The state of Hardstyle - 2021

[ThePrincipal]

ceero, your comment about techstyle

I have an old school booking in July and it's basically going to be almost all Straight On Red/Black stuff hehe <3

[Tomix]

What should be reinvented?

Spoiler

1. Normal track length, normal length of danceable parts of tracks

2. I strongly believe there are way too many vocals, songwriters and attempting to appear as 'pop/instrumental music'. While it does sometimes work and sometimes i def enjoy it (PN or DBSTF are doing awesome job at it). When there is a vocal, songwriting, a featuring singer to compliment the tune, it's totally fine. But when there is a hardstyle bit to compliment 75% of that singing/songwriting/vocalists, I think that it's not in the DNA of this kind of music. I want more tunes like Andy SVGE - Ravetrip. Simple, funky, driving stuff that's not pretending it's something it is not. I want more sampled vocal bits from movies, games, rap songs - that stuff fits hardstyle WAY more then featuring a god damn singer in each and every tune out there.

3. I would absolutely adore to have the 'early raw' (is that a thing?) sound back. The 2010-2017ish stuff before piepkicks and gearbox crap took over. The early Roughstate, late Fusion, the A2 Records kind of stuff. Nowadays raw is 100% effectively dead to me, but i used to adore raw during this period im talking about. Ballsy, dark, screechy, hard and modern hardstyle without sounding like something coming out of a crack den. While the classic mainstream stuff is coming back and you can find this sound nowadays if you enjoy it, you don't really have too many options in 2021 if you are looking for something that sound like Adaro & E-Force - Open The Gates or B-Front & Slim Shore - Scary Noises. I miss that stuff hard.

4. I do wish that the Thilo & Evanti / Straight On Black kind of techstyle and the subground/QULT sound were resurrected, I think they were an absolutely awesome addition to the palette of hardstyle/harddance genres, but I know that's a complete fantasy

Everything what ceero wrote, plus a more simplified track structuring. There's no need to be 8 different kicks, carzy-ass modulations and over the top buildups.

[dylannn]

ceero, your comment about techstyle

I have an old school booking in July and it's basically going to be almost all Straight On Red/Black stuff hehe <3

Niiiice. Where's the booking, in Melbourne by any chance...?

[ThePrincipal]

yeah bro at this stage it is - late July but let's get our fucking lockdown out the way first hehe (hopefully it's only 4 weeks)

[Xurreal]

Thanks for your input, guys (515 views, but only 10 opinions )

Quick overview summing up some perceptions:

Positive perceptions:
- Gated kicks comeback
- love of experimentation
- influences by other genres (esp. Techno)
- increased production quality
- livestream diversity
- vinyl comeback

Neutral:
-------

Negative perceptions:
- tracks too short
- frequent kick changes (I'd like to hear more opinions on this one)
- overused vocals

[Xurreal]

Try thread at other communities too maybe ? (ex: reddit/hardstyle, hardtraxx, etc...)

Yay, thanks for the hint. Will do when time allows.

[Reverse Ghost]

As usual it'll be hard thinking of anything different since ceero pretty much knocked it out of the park with his post.

• Which current trends do you like or dislike?
  
  Like: I like the inventiveness in tracks from the past year, both with kicks and melodies. One good thing the lockdown had was forcing producers to actually produce music that sounds good and not just 30 second kickfests. I also see lots of amazing talent when Atmozfears shows off demo submissions in his streams. Wiqtory is a name I'll definitely be looking out for in the future. I also appreciate that guys like Atmozfears, D-Block & S-te-Fan, Wildstylez, Headhunterz, and Phuture Noize are still making tracks that are melodic and not afraid of actually sounding hard. We need more of that and not what I'll explain below.
  
  Dislike: I don't like that nu-raw is still a thing, with its 2 minute long melodic breaks followed by a 21 second anticlimax of five different kick varieties, maybe afterwards a 10 second melodic climax that immediately fades out so the next "track" can be mixed in. In general the state of Raw has been the worst thing for Hardstyle in recent years imo, it goes hand in hand with the uptemo cancer that hit Hardcore at the same time. Before, raw tracks used to make people want to dance and go hard. Now everyone just makes fucking duckfaces and and acts like it's a fucking Excision concert with their "bassfaces" or doing that pincer shit.
• What should be reinvented? Room for improvement?
  
