During “Home Of Hardstyle” we ran into the wonderful DJ Thera, who took some minutes for a really interesting interview. We talked “Home Of Hardstyle”, the Rawstyle hype, tips for newcomers and much more!

Hello Dj Thera!
Hello, almost didn’t recognize you! (laughs)

So… what are you doing here?
Well, this is the pop up store form hardstyle.com and it would only be perfect if we had a Theracords stand here! So we’re selling Theracords flags here, my album, wristbands and so on here!

And how do the people react to to you being here?
Well as you can see it’s getting a bit busier here at the moment. It’s really cool, the people took some pictures with me and we also sold some albums and flags too! It’s obviously a store, so we thought would be cool if we sold some stuff here too!

How would you describe the idea of having a pop-up store? What does it mean to you as label manager and artist?
I really like the idea! Usually these products are on sale on web shops, so there’s basically zero contact with the costumer, only email or such. Now you’re handing over physical items, which makes it’ so much more personal! And I really like being the seller! One guy got the album sold by me and didn’t realize who I was. So that was really funny, since I asked him if i should sign it. Afterwards he realized like ‘WHOA. I bought the album from Thera himself!’ – that’s something I really loved!

What can we expect from Dj Thera in the next few months?
I just finished a remix for Deetox – Here I come, it will be out on Theracords in February, so new music is coming out really fast! Obviously I’m working on new solo tracks aswell, but also collabs. I’m working with a collab with Jason Payne at the moment, a new artist on Theracords. My new release will be probably out in March or April. I’m already working on several new tracks. So it’s not like finishing the album slowed me down (laughs), it actually gave me even more inspiration to produce and produce and produce! So I actually want to release as much music this year as I did last year! The album had like 17 tracks, so I still have a lot of work to do! (laughs) I don’t wanna slow down!

What can we expect from Theracords in the next months?
Quite a lot of releases! And i think with rawer Hardstyle we’re also heading a bit more into a melodic situation, so not only screeches and kicks but also a bit more depth. Which I really like, that way you can create more emotion. We were joking around that it was going to be “Euphoraw” (laughs), but that was kind of a joke and a somewhat lame term. We took that from the question of why people call “euphoric” Hardstyle “euphoric”, because in such a situation “raw” Hardstyle would make me feel “euphoric”! So it doesn’t really make sense. We think outside of boxes, we make very melodic Hardstyle with hard kicks! Hard music that you can feel in your soul!

So speaking of that, what do you think of the entire “Rawstyle” trend right now?
That’s a bit of what I was already saying. I think it should be a bit more in-depth. Right now there’s not really a lot of depth or a lot of dimension there right now. I want “more music” in it. For instance I like to put orchestra or choirs in it, make it cinematic. I think people could take raw Hardstyle to the next level and make it more diverse, diversity is important!

So what tips do you have for new producers?
Be creative and don’t try to make something that’s already out there! (sounds very serious) Because I think that’s definitely the trend with the whole Rawstyle thing being so popular right now. Some people just make a screech, put a kick underneath and copy that over three minutes and then send that to an label or artist. I get so many emails with tracks like that. I’ve already heard this for years, be creative! (laughs) And try something new, try combining other genres with Hardstyle. You get some really interesting things that way. We should never forget Hardstyle started out as such a combination of different music styles. It has always been a fusion. If we keep on doing that, we can expand as a scene and get a wider audience. I want to keep on doing that. Maybe that sounds commercial, but I want as much people listening -they don’t even have to like it- to the music as possible! The biggest possible audience, I think that is something every artist might want!

Thank you VERY much for this interview!