It Keeps On Getting Better: An Appreciation For Darren Styles

This week is Hardcore Week here at Alive At Night and having covered virtually every other known variation of fast kickdrum led music over the last few days, today we devote our attention to the sweet, uplifting sounds of UK Hardcore. Join us in celebrating the career of an absolute icon, a worldwide superstar whose name is synonymous with the genre – we’re talking of course about the one and only Darren Styles.

To start this story at the very beginning we need to step way back in time, all the way back to 1992. The UK rave scene was exploding, with ground breaking events such as Fantazia and Dreamscape attracting thousands of ravers to events held on farmland and in warehouses around the UK.

Rave music was also finding a home in selected nightclub venues in the UK, of which one of the most notable was Oscars, in the coastal town of Clacton, Essex. Local boy Darren visited the club and was instantly swept away by the atmosphere and the music; from that moment on he never looked back!

The first venture into music production for young Darren Styles was as one of three eager up-and-coming musicians working with DJ Force under the name DJ Force & Evolution. Hardcore at that time was all about broken beats and pianos, with Styles soon becoming known for his amazing keyboard skills. Force & Evolution soon found themselves working at the studios of DJ Luna-C, creating masterpieces such as “Perfect Dreams” and “Fall Down On Me” which were released on Kniteforce Records.

Eventually two of the four members of DJ Force & Evolution moved on to pursue other interests, leaving Force & Styles to continue as a duo.

Force & Styles are responsible for some of the best known early UK Hardcore anthems and if you’re going to recognise any one if their tunes it will undoubtedly be “Heart Of Gold”, one of several tracks featuring stunning vocals by Jenna, which was released on United Dance and is arguably one of the biggest rave anthems of all time.

Numerous future classics were to follow when Force & Styles set up their own label, UK Dance, which brought forth the likes of “Funfair”, “Wonderland”, “Field Of Dreams” and tracks featuring distinctive lyrics and vocals by the late MC Junior, including “Pacific Sun”, “Paradise & Dreams” and “Pretty Green Eyes”.

In 1997, Force & Styles became the first (and to date the only) UK Hardcore artists to deliver an Essential Mix for national UK radio station BBC Radio 1. It is still a great honour for a DJ to feature on the Essential Mix show and to this day not many in hard dance have ever done so!

By the mid-2000’s Styles had become part of another duo, this time working with Mark Breeze. Breeze & Styles were releasing music on the iconic Raver Baby label, creating tunes like “You’re My Angel” and “Slide Away” which, more than a decade later, still bring crowds dashing on to dancefloors every weekend.

A number of Breeze & Styles tracks were released as UK Hardcore versions on Raver Baby and also as more commercially focused versions on All Around The World. The commercial versions certainly hit the mark, with “You’re Shining” and “Heartbeats” both becoming UK top 20 hits and appearing on the huge “Clubland” CD series, with Breeze & Styles also regularly mixing CDs for the “Clubland X-Treme Hardcore” series.

But did this mainstream success affect their creditability? Were Breeze & Styles suddenly labelled as “sell-outs” and shunned from the rave scene? Hell no! Quite the opposite in fact – Raver Baby was literally the coolest rave brand on the planet and Breeze & Styles were touring the globe as part of the Raver Baby Crew and headlining pretty much every major rave event in the UK.

In 2008 it was time for Darren Styles to spread his wings and fly solo, releasing his first solo artist album “Skydivin’” which achieved complete crossover success and secured his place as the international poster boy for UK Hardcore. If you’re looking for all those hands-in-the-air, peak time moments of bliss like “Come Running”, “Flashlight”, “Getting Better” and “Save Me”, “Skydivin’” is where you’ll find them.

Something you may not know is that Styles actually sings the vocals on many of his tracks. Whilst most of his on stage appearances are strictly DJ sets every now and then he grabs the mic and, much to the delight of the crowd, performs his biggest vocal tracks live on stage!

Roll on a few years to 2013 and the whole damn world was falling in love with hard dance music but very often Hardstyle was taking centre stage. As the only artist representing UK Hardcore on the whole line up, Styles made his first appearance at the mighty EDC festival in Las Vegas and in his typical modest fashion wondered if anyone would even know who he was! Of course the reality was very different, Styles played to a packed crowd of dedicated fans and has been welcomed back to the event every year since.

UK Hardcore was evolving rapidly and to give the genre a big push into 2015, Styles teamed up with fellow scene leaders Gammer, Dougal, Re-con, Breeze and MC Whizzkid to create a new label, Together We Rise (TWR), launched with a big rave on NYE 2014.

With the launch of TWR came a stream of phenomenal new Darren Styles music releases, including “Get This Place”, “It’s Like That”, “Sun Is Rising” featuring vocalist Christina Novelli and “Stay Young” with Dougal and Gammer.

Last year at Midnight Mafia in Sydney, Da Tweekaz joined Styles on stage when a very special track dropped during Styles, Breeze and MC Whizzkid’s set. Having remixed each other’s tracks in the past, in 2016 Styles got together with Da Tweekaz to create a brand new original track “Heroes”, which was released in both 150bpm and 170bpm versions! Styles has visited Australia regularly to perform in front of literally thousands of fans at the country’s biggest indoor hard dance events, most recently Knockout Circuz and Midnight Mafia, I wonder if we will be lucky enough to see him again this year?

Recently Styles has resumed his production partnership with Stonebank, working under the name Zero Hero. Originally the true identities of the artists were a big secret when Zero Hero first appeared in 2013; the cat was eventually let out of the bag but there’s still a lot of people in the scene who haven’t made the connection due to Zero Hero experimenting with a range of different sounds and tempos. Keep an eye out for the name Zero Hero this year, you never know when this intriguing duo might show up next.

Styles has also busted out some sensational remixes in the last few months, including remixing Stonebank’s “The Only One” and Kayzo’s “Born Again”, the latter with their mutual good friend Gammer.

Next month Darren Styles and Gammer are embarking on a tour of the USA, however in a slightly shocking turn of events the boys have announced that the “Feel Like This” tour will be their last ever back-to-back sets! Can this really be true? Will we really never, ever, again see these two masters of the genre sharing the same spotlight? I’m going to hedge my bets on that one, but nevertheless this tour will be an unmissable event for UK Hardcore fans in the USA. To coincide with the tour, this month finally sees the release of the anthem “Feel Like This” on Monstercat.

Not only is Styles continually pushing the scene forward and bringing cutting edge new music to dancefloors the world over but he also doesn’t mind winding the clock back too for occasions such as the forthcoming Force & Styles set at the Clubland Weekender in May, soon after which he’ll be heading out to Mallorca for HTID In The Sun where we’ll be treated to both a solo Darren Styles set and a Breeze & Styles Clubland Classics set!

For over twenty years now, Darren Styles has been at the forefront of the UK Hardcore scene. Along with his worldwide army of fans, Alive At Night will be watching eagerly to see where his musical journey leads to next!
Darren Styles, if by any chance you’re reading this I want you to know that I had so much fun researching and writing this article! From being a teenager in the UK and first discovering rave music, through my twenties partying to a soundtrack of Clubland hits then in recent years raving front and centre at events like Knockout Circuz in Sydney, your music has always been a part of my life 🙂

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