you're listening to in your down time? Is it 24 / 7 trance for you? I know Ultra Records is doing that Back To Mine series of records where they have DJs mix songs that they listen to after they've gone back to their houses following their DJ sets. If you were to do an installment in that series, what sort of stuff would you pick? I like Vangelis and I like Global Communications, William Orbit. A lot of the old 4AD stuff. Pretty stuff. And downtempo. You mention a lot of atmospheric bands in there, and I noticed that you started off Tranceport III with kind of a darkambient piece that you composed. When did that come together and why that style? Why did you choose to kick off the record like that? I wanted to write my own intro, and I guess it just sort of ended up that way. Do you foresee delving more into that territory in the future? Maybe. But not completely. I have a different sound, and I have a lot of different likes -- so one song might be one way and the next song will be completely different. I've always liked dark music, but I like pretty music too. I know that, just from reading articles on you, that you started out being interested more in industrial music and industrial beats, and then you gravitated towards trance music and DJ music. It's like a time line, yeah. It all makes sense. I've noticed that a lot of people now are making the jump over to the rave scene from the industrial scene. Really? Yeah. I even have an industrially-inclined friend who calls it "going over to the light side." People are still in the industrial scene? A little bit. In San Francisco and in LA there's still kind of an industrial underground, although a lot of what's being produced musically is coming out of Europe now. Sure. [Laughs] What is it do you think that motivates this switch? What motivated you to jump from industrial music over to trance and electronic dance music? I think it was a natural progression. [Trance] was the next form of [music] that I liked. Sometimes, when you're younger, things sound good because you're kind of rebellious and you're young and hard sounds sound good to you. Then your ears change as you get older, or as you work through things. It's like therapy, and it might not sound as good to you anymore, and you progress into something else. Do you think you're mellowing as time goes by and as you progress through your career? No. Just when I think that I'm playing fluffy or light, it'll change. You know? Yeah. Now, you're in the studio working on your debut full-length, as a producer rather than a DJ. Correct? Well, I haven't started yet, but that's my plan. Have you charted out any plans for what the album's going to sound like? It's going to be a variety of types of songs. I want to have a couple of normal progressive house songs that I would normally spin out -- what people would expect from me. But I also want to do some downtempo, and some vocals and just different things. I want to venture out and put all the kinds of music that I like on there -- that's what you do when you do an album. So it'll end up being, in a sense, like what Tranceport III was -- kind of a journey. Yeah. You have been DJing now for 11 years. Since '89? Maybe '87 or '88. Wow. So even longer. How have you seen the scene change in America over the last 12 or 13 years? And, as a followup to that, how would you like to see it change as it moves forward? How would you like to see it stay the same? Back in '88, '89, people were really excited about it. It was a new thing and people were more naïve about it. More happy and open minded. And then, I think a lot of people got to know a little bit too much and stopped having so much fun and had an opinion. And it changed things a lot. But then, it kind of goes through its waves. Different places will still have really good parties and then, at other places, everyone will have an opinion, you know? I think it's better to be naïve. Just not know anything, just go on the dance floor and not know anybody. Because that's when you really listen and you stop thinking. Do you think that's maybe an advantage of the increasing popularity of trance music? That it's drawing new people into the scene that don't necessarily have an opinion of it? Yeah, possibly. My last question -- I know that you've registered the domain name SandraCollins.com, and I assume, from that, that you're constructing a Web site or having some one do it. How wired to the 'Net would you consider yourself, and what plans do you have for your Web presence? To tell you the truth, I haven't had really much time to be on the computer, but I'm going to change that. The computer that we have at home is really geared toward making music, and I didn't want to do Internet stuff on it. But I just bought a second computer and I really want to be more involved and get my Web site created and stuff. Have you been following the hubbub over things like Napster and Gnutella and all? Yeah, I've pulled up Napster. A lot of people have very strong opinions about that technology -- do you find it more exciting and invigorating, or do you find it threatening? I can see both sides. I think it's kind of screwed up because an … on an album it says, "No unauthorized copying of this material." It's illegal. If people are on there selling the music, but if people are just on there listening for personal use, then maybe it's OK.