Ferry Corsten

• Genre: Trance

About

The Netherlands has produced some of trance's biggest names, including Tiesto and Armin Van Buuren. A key member of the country's trance elite is Ferry Corsten, whose 1999 single "Out of the Blue," recorded as System F, is credited as helping to establish the very sound of Dutch trance. Since then, Corsten has remained a regular member of the top 10 jocks in DJ Magazine's annual Top 100 DJ poll, thanks to a nonstop touring schedule that's seen him headlining festivals from Miami to Malaysia, playing to tens of thousands at every stop. But the road is only one part of Corsten's popularity. Credit the other half to his productions -- recorded without engineers or ghostwriters, an anomaly in best-selling electronic music -- which infuse trance's hands-in-the-air template with touches of electro and even hip-hop.

- Philip Sherburne