Tiësto

Tiësto (Tijs Michiel Verwest) spent the 1990s moving from Breda's club circuit through the Dutch trance underground, signing to Black Hole Recordings and building a back catalogue that would define an era. The centrepiece is Tiësto in Concert at Gelredome in 2003 — 25,000 people, solo DJ, stadium, filmed for broadcast. At the time there was genuinely no precedent for it. He played the Athens 2004 Olympic Games opening ceremony. He was DJ Mag World No. 1 in 2002, 2003, and 2004. The records from that period — "Flight 643," "Lethal Industry," the In My Memory and Elements of Life albums — still serve as anchoring tracks in classic trance compilations, not because they're nostalgic but because they still function. Since then he has moved progressively further from trance into pop-adjacent territory — which reads as either a betrayal or a straightforwardly honest career, depending on who's asking. The work from the trance years is what's here.