Trance at 140 still does something the rest of the dancefloor cannot fake. It lifts the room in one clean motion, then holds it there. Nikolauss and Conor Holohan just put that feeling on Dreamstate Records with Never Be The Same, out 25 September 2026, and it already sounds like a peak-time weapon for the next festival season.
Dreamstate is not a random home for this one. The label sits next to the Dreamstate festival brand, the Insomniac event that keeps returning with the kind of lineups uplifting and progressive trance fans actually travel for. San Francisco is back on the calendar this November. A vocal record that treats transformation as the whole point of the drop fits that room better than a forgettable club edit ever could.
Never Be The Same is uplifting trance with a real vocal, not a chopped slogan pasted over a kick. The idea is simple and physical: two forces meet, and neither walks away unchanged. Classic, inspiring synth writing carries that message. The rhythm is energetic without turning into noise. The breakdown opens into something ethereal and atmospheric, the kind of pause that makes the return hit harder. Listeners who have already caught the original mix have been calling out the vocal specifically. That is the tell. In a genre full of supersaw stacks, a voice that actually lands is what gets a record replayed between sets.
Nikolauss is the Romanian producer the scene knows as Mr. 140, a nickname Sean Tyas pinned on him and that stuck for a reason. High-velocity precision is the whole reputation. He is a central figure in the Subculture family, shaped by a long creative line with John O’Callaghan that produced anthems like Bláithín and Reflections. Tech-trance on John Askew’s VII, including Follow the Path, sits next to regular appearances on Subculture, FSOE, Armada, and GO Music. Beatport Top 10 marks already include Lifdagar, Time, We Are Not Alone, Bláithín, Hold On, Cosmic Breakdown, and Reflections. Armin van Buuren, John O’Callaghan, John Askew, Aly & Fila, and Paul van Dyk have all kept his records in rotation. Music First represents him now, and the 140 sound is still the thing he is pushing onto the biggest stages.
Conor Holohan is the Dublin half of the pairing, an emerging trance DJ and producer who has moved fast. In a short run he has put out releases on John O’Callaghan’s Subculture, Black Hole Recordings, and Giuseppe Ottaviani’s GO Music. The club side matches the label list: Liberation London at Fabric, plus support slots for Paul van Dyk and Bryan Kearney back home in Dublin. Energetic rhythms and inspiring melodies are the mix people keep attaching to his name. Pairing that with Mr. 140 is not a random feature credit. It is two Subculture-adjacent writers meeting on a label built for the big-room trance moment.
The wider scene is still in a loud year for the genre. A State of Trance is marking 25 years, with Armin van Buuren running extended sets and a vinyl hour through his UNVRS Ibiza residency this autumn. Dreamstate keeps feeding the festival side of the same audience. Records like Never Be The Same sit right in that gap: technical enough for the DJs who still program by energy curve, vocal enough to stick with the crowd that came for the melody.
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What do you think of this pairing’s sound? Drop it in the comments.
