Hardstyle trend of 2015?

What a year 2014 was. Ups and downs, the split between Rawstyle and Euphoric. Some of us are still fearful about the fact that mainstream hardstyle is getting huge, others are happy about the roughest rawstyle since ever in hardstyle history. But what can we expect of the scene in 2015. What will be the next trend?

We asked two creative and open minded producers and together we set the prognosis for the year ahead. They let us jump to old, but reinvented, classics and stopped the time for a brief moment with tracks like ‘Radiance’. Welcome Bass Modulators!

1. Hardstyle reached a new global peak in the last year, but how was 2014 for you guys? Any unforgettable moments you want to share?

BM (Bass Modulators): There were so many great moments, but the highlight of last year was our 2 week tour in Chile and Australia. It was our first Time in Chile, where we played at ‘The sound of Q-dance’. What happened there, was out of this world. Those people are crazy!

Another great moment was to produce ‘Rocked up’ together with Noisecontrollers. We had so much fun and chemistry going on in the studio. It worked out really well.

2. You are not famous for releasing so many tracks a year, but when you do, it’s always a floor banger. Is that your secret, taking enough time to produce, for great tracks like ‘Radiance’?

BM: Thanks! We are taking all of our projects pretty seriously. Every track needs to be the best we can and every track needs to be unique. So in some cases it takes some time to find the perfect ingredients and perfect mix for a track. We think that worked out pretty well with tracks like Radiance. We’re very proud of that one.

3. In early 2014 Hard with Style literally created a new sub genre in hardstyle. I call it Big Room hardstyle. Later that year, many raw producers gained fame and the scene split up heavily. If you look back now, what do you think of this separation?

BM: The thing with music is that it will always change and evolve. We have to accept that. Most of the time that’s a good thing so it won’t get boring. But to be honest, we think it’s too bad that it splits up so heavily into two separate styles these days. You’ve got the extremely raw stuff and the more light euphoric stuff, but there’s not much left in the middle of that. But whatever happens, we will keep making and playing our own style.

4. Music changes, that’s how the nature of it works. Where do you see hardstyle in 2015? Will it gain more attention or have we reached the limit already?

BM: We think hardstyle has definitely not reached its limit yet. Especially now, hardstyle is gaining so much popularity worldwide. That’s also because of the hardstyle influences you see in other EDM genres nowadays.

House artists also play hardstyle tracks in their sets so people get in touch with this sound and starting to like it. So it keeps growing. You also see more hardcore artists experimenting with hardstyle these days.

The big difference is that the raw hardstyle is getting more popular in Europe, and the euphoric sound is getting way more popular in the rest of the world at this point.

5. What will be the next big trend?

BM: As said in the answer up here, raw is (becoming) the trend in Europe and euphoric in other parts of the world. But you also see a lot of crossover tracks nowadays with progressive house and hardstyle influences like Headhunterz does for example. You can call it bigroom hardstyle if you like.

Since the EDM scene is getting bigger and bigger worldwide and especially in the USA, we think this thing can become really huge. Of course the question is; will the real die-hard hardstyle fans like this trend?

6. This was Headhunterz before he played his first track ‘Shocker’. He is referring to the ‘Evolution of Hardstyle’, getting slower and more mainstream. Will we reach the point where we can’t identify hardstyle by its characteristics like the BPM? Or, is that even important in the first place?

BM: We definitely support Heady on this one. Although we don’t think that he is specifically referring to Hardstyle, but more to the evolution of his own music in common.

The definition of Hardstyle has never been claimed officially as far as we know, but if that would have been the case, hardstyle nowadays would have already broken the characteristics of the hardstyle from back in 2001 for example. Back then the bpm was like 140, the kicks were not even close to what they are nowadays and the kicks never pitched together with the melody.

But no one is complaining about that anymore. So as long as the music will be good, catchy, energetic and original, we don’t have any problems with changing these characteristics since it happens all the time in the long run. But that doesn’t mean that the solid 150 bpm hardstyle bangers will disappear. At least we hope not!

7. Last but not least: what can we expect from you in 2015?

BM: There is a lot coming up. First of all we produced one of the 4 HardBass Anthems for this year that will be released soon. We are working on a new collab with Noisecontrollers again since the first collab worked out really well and we almost finished our new solo track.

We also have a lot of awesome bookings coming up worldwide, but we can’t say anything about it yet. For the ones that are public, you can check our online schedule.