Project Exilium: France strikes again!

Jonathan Leroy aka Exilium is one of the new rising stars in French Hardstyle. You may have heard a few of his tracks  already in podcasts like Global Dedication, Hard with Style or The Future of Hardstyle with his recent hits Heart of Glass , Away from You that he made with Chile most smiling gentlemen on the planet Sickddellz, or Unshakable produced with the best twins duo Sound Rush. 

Even if you haven’t, when you play these tracks it should right away ring a bell, and if it doesn’t, well.. I’m sorry but you might have been abducted by aliens and you should get yourself checked because they probably did weird shit with your body while you were unconscious, as they are used to do so.

Well actually don’t go anywhere as we have Exilium stepping inside our office today and you might be more focused before the doctor told you what these aliens exactly did with you. 😀

Bonjour man! How is it going today? Oh you brought croissant, awesome lad but I’m sure the others at the Mag don’t want them, so, if you don’t mind I’ll take them all… Don’t tell anyone ok?
Yo I’m good thanks for asking! No problem, they don’t even know how good it is… Haha!

It’s always a pleasure to host french artists. I mean you come from one of the greatest country on earth right 😀 … nah don’t mind those of our crew who shake their heads, they secretly know, but don’t want to admit. It’s called jealousy! Which part of France do you come from?
I am from the north of France, living in a city called: ‘Calais’.

We love to talk about food culture a little bit with our guests, and as some of our fans sometimes take a small detour through Northern France to visit their favorite events, so I think It would be amazing for us all to know what we have to try once we stop there?
What a cool question, haha! I really love fast food and all to be honest… In my opinion, that would be something typical from here, definitely a cone of fries together with a fricadelle.

It sounds like I really should like ahah! Who doesn’t like fries ? Now let’s come back to music. Can you tell us what is the meaning behind Exilium? At first I’d say it comes from Latin, because … it obviously looks latin right? 😀
Do you really wanna know? I found that name, it looked good at writing, the pronunciation was ok and, that’s how I became: ‘Exilium’.

So how did everything get started? When did you fall in the Magic Potion that is Hardstyle ? 🙂
I discovered Hardstyle with that one and only track called: Headhunterz & Abject – Scantraxx Rootz. I don’t really think I am the only one who discovered Hardstyle with Willem… That was something like really huge back in the days!

Producing music and especially Hardstyle can be a pretty hard thing if you don’t know where to start at first. Did you learn everything from your own or did you have some kind of mentor that helped you building what you are today?
I had a close friend here in my town who was also producing Hardstyle and together we learned the basics like, how to do a melody, creating an atmosphere in a break but right before these things, I of course learned how to use FL Studio and some years after I was like ok, now it’s time to create the very first track! 🙂

Patience is the key element as a producer. If you burn steps, you’re f*cked…

Time by time I created my own musical space and then, I met people who are actually still working together with me… 🙂

I heard that you are signed to the label Invaders Records, which is the number one french Hardstyle label at the moment in the scene am I right? Can you tell us a little more about that label? What is it different from for instance DWX or Scantraxx and etc… What is the philosophy of that label?
That’s true but there are not that much French Hardstyle labels so that’s not really hard to be the first one, haha!

Invaders Records is not only a label for me, that’s a real second family… IR brought me a lot, the teamwork skills is what you can feel directly when you start working with them!

Is that why you chose to sign to that label?
I choose IR because that was just a logical step for me and I did it right, I can tell you I am still proud of that choice right now! 🙂

Now I have listened to pretty much all of your tracks, and I’m very interested in the most recent ones you have released. Could you tell us what inspiration you had for each of them?
I am always trying to bring my own vision of Hardstyle but I am definitely inspired by some names like: Noisecontrollers, Wildstylez or even Adrenalize…

Unshakable (feat Exilium) – Sound Rush: I love this track it’s so fresh… big summer feeling! How did you come up to make a collab with Sound Rush?
We had a long chat about it and the fact we like what we do from each other was the key element to start new music and that’s how we created ‘Unshakable’ which was 1st at Hardstyle.com!

Away from You – Sickddelz & Exilium feat. Sebastian Hansson: That vibe, a perfect Hardstyle track that reminds the good old days back in 2012 – 2013, with a great melody very catchy! What was your inspiration for this masterpiece?
To be honest, Wildstylez was our inspiration on this one… I really love what Sickddellz is doing and we direcly found a way to do that collab, was fun! 🙂

Heart of Glass – Exilium: A real token of euphoria. The atmosphere in this track is absolutely overwhelming, and goes straight to your heart. The first time I listen to this beauty, I had goosebumps! Definitely one of my favorites Hardstyle tunes ever!
Haha, glad you like it man! Heart of Glass is one of my personal favorite, I had a pain in the ass to create this one but at the end, I’m really proud of it.

And, where do you think we could catch you up this summer? Which festival can we see you playing at?
I have some gigs for this summer yes but I can’t really give any info at the moment but one of them is a cool step for my whole project… ‘More info soon!’ 😀

Alright Jonathan, it was amazing to have you with us today, the whole Hardstyle Mag crew wishes you the absolute best for Exilium! You guys rock and thanks again for the croissants!
Thank you so much for supporting me, that was a real pleasure to be a part of that interview! I hope you liked it, haha! Good luck and… We live for Hardstyle baby! 🙂