It’s no secret I’m a Trance music fan. We could debate forever, what, when or why Trance was good, but for me, it was one of my many gateways into ambient music growing up. Be it via Pete Namlook, proggy mix CDs, or 90’s pioneers such as B12 and Global Communication, where many began to blur the divide; there’s an unwritten relationship between the two genres which is hard to actually pin down. Maybe one day I will do due diligence and try and trace this connection a bit closer, but until then, I am busy unearthing the brilliant sounds emitting from UTE.REC - a label collective from Norway that manages to bridge the divide between expansive, meandering Ambient Trance, and full-on (what I may consider, proper) Trance music. For our next isolatedmix, I invited UTE.REC and one of the founders, Marius Bø to prepare a mix that reflected the label and of course, Marius’ own personal identity as it relates to the collective. Evidently, and as many ASIP label followers may soon find out (hint!) the collective is sitting on a treasure-trove of music as their inspiration and productivity hits new highs, and alongside some classic cuts from Global Communication, James Bernard, Pete Namlook and Gas, we’re treated to a wealth of unreleased/upcoming music from UTE related artists… I sent a few questions Mario’s way to get a bit more detail on the label and inspiration. Can you tell us a bit about UTE, how it came about and the sub-labels?We are a group of friends where some of us grew up together, and some of us went to high school together. We started out hosting forest raves in Oslo, which later grew into club nights, and now we also do a small intimate festival. A couple of years ago we started Ute.Rec. We had a lot of music we wanted to release, and we felt it made sense if we did it ourselves on our own platform. Starting up the sub-labels came to our minds later, when we felt that we wanted to release more music that couldn't fit or come through on Ute.Rec. The releases are more short-term, and from in-house artists. We all love the whole spectrum of trance, ranging from goa trance to hard Trance, to ambient trance, so having different imprints where we release all these kinds makes sense to us. Sinensis is an ambient plattform where we release CDs. Every release consists of a one, hour-long ambient track to really get you to trance away. The hour-long tracks are paired with a clubbier B-side, but in the psychedelic and dreamy vibe as well. Translusid on the other hand is a digital platform where we do releases with a lot of collabs and aliases. This is a platform with more room for the artist to experiment and do things they don't always do.The labels are run by Teo Bachs, Filip Storsveen (Oprofessionell) and myself. In the Ute crew as whole there are also Mikkel Rev, Haider and Carl F**k and Marilao.UTE001 by OprofessionellWhat was your introduction to Trance music?For my musical development Filter Musikk in Oslo has played a big role. Run by the local legend Roland Lifjell. Digging in the second-hand boxes in the back of his store really introduced me to the 90s trance and techno. Ranging from techno, hard trance, progressive and goa trance. Roland Lifjell was a trance DJ back in the 90s with a huge collection, and he regularly put parts of it out in the store for us trance heads to hunt. Sharing and playing music with the Ute guys is also very inspiring and educating.SINE01 by OmformerTrance definitely seems to be a trendy genre for some people nowadays with many techno DJs diving into the classics. Do you think Trance gets an unfair rap nowadays?There are definitely some not-so-good takes on the term “trance music”. But having people digging and educating themselves in trance is of course good. I understand that people seem to have some bad connotations if they only associate it with the Millenium trance