Tom Trago - Tide Will Turn - Jong Nederland - JNL03

a1. Number Own
a2. Tide Will Turn
b1. Understood

digital: https://jongnederland.bandcamp.com/album/tide-will-turn
vinyl: https://www.rushhour.nl/record/vinyl/tide-will-turn

During 2020/21, when the global pandemic raged and hundreds of millions of people around the world were confined to their homes, Tom Trago kept himself busy by increasing his daily music-making activities. As he had done pre-pandemic, Trago set aside time each day to improvise and record tracks in the studio attached to his home in Bergen on the Netherlands’ North-West coast.

Tide Will Turn, Trago’s third release on the Jong Nederlands label he established to share his work, showcases three such outings. As with previous EPs on Jong Nederlands, each of the tracks was created using a small selection of electronic instruments, drumcomputers and effects units.

EP opener ‘Number Own’ is typically emotive and quietly colourful, with chiming lead lines, sustained synthesizer chords, stirring riffs and fluid electronic motifs rising above bustling, body-popping beats and a smooth, jazzy bassline. Bubbly and ear-pleasing, it’s the aural equivalent of watching sunlight bounce off the waves that wash up on the beach just a few hundred metres from Trago’s studio.

Title track ‘Tide Will Turn’ is an altogether more relaxed and becalmed affair. Its drowsy chords and gentle, undulating melodies slowly sashay their way between clicking drum machine percussion and slow-motion beats. Trago picks things up again on ‘Understood’, wrapping attractive synth stabs, cascading lead lines and fizzing electronics around a pulsating bassline and breathless, all-action, electro-influenced beats. It provides a fittingly attractive and emotion-rich conclusion to another fine batch of straight-to-tape improvisations.

Tom Trago - Tide Will Turn (JNL 03) Snippets

Trembala

Tunnel #1

Podcasts / Mixes

Use Me Again

Use Me Again (Remastered)

Use Me Again (And Again)

Use Me Again (Carl Craig Rework)

Hidden Heart of Gold

Hidden Heart of Gold (Original Mix)

Pre-order: https://jongnederland.bandcamp.com/album/tide-will-turn
Vinyl: https://www.rushhour.nl/record/vinyl/tide-will-turn

During 2020/21, when the global pandemic raged and hundreds of millions of people around the world were confined to their homes, Tom Trago kept himself busy by increasing his daily music-making activities. As he had done pre-pandemic, Trago set aside time each day to improvise and record tracks in the studio attached to his home in Bergen on the Netherlands’ North-West coast.

Tide Will Turn, Trago’s third release on the Jong Nederlands label he established to share his work, showcases three such outings. As with previous EPs on Jong Nederlands, each of the tracks was created using a small selection of electronic instruments, drumcomputers and effects units.

EP opener ‘Number Own’ is typically emotive and quietly colourful, with chiming lead lines, sustained synthesizer chords, stirring riffs and fluid electronic motifs rising above bustling, body-popping beats and a smooth, jazzy bassline. Bubbly and ear-pleasing, it’s the aural equivalent of watching sunlight bounce off the waves that wash up on the beach just a few hundred metres from Trago’s studio.

Title track ‘Tide Will Turn’ is an altogether more relaxed and becalmed affair. Its drowsy chords and gentle, undulating melodies slowly sashay their way between clicking drum machine percussion and slow-motion beats. Trago picks things up again on ‘Understood’, wrapping attractive synth stabs, cascading lead lines and fizzing electronics around a pulsating bassline and breathless, all-action, electro-influenced beats. It provides a fittingly attractive and emotion-rich conclusion to another fine batch of straight-to-tape improvisations.

Tom Trago - Tide Will Turn (Snippet)

Tom Trago - Understood (Snippet)

Tom Trago - Number Own (Snippet)

Dutch selector Tom Trago dials in a vinyl-only offering that provides a slice of warm, vibrant and sunkissed escapism just in time for his appearance at Puglia's Polifonic Festival. 

Speaking on the entry, which features tracks from house heroes Ron Trent and Soichi Terada, among others, Trago described it as an encapsulation of the "late-night emotions of the Bari area [in Puglia, Italy]".

