Recently I’ve found myself getting super frustarted with myself purely because I can’t decide what to listen to, and I end up spending more time browsing Spotify than actually coding. This Commit Strip comic springs to mind. Also, I’ve never really given Hardstyle a proper chance to sneak into my music library. I used to thoroughly enjoy a bit of Trance and Dance back in the day. How different can this new-age stuff be? Spoiler: very.
Which leads us to this past week. I’ve spent the last 5 days with a YouTube auto playlist constantly open, running through an endless parrade of Hardstyle. These are my thoughts.
Thoughts
- MY GOD WHY DOES EVERY TRACK INCLUDE A TRAMPOLINE AS THE BASS DRUM!? I’m pretty sure this method of bass line management is going to lead to a stroke.
- There’s seems to be an obsession with getting samples of people (usualy north American males with deep voices) talking about irrelevant, mostly space related, nonsense. Pretty much any song with these samples in I strongly dislike.
- A lot of the playlists include the word MEGA, which I totally appreciate.
- The distinct lack of sidechaining is upsetting. It’s like the entire genre is built around this trampoline bass drum.
- I quite like how pretty much every Hardstyle track is set to around 140 BPM. It makes the transition between tracks a hell of a lot smoother.
Tracks I Actually Enjoyed
- Cyber - Perception: It’s got a pretty epic intro, then the trampoline kicks in…
- Cascada - Everytime We Touch (Fallen Superhero Hardstyle Remix): They’ve taken a song that’s already pretty mental, and just made it every crazier. Pretty solid in my books. Plus, no deep voices.
- Major Lazer Justin Bieber - Cold Water (RNGD REMIX): Literally no idea why I like this one man, like, it’s just so bad that it’s good.
- Galatis - Gold Dust (Dany BPM Remix): No idea. It just works.
Tracks I Absolutely Loathe
- Cyber - ILY: Maybe it was that English woman’s voice at the start, or maybe it was the excessive use of unnecessary key changes, or maybe it’s just the sheer amount of trampolines in this song. I don’t know.
- Energyzed + Adrenalize - The Mechanisms of Nature: There’s a guy talking throughout that make this track sound like a trailer for a James Cameron movie. Super anoying. The rest of the track is also rather boring.
- Da Tweekaz - Tweekay16: It’s very remenicent of Happy Hardcore stuff from the early 2000s. I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now.
- Da Tweekaz - Game of Thrones: Yeah I really don’t like this guys stuff. It’s too corney, some stupid American dude chatting at the start, and the GoT theme just kinda hastily thrown in there. I get what Tweekaz is trying to do, he just isn’t doing it very well.
- Atmozfears - On Your Mark and Singularity: There’s a sample of some guy saying the phrase “we became like gods”, and it’s used about 20 times. The rest of the track was tollerable.
In conclusion
Meh, it’s alright. There’s very little variation between tracks since they’re all using the same chord progressions and BPM. I imagine it’d be entertaining at a festival or something, maybe.