  Raw and euphoric styles need a reset imo. The Raw style that went from 2014 to 2017 was the absolute pinnacle. Take some lessons from Radical Redemption and Warface from from those times. Those guys were on top of their shit for good reason. Meanwhile, euphoric can definitely have more drive in its tracks and not just being pop music singalong again. Take note from Neilio, Rebourne, Omegatypez, and Frontliner how to actually properly do good euphoric tracks.
  Also, for the love of God, early hardstyle still needs more love. I'm not talking about your typical Luna early set with the same hitmix tracks. I'm talking about actually busting out proper classics, lesser known bangers, more SAIFAM tracks before the nustyle era, and throwing a little bit of early jumpstyle in there. I always loved how from 2003 to 2005 the big DJ sets would always throw at least one jump track in there to spice things up a bit and keep everyone on their toes. Hell, even the Techno crowd goes wild when a hard as hell early track is dropped in a DJ set at their parties! Big love to Thera and Geck-O, and even The Darkraver with his numerous livestreams for keeping that early spirit alive in their productions and DJ sets. we need more guys like them on the forefront
• What makes you keep coming back?
  
  This website for one. If this site were gone my only way of getting Hardstyle news and release info would be scouring social media pages or the reddit. Also the good music as explained above is keeping me in moreso than the negatives keeping me away. However my interest in modern Hardstyle has been waning lately. I'd rather listen to techno, early hardstyle, and oldschool rave than anything else with electronic music anymore.
• Increasing popularity of the genre - perceived advantages/disadvantages
  
  Hardstyle has always been commercial, popular, and big. This topic has been discussed to death in many other settings. It's nice when a hardstyle track is played on a typical mainstage and seeing how the crowd responds. Likewise if we ever get more hardstyle tour stops in the US, we welcome the harder borderline raw style more than the poppy singalong music everyone thought we would enjoy since the beginning of time.

[dylannn]

[*] Which current trends do you like or dislike?

Thera has become my favourite artist with the hardertrance sound. Nice having some well produced early sounds around.
Not a fan of raw and anything getting close to the pieps in hardcore, but that's easy to avoid.
I prefer the kicks of the last few years over the 2010-2015 dong kicks, much more energetic and pleasant to listen to. Not quite as nice as a reverse bass but still

[*] What should be reinvented?

Still love spoontech, other raw artists taking inspiration from there would be nice.
This has been an issue for 10+ years but intros/outros being creative in extended mixes and not just "for DJs" - this can be an interesting build up, don't need to go straight from four kicks to a vocal to climax.
Would like to see less "formula following". More fusion with other genres (reggae, ambient, dub, metal, whatever really)

[*] Where do you see potential for improvements?

Like everyone here has said (probably cos being on this forum means you like the music for the sake of it being music rather than parties alone) track timing!!! My favourite songs take you on a bit of an journey, 2-3 minutes is like fast food - it works but you're not left satisfied

[*] What makes you coming back?

Tbh I pretty much just look out for the artists I like and otherwise look at the top 100 end of the year. Other genres have definitely become of more interest to me since 2010. But, hardstyle has a bit of a community here and on Reddit so if I'm bored and want to scroll through something I'm back

[*] Increasing popularity of the genre - perceived advantages/disadvantages

In AUS 95% of my friends don't know what hardstyle is, and that 5% pretty much only knows it from when shuffling was all the rage in 2007. Very niche over here across the average population.
The disadvantage more broadly is spotifysation of the music in terms of track structure and length
Advantage would be the ease of discovering new music, no more hunting vinyl rips or not knowing if something's been released

[*] What made you discover Hardstyle (if you're relatively new to it)

Been around a while. Masif/blutonium compilations way back when

[*] honorable mentions for what entertains you, despite the lack of parties

Hard trance still pretty good. Techno is occasionally giving me the same excitement early hardstyle does - ASYS in particular with hard hitting acid. Happy hardcore is basically just fast euphoric hardstyle these days which I don't mind once in a while

[Shodan]

i genuinely don't get why the forum seem to blame only spotify for track lenght when youtube has shorter previews and snippets, even soundcloud has shorter tracks
Spotify is the easy target i guess?

I would instead blame the artist but much more heavily on the label who publish the tracks, why would you want 5-8min tracks when producers does not even feel the need to get their idea to that extent? even if there are extended mixes is up to the label if its uploaded to spotify or not, i prefeer a compact well-strutured idea than a longer forced project

i think i also saw some blaming the fanbase? for listening to whatever they want the time they want? alright, i don't know, i wonder who's to blame for real

[Reverse Ghost]

i genuinely don't get why the forum seem to blame only spotify for track lenght when youtube has shorter previews and snippets, even soundcloud has shorter tracks
Spotify is the easy target i guess?

Because Spotify is the easiest to use music listening service and the most popular for that reason. Not many people use youtube for their music anymore.