Gaia

Gaia is the trance-purist alias of Armin van Buuren and his longtime studio collaborator Benno de Goeij. Armin first used the Gaia name in 2000 as a solo alias, and the project later evolved into a duo with de Goeij — the same producer who has co-engineered much of Armin's main-name catalogue. From the start Gaia served as the dedicated outlet for the duo's longer-form, instrumental, breakdown-led trance — material that prioritises arrangement craft over the radio-format singles released under the main Armin van Buuren name. The project is a Dutch trance-band entity entirely separate from any other artist or band named Gaia. The catalogue is small but high-impact. "Tuvan" (2009) was the first widely circulated single, followed by "Aisha" (2010), the A State of Trance 500 anthem "Status Excessu D" (2011), "Stellar" (2011), and "Empire of Hearts" (2014). After several years of relative quiet, the duo's debut studio album Moons of Jupiter arrived on Armada in June 2019, structured as twenty-one tracks each named after one of Jupiter's moons. The album effectively reframed Gaia as a long-arc trance-album project rather than just an occasional anthem release. Within the broader Armin van Buuren ecosystem, Gaia is the dedicated home for "pure trance" — the format Armin has continued to defend even as the main name has crossed into mainstage and pop. For long-running ASOT listeners the Gaia singles function as the radio show's signature anchor moments, the ones used to bookend big episodes and ASOT 500 / 600 / 1000 themes. The project sits at the centre of the modern trance canon, alongside Armin's solo run, the ASOT show itself, and the wider Armada family.