Interview with The Purge

Hi Guys, first of all congratulations how are you doing? Can you give us a little recap of your amazing 2016?!
Ehy Hardstyle Mag! We are doing pretty good, thanks for asking! Well, 2016 has been a great year for The Purge, we had our first great bookings and we’ ve been producing quite a lot of tracks which had a great response. That also gave us the opportunity to start crafting our own sound. As you guys might know we are about to sign into a label, but we can’t tell anything yet! Just a bit more of patiance and you will find out soon! 🙂

For all the new readers, can you give us a little introduction, who are The Purge? How did you guys meet?
The Purge is a Raw Hardstyle duo from Italy, formed by Manuel and Luca. We’ve met few years back in Italy attending the same parties, and a day we’ve met again in London where we were living, and where we created the project “The Purge”. Since than we started to make music together by sharing the same passion for Hard Dance music!Let’s go way back in time. How did you guys come in touch with Hardstyle in the first place? Did you directly fall in love with the sound? Who was your favourite producer back then, and you perhaps had a favorite track which you did play on repeat?
So we have to go back to 2008 with first ever Q-Dance event in Italy, where Manuel first came across with the Hardstyle sound. There was a pretty cool line-up consisting of Lady Dana, Showtek, Headhunterz, Wildstylez and others he can’t actually can’t remember!

For Luca, we have to go back to 2006 when he first heard of Headhunterz and the very first track he ever listened to was D-Tuned.

Since then the passion for the both of us grew bigger and bigger every day and got us to know better the genere. If we think about back in the days our favourites artist were for Manuel; Nosferatu, Noize Suppressor (since he was more into hardcore as well) and in the Hardstyle scene were Federico Zenith, Zatox, Noisecontrollers, Zany and many others. Instead for Luca his favourites artists were Tatanka, The Rebelz, Showtek, The Beholder and list goes on and on!

Our favourites tracks back then were Nosferatu & Endymion – Drunk With A Gun ( Manuel) and Showtek – Breakbeat Junkie (Luca). They are still giving us goosebumps though! 🙂

When did you decide to start producing yourself? How did you start? Did you get any help, follow a course or a study?
As we mentioned before we started to make music together in London about 2 years ago! We were sitting in Manuel’s living room and all of a sudden we looked each others and thought we should have tried to produce music!

Yes, Manuel followed a course at SAE Institute in Amsterdam, which helped us a lot going through our productions, and also we’ ve been lucky enough to have feedback from big artists in the scene! It was very motivating!

It is always great to have someone helping you and giving you tips of course! Talking about that, do you have any tips for talents who are now in their lofts, dreaming about a career like you guys?
What we can say to all the upcoming talents is to keep working hard even if you think you are failing, a day you might reach what you are looking for! Dreams are always behind the corner!

What makes you, as a duo, different from the rest?
Since we have not been around for long as artists, what we are aiming for at the moment is to create a sound that people will instantly recognize as The Purge sound!

You also host your own podcast if im right, can you tell us something about it? Who will be the guest of the next podcast? Where can we check it out?
You are right! We are hosting our own podcast called “The Hardest” and it works on the formula of getting mostly the new talents to show themselves and their productions, and on our side we like to play what for us are the best releases of the month, and we are also promoting some new talents!

The next episode will be online the 9th february and our guests will The Principal(AUS) and The Strikerz (ES), so if you like to check the next episode you will be able to follow it live on our Facebook page and also on our Youtube channel and Soundcloud! Of course if someone is interested to be part of it or just want their tracks to be played you can contact us! 😉

If you could pick any artist, also outside the Hardstyle spectrum, who would you like to collaborate with?
Into Hardstyle for sure Delete or Phuture Noize, oustide Hardstyle we can think of I:Gor, Dither, The Outside Agency and a big dream would be Noisia (we both are big Drum’n’Bass lovers)

Speaking about collabs, we heard you are working on a collab with Unkind. Can you tell us something about it?
Yes, true we have started a collab with Unkind and so far we can tell you we managed to create a fresh and heavy track and we are going to play it for first time at our next gig in Ireland and he will also play it during his set at Loundess, so we hope to see you there! 😉 We can tell you that we are also working on track together with Mind Dimension and believe us, this is some rough shit! 

As the new generation of artists, which new artist do you recommend to keep an eye on?
There are some new talents which we recommend to keep your eyes on! You should check for Black Shadow, Wildness, Untamed and Crucio! This guys we believe they should be heard by the followers of the scene because they are really giving everything they have to make it into the Hardstyle spectrum!

Both of you are really passioned with the Harder styles, do you guys like to listen to other music genres sometimes?
Definately we do! We like to listen to Drum’n’Bass, Hardcore, Hardcore Industrial, Neurofunk also Ambient/Cinematographic music and also Psytrance which are also styles we take inspiration from!

A few months ago you guys did perform at Loudness, how was it? What was the greatest event you guys played so far
Yes, we did play at Loudness in November where we closed down Stage 4! It was definately an unforgottable experience, also because we were not expecting to achieve so much in such a short period! Also Total Damage was a really great booking not to forget!

We send you both to an uninhabited island, you are allowed to listen to one track only, which would it be?
Ahaha nice question! It is really hard to choose but if we think of one track that would be Vazard & Delete vs Main Concern – Gone Too Far

Final question: Do you guys have anything to share with us, maybe something unique or something to say to your fans?
If you want know what will happen in our future just keep following us as you are already doing. To all our fans, we want to thank them one more time because the support you showed us lately is immense and we could not be more happy about it! Also we would like to thank you guys from Hardstyle Mag for the interview, it was nice to talk with you!