Check out the tracklist on crackaud.io: crackm.ag/3xRoQIa 
Still Independent. Help us keep it that way: crackmagazine.net/subscriptions

Crack Mix 454: Tom Trago

Guest mix for Radio Nova

Slow Rise

The Foundation

A Shine Through

Whatever

Forever Whatever

My North American The Light Fantastic DJ Tour started on the 6th of March in Miami. New York City, Austin, L.A., Chicago, Vancouver and more cities are visited until I end the tour again in Miami on April the 12th. This tour revolves around my third album The Light Fantastic which was released in the autumn of 2013 on Rush Hour. You can buy the album digitally for only €6,99 and you will receive the 320 kbps files of the tracks plus an exclusive album mix directly. Buy the album through paypal here: http://bit.ly/PpoHVU

For more dates, check my agenda here: https://gigs.gigatools.com/user/tomtrago

2. True Friends

5. Jack Me

7. The Elite

8. Two Together

Pearls for Pleasure Vol. 1

Take a Chance

Hotballs FM

All Right

Dexter: World War III (Original Version) 
Release date: 2024-08-30

Stream/download: https://bfan.link/In-Your-Eyes

DEXTER RETURNS TO REFRESHED VOYAGE DIRECT LABEL

14 years after delivering Voyage Direct’s debut release, Dexter returns to Tom Trago’s label with ‘In Your Eyes’, a colorful, tactile, and glassy-eyed slab of 21st-century boogie/house fusion.

The Dutch scene stalwart’s surprise return – almost a decade and a half on from the release of the Not The Only One EP – marks the start of a new era for Voyage Direct. The label has been treated to a fresh new visual identity and roars back with a refreshed roster of artists – a mixture of talented newcomers, rising stars and experienced heads from the Netherlands and far beyond.

Dexter, a fixture in the Netherlands’ electronic underground for a quarter of a century, naturally sits in the latter category. ‘In Your Eyes’ is one of his most kaleidoscopic and accessible tracks to date – a memorable song, brilliantly delivered, underscored by lilting lead lines, intergalactic electronics, squelchy synth-bass and infectious beats.

It comes backed by edited and instrumental takes as well as bonus cut ‘World War III’ – a bustling mutant electrofunk workout that offers nods aplenty to Dexter’s trademark electro sound and some of his most cherished underground anthems of the early 2000s.

Vibrant, dazzling and unashamedly dancefloor-focused, Dexter’s return to Voyage Direct joins the dots between the imprint’s past, present and future. It heralds a thrilling new chapter in the label’s ongoing story.

Follow Tom Trago | Voyage Direct
Facebook: www.facebook.com/tom.trago
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tomtrago
Resident Advisor: www.ra.co/dj/tomtrago
Spotify: www.sptfy.com/tomtrago
Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/tomtrago
Beatport: www.beatport.com/artist/tom-trago/38932
Bandcamp: www.tomtrago.bandcamp.com 


℗ & ©️ Voyage Direct (represented by Frills GmbH)
ISRC: DG-A08-24-15078
Distributed by Believe

Written and composed by Remy Verheijen
Video by Rocky van Jaaren
Produced by Dexter, 2024

World War III (Original Version) [Voyage Direct]

Dexter: In Your Eyes (Instrumental Version) 
Release date: 2024-08-30

Stream/download: https://bfan.link/In-Your-Eyes

DEXTER RETURNS TO REFRESHED VOYAGE DIRECT LABEL

14 years after delivering Voyage Direct’s debut release, Dexter returns to Tom Trago’s label with ‘In Your Eyes’, a colorful, tactile, and glassy-eyed slab of 21st-century boogie/house fusion.

The Dutch scene stalwart’s surprise return – almost a decade and a half on from the release of the Not The Only One EP – marks the start of a new era for Voyage Direct. The label has been treated to a fresh new visual identity and roars back with a refreshed roster of artists – a mixture of talented newcomers, rising stars and experienced heads from the Netherlands and far beyond.

