Israel's Psytrance Stronghold: Vini Vici on Top, Borgore and Guy Gerber Break the Mould

Israel has 193 DJs on the DJ Radar board, and the top of that list has one dominant sound. Six of the country's top eight list Psy-Trance as their main genre. The other two are a dubstep heavyweight and a minimal/deep tech specialist, and they make the pattern stand out even more.

That sums up the local flavour. On Israel's leaderboard, trance isn't one lane among many. It's the main road.

At No. 1 is Vini Vici, with a credit score of 914 and 11,085 votes. That's the highest vote total in the top eight by a clear margin. The next-best is Borgore's 8,156.

The 35-point lead over No. 2 is also the widest gap between any two neighbouring spots in the top eight. On the platform side, Vini Vici has 3,048,264 Spotify monthly listeners and 735,149 Instagram followers, the largest Instagram count recorded in the group.

Directly below, the board gets crowded. Just five points separate Astrix (879), Borgore (877) and Infected Mushroom (874), from second to fourth. This is the real tight race in Israel's top tier.

Astrix holds second on 7,935 votes, with 1,380,000 YouTube subscribers and 481,389 SoundCloud followers.

Borgore is the interesting case. He has more votes than Astrix, 8,156, yet sits one place lower. Raw vote count clearly isn't the whole calculation. He's also the bass-family outlier in a trance-heavy field and the only dubstep act in the top eight.

Infected Mushroom rounds out the cluster at 874 with 7,199 votes. The act has 835,366 Spotify followers, the most of anyone in the top eight, plus 9,674 Resident Advisor followers.

At No. 5, Guy Gerber (862, 6,886 votes) is the clearest break from the psytrance pattern. His main genre is Minimal / Deep Tech. His 35,425 Resident Advisor followers are well ahead of every other RA figure recorded for Israel's top eight. That fits the one name here working in the techno family.

His 446,843 Spotify monthly listeners also put him in the same range as several of the trance names around him. The minimal sound is competing here on equal terms.

The back half of the top eight returns to trance. Bliss sits sixth on 857 with 6,541 votes. Then the score drops 25 points to Ghost Rider at 832, who pairs 6,848 votes with 456,666 Spotify monthly listeners.

Berg closes the group at 828, just four points behind Ghost Rider. Berg's 6,915 votes are actually more than Ghost Rider's, Bliss's or Guy Gerber's. Again, the vote column and the final order don't line up neatly.

From first to eighth, Israel's top tier spans 86 points. There's one clear leader and a three-way fight behind it. The bigger story, though, is depth in a single sound.

With six psytrance names in the top eight, the genre doesn't depend on one flagbearer. It has the No. 1 spot, two contenders in the race for second, and a second wave holding sixth through eighth.

For fans tracking where psytrance talent is concentrated, Israel's board is the one to watch. For everyone else, Borgore and Guy Gerber show that the country's top tier doesn't stop at trance.