Hardstyle.
It's a pulse that keeps beating. Four to the floor beats with an affect that sends your mind into a hailstorm. Hardstyle is music characterized by excessive reverb, fierce basslines, four to the floor beats, keyboard samples arranged in a specific melodic sequence, and it is continuous.
As a sub genre of trance, hardstyle creates a feeling. It is a wave. This wave is vicious, it keeps moving up and down. One could call it devastating. I feel that I understand this music so well that I could create it myself, however I lack the knowledge to do so. Hardstyle music is revolutionary in my mind. The first time I listened to a hardstyle track, my mind was blown.
The year was 2006 I believe, and I was downloading electronic music like mad with the power of bit torrent. I stumbled upon a torrent labeled "Hardstylistix_-_PIMP-Promo_Vinyl-2006-DJ" and figured that name sounds pretty bad ass, I'll give it a shot.
In my mind, the idea of hardstyle was nothing. One could have approached me and asked, "what is hardstyle?" and I would reply saying that I knew nothing of it or even heard of it.
During that time, I was on a quest. I was on a quest to discover a certain kind of music, or song, that pushed the limits, exceeded the capacity of my mind. Little did I know, this track was it.
The download finished and I loaded the first track into Winamp on my computer. I loaded the song and let it go, I did not touch the seeker and the song played from beginning to end. I began reading articles on the internet and talked to my friends over AIM as I usually do.
Then the song hit me. I sat there and my jaw dropped. The climax of the song was undescribable. I was in absolute awe as to what sound was penetrating my ear drums, and I find it funny due to the fact that I paid little to no attention once the track started, but I still had faith the track would turn out to be good. In fact, the track turned out to beyond good, it changed my life.
How corny does that sound? One out of millions of electronic music songs changed my life forever. This one, corny track made by three German producers, two of which remain to be among some of my favorite hardstyle producers to this day, changed my life. Forever. Corny was far from the correct word to the describe the song.
This sound was exactly the sound I have been looking for. Once I discovered the genre of hardstyle, my life was different. My mental fear of embarassment due to the fact that I listen to excessive amounts of electronic dance music were starting to wear away, and they are completely gone today.
Hardstyle is my life. I have found an obsession, and audible drug for my own self use whenever I want to listen to it really. These thunderous beats and the power behind this music is incredible. It's unmatched.