Dexter, a fixture in the Netherlands’ electronic underground for a quarter of a century, naturally sits in the latter category. ‘In Your Eyes’ is one of his most kaleidoscopic and accessible tracks to date – a memorable song, brilliantly delivered, underscored by lilting lead lines, intergalactic electronics, squelchy synth-bass and infectious beats.

It comes backed by edited and instrumental takes as well as bonus cut ‘World War III’ – a bustling mutant electrofunk workout that offers nods aplenty to Dexter’s trademark electro sound and some of his most cherished underground anthems of the early 2000s.

Vibrant, dazzling and unashamedly dancefloor-focused, Dexter’s return to Voyage Direct joins the dots between the imprint’s past, present and future. It heralds a thrilling new chapter in the label’s ongoing story.

Follow Tom Trago | Voyage Direct
Facebook: www.facebook.com/tom.trago
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tomtrago
Resident Advisor: www.ra.co/dj/tomtrago
Spotify: www.sptfy.com/tomtrago
Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/tomtrago
Beatport: www.beatport.com/artist/tom-trago/38932
Bandcamp: www.tomtrago.bandcamp.com 


℗ & ©️ Voyage Direct (represented by Frills GmbH)
ISRC: DGA082415077
Distributed by Believe

Written and composed by Remy Verheijen
Video by Rocky van Jaaren
Produced by Dexter, 2024

In Your Eyes (Instrumental Version) [Voyage Direct]

900 Turbo

Tony Williams

Machine Collective

It is a wonder it has taken us this long to get Tom Trago involved in our series. The Dutchman has been a pillar of the Amsterdam scene for years, either as a producer for Rush Hour and a veteran of no fewer than three artist albums, or as a resident at places like the sorely missed Trouw. He also runs his own Voyage Direct label, has worked with everyone form Aardvark to Bok Bok and, of course, played our festival once again this past weekend. Trago’s sound--in both the booth and the studio--is a colourfully eclectic mix of disco and afro, hip hop and jazz, as well as house, techno and electro, and it as charming as the man himself. 

His two hour session for us is a perfectly soothing selection to get you back into the groove after a full on weekend at the festival. From horizontal ambient and deeply seductive house, the mix stays pretty spaced out and lazy for the first hour, before more driving drums and pumping chords colour the second half. Always warm, human and inviting, it is a suitably personable mix from one of house music’s nice guys. 

Dekmantel Podcast

Dekmantel Podcast 082 - Tom Trago

Catch Tom Trago at Pitch Music & Arts Festival on Saturday March the 10th...

Tom Trago's new album 'Bergen' will be released through Dekmantel Records on the 2nd of April

Pitch™ 2018 Preview - Tom Trago

After starting the mini Dekmantel Selectors podcast series two years ago, it feels like a tradition to bring it back to life. In the next couple of months, we will release 6 podcasts by some of the exciting artists from the line-up. This year’s podcasts challenges the artists to work around a theme or idea they picked theirselves. Next up: Dekmantel label member Tom Trago.

Trago can be seen as one of the main key players of Amsterdam's nightlife. Having grown up in a musical family, he picked up on his love for music really fast and has been making music from the age of 15 ever since. A collaboration with Aardvarck and Awanto3, a debut single on Rush Hour and many DJ-sets worldwide followed, which made Trago the acclaimed musician he is today. Earlier this month we had the honour to release Trago’s newest LP 'Bergen', which was made in the same-titled village in The Netherlands and sees him putting out music through a new live set-up.

In anticipation of Dekmantel Selectors, Trago cooked up a special mix for us containing lots of disco and summer-vibes. "This mix is dedicated to those late summer nights and early mornings. Mostly tracks that i play when i feel that there is freedom and acceptance among the crowd. A lot of home listenings jams And easy groovers. Sit back And relax!".

Selectors Podcast

Selectors Podcast 018 - Tom Trago

Special edit for the 'shelter' party. 6 hour solo set @ Club Up. Amsterdam. 22 september 2012.

