"For An Angel" lived two lives. It first appeared in 1994 as a cut on "45 RPM," Paul van Dyk's debut album for Berlin's MFS label — a lovely, understated piece from a young East Berliner who had learned dance music through smuggled West Berlin radio before the Wall fell. Four years later, van Dyk rebuilt it as the "E-Werk Club Mix," named for the converted power-station club where he held his legendary residency, and released it on Deviant in 1998.
The rework detonated. That fizzing, sequenced lead — instantly recognizable from its first bar — became the signature of German trance's imperial phase, charting across Europe and soundtracking the Love Parade at its late-nineties peak, when over a million people filled Berlin's Tiergarten. The official video, shot amid that sea of humanity, remains one of the era's defining documents: one DJ, one riff, and an entire city moving to it.
Nearly every era-spanning trance set still finds room for it, because "For An Angel" solves the anthem problem perfectly — euphoric without being saccharine, driving without being brutal. It's the sound of a genre realizing exactly how big it could be.