He is definitely in one of his best moments: BLR, or, if you want, Leon Bolier : ), gave us a few minutes to talk about his current and future projects and collaborations and a bit of his past, trance and not only:
Hi Leon and welcome to Trance History ! It seems to be a really exciting time for your career, with new collaborations coming up and just as many released, so let’s start by asking you where that synergy that created the collaboration with Amber Revival came from ? Your last track together (after ‘Wearing The Darkness’ last year) ‘Love Me Endless’, vocal version of your ‘Endless’ is one of the most beautiful and intense progressive trance tracks of 2025 released so far.
Hi thanks for having me! Yeah with Amber Revival we just got to talk some day over FB messenger actually, and at some point they just pitched this idea to me like, hey, maybe u feel this, you know? That track became ‘Wearing the Darkness’ – and then afterwards we have been working on more stuff, ‘Love Me Endless’ came about after they heard my ‘Endless’ and asked me if they could try some ideas on the instrumental – and I was like ‘sure go ahead, can’t hurt’ – when they sent the idea they had on some sunny Sunday I was like ‘ahhhh that’s beautiful’ and I think we just went from that first idea which became the final ‘Love Me Endless’ without any or many adjustments.
Just like many long-time producers and DJs, you have gone through more intense phases of work and phases of relative “calm”: we would like to ask you, who is Leon Bolier and who is BLR and if the two projects have different ‘goals’.
Leon Bolier was my trance guise, then became edm/bigroom for a bit but then I got bored of that – and started my Bolier guise (one you guys might have missed out haha – but that period also wasn’t ‘calm’ for me at all, with gold and platinum records more in the (deep)house genres – like the official ‘collab’ with Bob Marley ‘Is This Love’ and the golden ‘Every Single Piece’ with Redondo). Right now I am back doing some more uptempo trance stuff as Leon Bolier as you might have noticed. BLR is my alias when I wanted to go back to club, techno, club house and trance influences as opposed to the organic and more radio friendly Bolier sound.
Going back in time is one of our passions: like many producers with a long career behind, you already have a lot to tell and some of your records have marked the history of the trance genre in recent years: probably ‘Ocean Drive Boulevard’ from 2008 is your most famous track, would you like to briefly tell us the memories about that song ?
Id say Ocean Drive Boulevard is my most famous track for trance fans – I have had ‘bigger’ tracks afterwards but in different genres etc – having said that, Ocean Drive Boulevard still is a track I am very fond of. The track came about as a result of two things really: first of all, I had just bought this hardware synth (Access Virus TI) and I was fooling around with its sound design a bit and quickly came up with the stabby chords that play in the intro – and at the same time, as I was getting more gigs, I noticed I had to produce my stuff a bit more geared to the dancefloors to work really, and I decided to combine some more organic elements (sometimes classical, like in Summernight Confessions, this time a bit more balearic guitar-y) with strong hooks and massive drops – and the result of this train of thoughts was Ocean Drive Boulevard.
Last November, you thrilled us with that beautiful collaboration with SØNIN and Brieanna Grace: ‘Rush‘, it seems like a real tribute to the Anjunabeats’s sound of the early 2000s: how was this fantastic track born ?
Brieanna’s manager had just reached out to me with a bunch of vocalists and I was checking their demos and instantly blown away by Brieanna’s sound. As a result, she started working on a track of mine (still to be released), and at the same time Antin (SONIN) reached out to me with this instrumental idea, asking if I knew a vocalist. I forwarded this to Brieanna, and a week later Anton showed me what she came up with and I was like, ok send me the stems of this, this gotta be a collab – and we took it from there, I added more of a BLR flavor to the beats etc, so it became this fusion of oldschool trance with modern beats and low end with this super strong vocal hook.
It’s a moment in the history of electronic music in which it seems you can listen to and produce any style, mainly voted to a style closer to techno music even within the trance scene: a demonstration of this is your new collaboration ‘Bach To The Future’ with “the boss” Armin van Buuren, featured in the new ‘A State Of Trance 2025’ compilation: how was it to work with the king of A State Of Trance for this track ?
Ahhh yeah that was fun as Armin has been of the earliest supporters of my music, I had this idea in mind to do something with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, made a demo and was like, ‘hmmmm this might be something Armin is into as well’ so I texted him like, yo, you wanna jump on this track? He responded quickly that he loved the idea and after I sent him my stems, he finished it on his end so it really is a blend of both our styles.
Not only trance, indeed: your 2019 album ‘Odyssee’, released under BLR alias on the AFTR:HRS label (the progressive/deep house label of Tiësto), is a successful experiment between house, ambient and progressive music, demonstrating your musical versatility: given the new collaborations, is there any idea of publishing a new album in the future ?
There is, but gotta find the right time, place and label for it really. An album is something more personal but at the same time I want it to reach an audience as big as possible – I already have some ideas laying around!
Classic trance is much talked about these times and is often re-proposed in many DJ sets, perhaps also because the so-called “golden age” of trance is at least a generation away from here: also thinking back to how trance was experienced by those who produced it years ago, do you think that – like us – even now trance music is giving something that in the future we will celebrate as “classic trance” ?
Definitely. Every era and genre creates its classics, like there’s classic trance classics, or like you still mentioned Ocean Drive Boulevard; Martin Garrix’ Animals and Avicii’s Levels are considered classics of the early 10s era, there are classics being created as we speak – and I think a bunch of them are being made within the broader trance genre given the current resurgence of trance bringing in new talent, and bringing back old talent.
The memory of something you have produced in these twenty years and that as soon as you finished it, you exclaimed, more than other your works: “WOW !”
haha, too many to mention! I don’t want to sound arrogant here but it really is about that, you want to have that WOW feeling. One thing I have taught myself is to not continue working on tracks that don’t give me that wow-feeling, as it will be a waste of time. For trance fans out there, this wow-feeling can also be created by a killer groove, or something poppy but so on point, etc – usually for a trance track it’s about melody and sound design for me really tho.
What will summer 2025 bring for BLR and his fans ?
A lot of more music, I have already fully planned my BLR release schedule up to end July, for Bolier some exciting tracks coming up too and for Leon Bolier I have a collab with Allen Watts coming up, a solo track on FSOE and I am currently working on something with Andrew Rayel. Last but not least I also started an alias ‘West Of The Sun’ for more deeper vibey slower dance music, lots coming up there too! And of course for the trance fans, I will see them at Luminosity Beach festival this summer as I will play a BLR set there!’
Thanking you for your availability, we conclude with the classic Trance History question: name us one or more tracks – excluding your discography – that have always loved or those that inspired you in the history of the trance music genre.
Energy 52 – Cafe Del Mar is my OG.