N-Trance

There can only be few people around the world who haven’t heard, dance to, sung along to and enjoyed N-Trance’s most famous hit, ‘Set You Free’. The group was formed in 1990 by Kevin O’ Toole and Dale Longworth and though at first it was just an excuse for four or five students to get a load of free studio time and to mess about with all the college’s equipment, after a while they began to produce stuff which they thought was comparable to the ‘rave’ scene just taking off in the UK.

Since then the group have played with many different sounds and styles including a dance version of the theme from the children’s TV cartoon ‘Roobarb’!, ‘Back To The Bass’, a hardcore, sample-laden tune which brought them to the attention of Dead Dead Good Records and of course ‘Set you free’ featuring Kelly Llorenna. During this time the band had started to gig regularly and the reaction to ‘Set you free’ in clubs (especially in Scotland) was phenomenal. This led to the song’s second release, which actually made the top 40 (number 39!). The follow up to this was the more Euro style ‘Turn Up The Power’, which featured Rachel McFarland and rapper T-1k. This reached number 23 in October ’94 but still ‘Set You Free’ was more in demand and after another release it reached number two, stayed in the charts for five months, sold 600,000 units and went on to be the eighth biggest selling single of the year. It also opened up new markets abroad for the band, charting in Europe and Australia and to this day remains a dance classic.