After spending a number of years now immersed in rave culture, one big thing has become increasingly obvious to me: us ravers love an opportunity to throw some opinions around online and get a good old scandal wagon rolling. The best part of this is that our appetite for controversy and debate is so large, we don’t even care if the subject has been done to death.

Female artist gets signed to well known label? Scandal wagon. Ghost producing? Scandal wagon. Raw vs euphoric hardstyle? You got it: Scandal. Wagon.

I use the last example very deliberately as apparently, that’s what we as a collective scene have to decided to go over again. For the 99th time. Maybe 100th. I don’t know, we’ve had this conversation a lot is my point.

The latest knotting of everyone’s knickers has been prompted this time by one of the members of well-known euphoric hardstyle duo Wasted Penguinz. In a rant that’s since been shared hundreds of times, Pontuz takes aim at raw hardstyle, claiming it’s not music and that the genre’s top artists do nothing to push the genre forward or develop the sound. He finishes up by threatening to leave hardstyle if nothing changes and claims that people will then wonder what happened to the euphoric side of the spectrum.

Well. I don’t know about you guys, but my immediate reaction was one of amusement. What an outburst! I love a good rant, and this definitely tickled my fancy. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with Pontuz’s statements in whole, (I’d probably choose raw over euphoric most days) but you have got to hand it to the man: he definitely made his feelings very clear. No room for misunderstandings in this post.

Once my initial amusement and derision faded though, I was left pondering the wider ramifications of Pontuz’s statement. I’ll admit, I immediately thought of how this was inevitably going to filter back on to HSS (Harder Styles Society), and as an admin of the page, there was a good chance I was going to have to manage the potential drama that could follow. I already could envision who would be involved and how the mess would all unfold. I sighed, mentally prayed it would stay off the page (it didn’t, I’m still getting notifications for that thread) and tried to think of what Pontuz’s endgame in all of this was.

Well, there was always the possibility that it was a marketing ploy.

How so? Well, as the earlier screengrab shows, Pontuz posted his original post on February 18, just after 3 in the afternoon. Given Pontuz’s and Wasted Penguinz’s solid online presence and fanbase, the post attracted scores of likes and shares. I remember checking the post sporadically over the course of the day, and being struck by how quickly everyone seized on the subject and started throwing their two cents in. Both opposing and agreeing commentary was offered, some making excellent points, others not so much. Emotions ran high and sass was not in short supply. There was everything from complete support of Pontuz’s statement to expletive laden rants in their own right that in no uncertain terms told the Penguin where to go.

Then, roughly five hours later, Pontuz posted again. This time however, it was not a question mark laden spray of vitriol towards raw. It was a teaser and youtube link for an upcoming Wasted Penguinz track, ‘Our Moment’:

Now, maybe I’ve got my tinfoil hat on too tight here, but doesn’t it seem a bit odd? The two posts are literally one after the other on Pontuz’s timeline. Given how quickly fans flocked to the opportunity to jump on the ole scandal wagon, it’s reasonable to say that Pontuz’s timeline would have seen some increased traffic that afternoon/evening. It also seems very reasonable, especially considering the video didn’t even get posted to the actual Wasted Penguinz page until the following day, to guess that it was a deliberate move on Pontuz’s part to secure more views for the new single.

 

 

If it were about likes, views and securing a wider audience though, wouldn’t it have made more sense to post the rant from the artist page itself, rather than one of the duo’s personal profiles? After all, the Wasted Penguinz artist page has the reach of more than 220,000 people who’ve liked it, as opposed to the roughly 2,400 people who follow Pontuz’s profile.

Well, yes and no. Whilst the reach and subsequent coverage for the new single would have been bigger if he’d utilised the actual artist page, it also would have been so very detrimental to the duo’s professional reputation and career. Seriously intended or not, Pontuz’s post was vitriolic and very controversial, especially considering what a sensitive subject raw vs euphoric tends to be in my experiences. Whilst promoters, label bosses and other artists could probably deal with one of the producers sharing some disagreeable opinions on a personal level (and remember, Pontuz specifically opens by saying what followed was his ‘opinion’, so only representative of him personally), they couldn’t really do the same if it was seen as officially coming from Wasted Penguinz. If Pontuz’s opinions were relayed as representative of what the duo and their brand officially believed, it would be construed as condoning one artist lashing out at many others.

So subsequently, the rant had to come from just one of them and had to be portrayed as just a personal ‘opinion’. Despite all that though, it seems very obvious to me that it was a calculated move very much designed to whip up a greater audience for the upcoming single.

Considering how obvious it seems, you’d think that those with a bit more experience than say, the punters, would recognise the ploy for what it was and steer well clear of the done to death controversy.

Then again, you could be wrong. Enter the Radical.

