Hard Trance: Oakenfold & Sneijder Reunite
Paul Oakenfold and Sneijder's "Bullet In The Gun" (Perfecto Fluoro / Armada Music, April 24 2026, 140 BPM hard trance) was one of the most-discussed reunions of the month. The original "Bullet In The Gun" is a 1999 hard-trance anthem from Oakenfold's late-90s Perfecto catalogue, and the new collaboration with Sneijder updates the record for the modern Afterdark / Subculture / hard-trance audience. The track sat at the upper bracket of Beatport's hard-trance chart through April and demonstrates how the Sneijder Afterdark editorial direction (treated in detail in the Sneijder artist profile) is operating across multiple tracks per month at this point.
Mainstage Uplifting Picks
Four April uplifting cuts that earned heavy ASOT and Group Therapy rotation. Eximinds feat. Olga Murphy's "Adagio" (Interplay, April 10 2026, uplifting trance) is the most vocally accomplished of the picks, with a topline that ranks alongside the year's best vocal-uplifting work. Corrado Baggieri's "Seawaves" (Extrema Global Music, April 17 2026) operates in the Anjunabeats-adjacent emotional space and is part of the producer's Calmness / Seawaves EP. The Space Brothers & Tai Woffinden's "Shine" (Armada Captivating, April 3 2026) carries The Space Brothers' 1990s vocal-trance lineage into the 2026 calendar — another reactivation moment for the genre's veteran producer pool. And Petereese's "Lost in Infinity" (2Rock Uplifting, April 17 2026) added a song-led uplifting cut to the mid-month rotation.
Remix-Pack and Nostalgia Picks
The Mystery Land Remix EP on Serious Beats Classics (SBCL019D, April 2026) surfaced Y-Traxx's mid-1990s anthem in multiple modern reworks, with the Quinny Remix in particular feeding the year's nostalgia-cycle narrative. Alongside it, the broader R/D/H wing of the genre continued the slower-trance trajectory established earlier in the year, with multiple Pure Trance / NEON adjacent releases keeping the lower-BPM space active.
What April Confirms
April 2026 confirms the Q1 release pattern: 2026 is genuinely a denser release year than 2024 or 2025, with multiple labels (Perfecto Fluoro, Armada Captivating, Interplay, Extrema Global Music, 2Rock, Dreamstate, FSOE / Argento) operating at cadence and veteran producers (Push, Oakenfold, The Space Brothers, Y-Traxx) reactivating into the modern editorial context rather than coasting on legacy. The May ASOT 2026 compilation release will close out the first half of the year — and our May chart article picks up that thread.
A Listener's Note — The Cuts That Stuck in April
The Oakenfold / Sneijder release was the headliner — the article above is right about that. What can be added from the listener side is which April cuts actually stayed in rotation week to week, which is not always the same as which cuts the editorial calendar marked. "Bullet In The Gun" sits in the same category as the March Push reactivation: a piece of 1990s canon meeting a present-day audience, noticed as a moment but not necessarily returned to repeatedly across the week.
The release that actually played most across April listening was Eximinds feat. Olga Murphy's "Adagio" on Interplay. That cut sits squarely in the vocal-uplifting register that often carries newer listeners into the genre, and Murphy's topline hits in a way the more headline-heavy reunions do not. The Space Brothers & Tai Woffinden's "Shine" was similar — the Space Brothers lineage is mostly heritage for the post-2010 cohort, but the new vocal cut entered the listening week as present-tense rather than as nostalgia. The distinction is worth flagging because the editorial story of April was the veteran reactivation pattern, but the listening week was carried more by the vocal cuts that did not announce themselves as anniversary moments.