…was a Jumpstyle producer before he gained a reputation as a hardstyle artist?
Carsten Giese
Maybe René de Bruin a.k.a. Digital Punk can be considered to be one of raw hardstyle’s pioneers when the scene divided into a more pop style and a more raw and dark part around 2010. But he and his productions did not appear out of nowhere. He was already known for several Jumpstyle releases.
The Punk Soul Brother
His first record got released on Tremble Tracks in 2006. Tremble Tracks used to be the Jumpstyle Division of the mighty Seismic Records Label – which itself belongs to the Midtown Records Empire. What really grabbed people’s attention was his next release: “The Punk Soul Brother”. The hard kicks, the simple melody together with the vocals of Fatboy Slim’s “Funk Soul Brother” fitted together very well.
Bringing The Funk
Together with Marlon S he released “Bringing The Funk” on Seismic Records instead of Tremble Tracks. Maybe this was due to the fact that this song sounded a lot more hardstylish than its predecessors. This one was such a big success: It pushed open the doors into the hardstyle world even wider for René. He even got booked for the Purple Stage – which was the newcomer area back then – for Defqon 1 2009. In addition to that Zatox remixed “Bringing the funk” in 2011.
Death Sentence – The TiLLT! Era
When Jeroen Streunding and Kelly van Soest aka. The Beholder & Max Enforcer (or Neophyte & Evil Activities) founded TiLLT! Records in 2010 Digital Punk created two of the first five releases. Both releases were considered to be outstandingly hard and raw back then. This really contributed to the development of raw hardstyle and led to one of hardstyle’s biggest careers.
This was DID YOU KNOW DIGITAL PUNK…
Another trip down memory lane has been done. This time we did not go that far into the past of hardstyle history. Stay tuned for the next one and be curious what we already dug out for the next article of this series.