As you know I like to give a little spiel whenever a track ends up posted to /r/hardstyle and there's so much I wanna say about this so if it ends up a gigantic wall of text I apologise.
This most definitely is not a regular hardstyle track and it was never intended to be. I've had an extensive musical history dabbling in many other genres (trance, drum & bass and uk hardcore) and after finishing my album I wanted to continue on that path.
When Headhunterz asked to work together on a project on the back of him really enjoying my album, I was blown away! Hell yeah! I've said it more than once, his track 'Power of the Mind' and his Project One album were my entry points into hardstyle.
He is a musical hero of mine and after hanging out throwing ideas around, it was clear we were on the same page - we didn't want to follow the rules and create something that was 'expected' of us, we wanted to break free of the rules, take a stand for what we believe in and explore our creativity.
You see, its very VERY easy as a producer to soak in all commentary of music that exists online and subconsciously it affects your creativity. Instead of being able to approach a track with question 'I wonder where we'll end up today', the question becomes 'I wonder what the the online crowd is going to think' and creatively that can be quite paralysing.
We really had to search deep inside ourselves to break free (or break out heh) of those inhibitions to figure out exactly what we wanted and were we wanted to go and it was through this journey that we ended up with this track. Believe you me, seeing the madness that goes on on Willem's Facebook page, we know the type of reaction that we were gonna get. I would argue that Audiofreq fans are a bit more forgiving though, they know I'm one to end up making something random in a style thats not always aligned with whatever is going on at the moment. Hell, I got away with a dark techno tune, and 2 drum & bass tunes on my album.
We see this as a bit of a revolt against the onslaught of raw hardstyle. Now I'm not saying that I don't like raw hardstyle, I play it when I feel its time to play it and have done a few rawer tracks myself. But with its current domination of the genre, I have to be honest and say, its not why I got involved with hardstyle. Just because something is rougher and harder doesn't mean it gets me all excited, it has to be in a particular context for me. I try not to focus too much one particular element, or even a set of elements to enjoy music. But that said I prefer music thats a bit more friendly and melodic, something that makes me feel good and gets me grooving.
This goes back to actually to when I first discovered electronic dance music in the first place when I was growing up - I continually seek to capture that feeling of discovery, euphoria and excitement in whatever I produce. Its a bit like a junkie trying to capture the magic of their first high. So instead of competing and compromising our visions for our music and playing into what people expected from us, we wanted to strip things back and build on the elements that we liked.
Taking a stand and going against the grain ruffles feathers, particularly when you break a lot of the conventions and expectations that people have. Through out my years of making music, I've found that sticking to genre boundaries can be boring after a while and as a multi-genre producer, I believe its important to find balance between pleasing the fans, but also pleasing yourself.
If people don't like this track, I don't mind at all, I know its not for every one. If you think its not hardstyle, it probably isn't - but thats if you believe that hardstyle follows the rules of 'it has to have a kick like this' or 'it needs a reverse bass' or even 'it needs screeches like this'.
I believe that the majority of producers have kinda lost the spirit and intention of what hardstyle was in the first place. When hardstyle was first concocted in the early 00's, it was a kind of in between music that was rougher than the current club music of the day, but softer than hardcore. Now that the line between raw hardstyle and hardcore is becoming more and more blurred, we have to re-evaluate - does the hardstyle now really follow the spirit and intention of why it was created in the first place? Is it still that in between music?
This track seeks to re-interpret the original ethos and spirit of hardstyle and both Willem and I are damn proud of the result.
En om maar te zwijgen over die kicks 
Alleen dan die drop... 