Time Is The Master (Gladys Knight & The Pips Edit)

order: https://tomtrago.bandcamp.com/releases

The Portuguese say that ‘saudade’, the emotional state of nostalgia and the emotional thrills it can trigger, is an extremely powerful thing. It’s certainly hit Tom Trago hard in recent times, with the Dutch producer naming his new self- released single – his first since 2017 – after this distinctively warm and fuzzy heightened emotional state. 

Trago’s nostalgia pangs were a direct response to his new life on the Netherlands’ North Sea-facing West Coast, a move that provided the musical inspiration for his 2018 album “Bergen”. While happy in his new home studio, Trago found his mind wandering back to countless happy days and nights spent jamming with friends and contemporaries in his basement studio beneath Volkshotel in Amsterdam. 

“Saudade”, Trago’s latest single, was made during one of those all-night Amsterdam studio sessions alongside JP Enfant, a DJ/producer best known for his residency at De School and releases on his LET Recordings. The A- side “Main Mix” fizzes with excitement and the possibilities of the night ahead. Sentimental, emotion-stirring chords, lilting lead lines, chiming melodies and ecstatic electronics rise above a chunky, hot-stepping drum machine rhythm. It’s nostalgic but immediate: a musical marriage of two giddy producers living for the moment. 

On the flip you’ll find the “Ambient Mix” set to soundtrack slow-burn sunrises the world over. All immersive synthesizer chords, yearning musical motifs and seductive melodies, it sees Trago delivering a suitably tactile and loved-up soundtrack with which to usher in the dawn of a new day.

Tom Trago - Saudade (Main Mix)

This is my latest live set featuring some of my previous work as well as unreleased tracks and exclusive edits. some of the new stuff will be available on my new album that will be out later this spring. thank for listening!
Live set recorded on 5-1-2013 @ Panorama Bar, Berghain, Berlin. 

Tom Trago Live @ Panorama bar

Voyage Direct is Tom Trago’s long awaited follow up to his first ep on Rush Hour ‘Live With the BBQ’. This seven track mini-album shows his diversity within the genre. It reaffirms that house music can still be sexy, deep, raw, emotional and passionate. 

The package includes the promo released “Passion” plus a host of new tracks. Highlights could be the raw ‘On the Side’ or the swing of ‘Brothers Of String’, but in fact every track is a highlight in its own right. Together they make this a complete package. A must have for any house connoisseur. 

Lost In The Streets of NYC

The voyage continues. With this Out Takes release Tom Trago delivers two new dance floor tracks that were created during his Voyage Direct project. 
Not sure if they would have grooved to 200 B.C. two hundred years before the holy man’s birth, but some two thousand years later it’s a sure shot peak-time disco-tech banger. Lots of suspense and drive to keep to rock the party.

Dekmantel Anthem is created late night after a legendary night at one of the Dekmantel parties in Amsterdam. As a homage to deep late night sets its called Dekmantel Anthem… easy does it. A deep late night groove, but with enough swing to last until way after the party is over...

Dekmantel Anthem

Taken from the Rush Hour catalogue:

We’ve been getting a lot of requests for this record, since the Detroit crew (Theo Parrish, KDJ & Rick Wilhite, Carl Craig to name a few) picked up on it at the end of last summer… We've repressed some in order to supply the demand..grab them quick 
Side A is an extended disco version of Use Me, morphing in to and out of the original like butter. Clocking over 8 minutes Use Me Again becomes somewhat a modern take on the original disco version. It’s got enough drive to make a dance floor go crazy.

Side B meanwhile is an exclusive from his live set. Here he strips the classic “Over & Over” to the minimum before sliding into the original groove only for a moment, only to continue to ride the rhythm again. 


Taken from the Rush Hour catalogue:

This must be one of the heaviest remix packages in a long time. A year after the release of Tom Trago's 'Iris' album we now have versions from no less than KiNK, Linkwood AND Larry Heard. All three hit the deep spots...err... TIP!

Larry Heard kicks off this set with his Fingers signature sound, turning the 'What You Do' into a deep and emotional piece. Yet it is sturdy enough to be a sensual (yes, sensual) late night warehouse mover. 

Linkwood reworks 'Being With You' and turns it up a notch, giving it a grandiose hi-tech soul spin which is reminiscent of older Carl Craig productions.. the ones we sorely miss these days, so kudos to Linkwood for bringing it back.

