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Klein interview dat ik op Decibel heb gedaan met Harderstate:
Hello Tita, first of all thanks for accepting this interview.
I’m happy to do this interview with Harderstate and with you man!
Ok, so, to begin why don't you start by telling us more about you ?
My name is Michel, I’m 22 years old and I live in Eindhoven (NL) with my girlfriend. I studied psychology. Apart from that, I like football and I used to play it on a pretty high level until I injured my knees. I like all kinds of music; it can go from heavy metal to pop.
You are the responsible for one of the most well-known radio show in the hardstyle landscape: 'The Magic Show'. When you decided to launch it, did you expect such a success?
Well we started in 2009 on a small German radio called Hardshockers FM. After 10 weeks we had our first highlight: a 4 hour long show with Thera, Titan, Solutio & The I’s and myself. That broadcast became the basics of The Magic Show as it is now. Not long after this episode we decided to move on to Real Hardstyle Radio, at that moment one of the biggest hardstyle radio channels in the world. Unfortunately they got into financial troubles and had to shut the streams down. We then contacted Dance-Tunes Radio and they were interested in having The Magic Show on their schedule, then. Not long after that Q-dance offered us broadcast time on their stream too, so now we are on both radios airing 3h per week.
One thing that makes the quality of 'The Magic Show' is the amount of residents. You managed to surround yourself with really great names like Adaro, Chris One, Da Tweekaz and The Vision between many other names, but I guess it was not always like that?
Our first residents were Mind.Illusion and The Geminizers who immediately showed interest in the ideas of The Magic Show. After those 2, I searched for some other names on the internet and that’s how we found, for instance, Solutio & The I’s who were also sharing our view on hard dance music. The bigger we got, the more residents we had. Ran-D heavily recommended us Adaro and he was happy to be with us and he still is! Everything is possible if you have a goal and if you are motivated, it’s a lot of work. But in the end it pays off!
I guess that now, every time there is a vacancy place to take, there is a little fight for the job, am I right? I guess there are no empty rooms for new residents right now? How much residents do you actually have?
At the moment we have 16 residents and we decided not to change them because we are really satisfied with them. Still, we receive a lot of demos from people who want to be part of The Magic Show (about 35 demos per week) but most of them don’t really add something to the show… But if it is something good, we’re happy to welcome new residents like we did with our new resident: Juized. When we listened to his demo it was like a relief, so good! Besides that, we are always on the lookout for new talents who share the same ideas and thoughts about hard-dance music as us.
You are, as much as possible, looking for young and talented producers to complete your list of residents. A good example is Tartaros. Can you tell us how you manage to find them in the big sphere of hardstyle upcoming producers?
Like I said, it’s mostly by searching on the Internet but I don’t really have time for that anymore. In the case of Tartaros, I called him when I heard The Vision playing one of his track at Q-Base and I just had to know from who the track was.. It was like a click, I just knew that he would fit the ideas of The Magic Show.
Do you think it’s a 'plus' for an artist to be resident of 'The Magic Show'? And why is that?
It’s really hard to say but I think our residents don’t have much to complain when it comes to online promotion.
Let's talk a bit about the other side of your show! Every week you are inviting a guest in your studio. Could you tell us more about the atmosphere and the feeling there is in the studio when you are recording a podcast?
Well it’s just having fun, drinking some beers and talking about music. Its fun and that what it’s all about.
I can confirm what you said because I was there when you invited Deepack and when we recorded 'The Smallest Sitdown In Europe'! But did you already have a bad experience?
No never actually, I would really say it but no, never! Always had nice atmospheres!
This year has been a breakthrough for you guys at The Magic Show because you had the opportunity to host your own areas at big festivals like WiSH Outdoor and The Qontinent. Tell us about these 2 experiences.
We have been in contact with WiSH Outdoor since the Q-Base DYOA contest of last year. This event organization really offers high quality, just like we want to offer. In the beginning of this year we decided to start working together officially. The event itself went great, a sold out venue and a lot of diehards going crazy on our music. Backstage we had a lot of fun too and it was very nice to see artists as Crypsis, Deepack and Josh & Wesz to just come over to hang around some with us. It will definitely be not the last time that we work together with WiSH so keep your eyes and ears opened for that!
The Qontinent was really a big success; it was somewhat comparable with WiSH Outdoor. Our artists really showed us what they can do. The closing of the The Magic Show area on Saturday by The Geminizers was just crazy because on one hand the main stage was packed but they managed to gather a lot of people in our own area as well. Anyone that was there can approve that we nearly made the area open air the last hour.
On Sunday Bass Events gave us the opportunity to host a raw hardstyle area. Together with them we managed to set up a quite unique line up with some very surprising acts. The highlights are hard to mention but the most striking set was Ran-D who really blew it off, it was hard to move in the area, that crowded it was! I heard very good feedback from the crowd and from him. I just loved every set, but was especially satisfied with the sets of Crypsis & The Machine, as they had never played together before and totally made the crowd go crazy. Also, Deepack broke it down; I was impressed, incredible set.
Being personally there at both areas, I can say that, what was really striking both times is the way that people passionate for this music and the fact I saw the same people attending both areas. Do you think there is some kind of 'The Magic Show' family?
Well, within the company, yes for sure.. Everybody knows each other. On the parties it’s still hard to say as we only hosted two areas so far. But we would be very proud if we could create something like that!
Does it take a lot of time to be responsible of The Magic Show? Are you taking care of the show on your own?
Yes it does, I used to do everything on my own but it was too much, really.. So Mind.Illusion and The Geminizers help me and I’m very satisfied with that.
You seem to invest a lot of time and energy in this, where do you find the strength and the inspiration to surprise us more and more every time, like you did with the TMS Top 500 and now the Fusion Weeks ?
Ideas come and go all the time! In the near future we will have three special weeks exclusively dedicated to XQlusive Italy. Other ideas usually come while brainstorming about what could be nice for the listeners. When the ideas are manageable we try to execute them. For example in the beginning of the year we felt like giving some more attention to the melodic side of hardstyle. We invited then Scantraxx artists Scope DJ and Bass Modulators to play a 2 hour long back2back set. While both of them didn’t know each other they really made one hell of a show!
Tell us about the door of the studio, the one I personally call 'The Magic Door', was it your idea?
Well actually it’s not our door, it’s the propriety of Freaky Records, where we have our studio, but we thought it would be cool for the artists to have something to remember and to be proud off. But now it’s almost full so I don’t know what we are going to do next (Laughs).
As this is a question I read in many interviews, I have to ask you: What do you think of the current situation in the hardstyle world? Do you think we should make a difference between raw/mainstream/early?
Well, my perfect hardstyle is diverse. There should be no splitting between so-called raw and so-called mainstream because the tracks have the same build-up and arrangement in general. The one and only natural split up who came in the hardstyle scene is the early hardstyle. Perhaps in the near future there are possibilities of a split to more industrial hardstyle; I’ve heard some tracks of Theracords that are going into that direction. In my opinion it’s very cool and refreshing.
Is there anything else you want to add or you want to say to our members?
Yeah, we are active on Harderstate because we think it’s a good place to broadcast our press messages and music! We think music is something that should by all times be positive, don’t hate, just love music or go do something else.
Thank you for answering my questions!
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Geplaatst op 22 aug 2011 15:56 