At first glance, it really seems like Radical swallowed the whole marketing ploy hook, line and sinker. But then, two big things jumped out at me: firstly, the way Joey links back to his instagram and snapchat (thus using the controversy to increase his own social media reach), and two, the calm and reasonable way in which he makes his own opinions known. It definitely contrasted in a big way with Pontuz’s vitriol, and definitely contrasted with the angry, aggressive image our beloved Penguin tried to paint of raw in general. Joey could have reacted with equal fire and hostility, but I think he was clever enough to know that in this instance, a short and sweet remark like this was going to do the job much better.

You’d think that would be the end of it, that Pontuz would look at the ensuing chaos and think ‘my job here is done, point made, now to get back to producing music’. Again, you could be wrong. What followed afterwards was a series of related posts that whilst much more light-hearted, were obviously still intended to stir the pot:

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At this point, even I can’t figure out whether Pontuz is still doing this to keep constant traffic on his page and subsequent attention on the new single, or if he’s just realised how fun and easy it is to bait the rave scene into jumping on the scandal wagon. After all, like I said earlier, doesn’t matter if the subject has been done to death, us ravers just seem to have certain subjects that are guaranteed to send us into a frothing frenzy. The old euphoric vs raw argument has proven itself many times over to be one of those golden tickets to controversy-land.

Regardless though of why exactly Pontuz, Radical or anyone else  for that matter has weighed in on the subject with their opinions, one thing is obvious: all the fans and punters who’ve helped stoke the fire here have fallen for it. Whether it just be Pontuz having a whinge/laugh, or a grand scale marketing ploy, it’s really a troll either way, one that it seems thousands of people have fallen for.

Aren’t we a little bit better than this guys? Aren’t we as a collective scene capable of recognising a troll or a ploy for what it is? Can’t we take a joke and acknowledge a well baited hook without necessarily biting? I remember listening to a recent episode of Keeping the Rave Alive and Kutski saying that he thinks sometimes the hardstyle scene takes itself just that little bit too seriously. I’d definitely agree with that and whilst in recent days Pontuz has tried to make the subject more light-hearted, the majority of fan reactions I’ve seen to the issue have been proof of what Kustki was on about.

The worst part is that despite my liking for raw, I do have to admit Pontuz, beneath all the sass and hostility, had some valid points around a lot of commercially successful raw sounding near identical and top artists not necessarily working to change that because they know we’ll settle for the ‘sameness’ of it all, so long as it has a ‘fully hectic’ drop and some big kickrolls for us to nail. Unfortunately, the validity of these points is just drowned by the vitriol in his post. I can’t help but feel disappointed not by the outburst itself, but by the way a very valuable conversation around the future of raw was ruined before it could even begin because it was presented in such a hostile way, guaranteed to rub anyone the wrong way.

Not only that, but the issue he describes can easily be said about euphoric as well. Earlier I said I’d probably refer raw over euphoric most days, and that’s because to my ear (untrained as it is), so much euphoric these days sounds way too similar and subsequently, my emotional connection with the music is lost because I’ve heard it so many times before. It’s not a unique issue for any genre that Pontuz describes, but of course being a euphoric artist, he was probably never going to look within his own camp before voicing his opinion. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones as they say.

And this is the danger I feel in the current hardstyle climate of segregating euphoric and rawstyle: you end up creating such a divide that (as Radical Redemption did point out), you forget that in reality it is all just hardstyle. I’m going be a little bit controversial here myself and say that honestly, hardstyle should be both euphoric and raw in some aspects, rather than one or the other. In my opinion, hardstyle should be both emotionally connective as euphoric is and fierce and powerful the way raw is. This separation of what should be two halves of the same total product is exactly what causes controversy such as this. I certainly don’t think that such aggressive segregation of the two sounds is beneficial to the scene at large.

But you know, that’s just my opinion. Maybe everyone didn’t fall for the most obvious troll/marketing ploy ever, maybe we don’t take ourselves too seriously and maybe we’re not as addicted to repetitive arguments as I make out. Who knows, maybe I’m just talking rubbish in saying that the current segregation between raw and euphoric is hurting rather than helping the scene. I know we have the beloved ‘rawphoric’ sound out there, championed by some very well established artists like B-Front, but even the love for this sound pales in comparison to the sheer number of people who are still playing into the old beliefs that raw is so far from euphoric as to be unrecognisable, and that they must choose one over the other.

Maybe. But maybe not. It’s something to think about at least. All I’m saying guys is consider the bigger picture before you get drawn into hopping on that scandal wagon. After all, doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. I’d rather be moving forward than in circles, and it seems obvious to me at least that by repeating this argument about raw vs euphoric, we are going in circles rather than having some very important conversations about which direction we want our music to actually be heading.