The frenzy starts with KiNK going ballistic on 'What You Do'. With his remix he pushes the track to madman level! For those who are not into lyricists, there is a dub mix too. 

What You Do feat. Tyree Cooper (KiNK Remix)

Taken from the Rush Hour site:

‘Use Me Again’ is Tom Trago’s evergreen club classic. Originally released at the start of 2010 it became a staple track in many DJs sets.

The track is based around an infectious loop in true disco spirit and it lights up every dancefloor its been played to. The original version has been yet again re- mastered for this 2012 release.

Carl Craig has been one of the track’s biggest fans ever since it was first re- leased, at a certain point he was playing it out in almost every set. For this release he came up with a typical c2 re-tweak. 

Use Me Again (2012 Master)

Voyage Direct: First Mission

Tom Trago's new 12", the album sampler to the upcoming album The Light Fantastic. Featuring the dancefloor stomper "Two Together" which was co-produced by Steffi, "True Friends" featuring Breach on the vocals and the non-album track "Avenido". Big TIp! 

Tom Trago is back, giddily dancing out of the studio into the dizzying light of a European summer. Tucked under his arm are the masters for his third album, The Light Fantastic.

Since his most recent appearance on Rush Hour last autumn, Trago has spent most of his time in the studio. Over four memorable months, he constantly jammed, recorded, tweaked and produced tracks, until he had enough strong material to put together what might just be his best full-length to date. 

Along the way, he was joined by an impressive guest list of guests and collaborators from Amsterdam and beyond, all of who were roped in after “popping into the studio to hang out”. 

You’ll have to wait to hear the album, but the good news is that there’s an enticing teaser of what’s to come in the shape of this formidable three-track taster. One of the tracks, the chiming, loose-limbed, bass-heavy workout “Avenido”, is exclusive to this 12”.

When he sat down to make The Light Fantastic, Trago was keen to recapture the essence of his early work, and particularly the melodic warmth, kaleidoscopic chords and robust grooves that characterized his 2009 debut album, Voyage Direct. This time, though, he wanted to rely less on samples and apply the lessons learnt from four years of largely acclaimed production work. As a result, The Light Fantastic oozes a gleeful sense of fun, whilst retaining the depth and definition that has always been a hallmark of Trago’s work.

The two album tracks featured on this sampler confirm the rich dividends that this new approach brought. “True Friends”, featuring the combined talents of Brit-in-Amsterdam Ben Westbeech and local hero San Proper, bristles with loved-up positivity, all bubbling electronic melodies, fuzzy vocoder vocals and jaunty, bottom-end bounce.

From the Rush Hour site: 
Then there’s the small matter of “Two Together”, an extra large helping of the kind of loopy, feel-good deep house funk with which he made his name. Expertly teased, tweaked and produced, it sees nagging hooks, darting synths, jazz keys and disco stabs riding a relentless, full-throttle groove. Co-produced with Berlin-based Dutch producer Steffi, it’s nothing less than a wide-eyed late night rush. If it doesn’t have you tripping The Light Fantastic, nothing will.

Two Together feat. Steffi

Bookings: bookings@voyagedirect.net

Press: 
tessa@voyage-select.com /  info@voyagedirect.net

Label Requests: info@voyagedirect.net

Tom Trago – one of the leading lights of the Dutch electronic music underground, who defined the house and electronica sound of Amsterdam like few others. He is a globe-trotting DJ, producer, live performer and label owner who enjoys nothing more than championing both overlooked gems and fresh sounds from his own country. Tom Trago held residencies at renowned Amsterdam institutions Trouw and De School and name any prestigious festival or clubs worldwide – pretty sure he’s played there.

He once claimed that he felt a physical need to make music every day, and it’s hard to think of anyone whose immersion in music is quite as complete. Tom Trago is known for his versatility across electronic music genres, deep beats and grooves, and remixes for giants such as Depeche Mode. His genre-blurring sound and unique style have made him an influential figure in the world of electronic music.

Tom Trago | Voyage Direct

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