Recap: The most amazing hard-dance moments in 2015.

It’s as if 2015 has flashed us by in record time, but when you slow things down and think about all of the great memories experienced over the past twelve months, you will recall how great this year was! Amongst all of the great events, artists and music in the hard dance scene, there’s also been some extraordinary occurances that touched the hearts of the community and have earned their spot in the history books.

As a recap of this year and in no particular order we’re going to be taking a look at some of the most beautiful, heart-warming or just plain amazing moments experienced by the hard dance community in 2015! Let us know in the comments below what your favourite moment of 2015 was!

– How Lose Your Mind handled the cancelation of CRAFT Festival
In our interview with Jeroen Sijtsma from Lose Your Mind, he stated: “The funny thing is that three months before the event we were telling everyone that “a storm was coming,” but at that point we were only talking about Gunz For Hire!”

Little did he know that there was actually a storm coming and it wasn’t G4H…

Dutch event heavyweights Lose Your Mind were struck with a gust of bad luck when a devastating storm hit on the 25th of July, the day the highly anticipated and sold-out CRAFT Festival was held. Making the difficult decision to keep the festival running and give a unique experience to visitors, hours later, Lose Your Mind had no choice but to cancel the festival to ensure the safety of the many attendees. After focussing every waking minute on perfecting the finer details of the festival, this unfortunate storm shattered everything LYM had worked towards. Regardless of this extremely unfortunate situation, the hardstyle community united and artists, fans and other organisations showed their support to Lose Your Mind.

Working non-stop over that weekend and handling the situation with such grace, LYM then announced that all visitors with a ticket would be valid to enter the 2016 edition of CRAFT Festival! Showing no signs of slowing down, LYM went on to organise the highly successful Penoze and De Tijdmachine and Adaro’s Dark Universe which will be held this weekend.

This graceful and well-loved organisation proves that there’s always a silver lining…

– Josh & Wesz’s comeback
After a quiet 2014 with no releases, severely underrated duo Josh & Wesz made an incredible comeback by releasing not one, but three older-influenced tracks in the space of just a couple of months! First came “Resurgence” in January, “Retrospect” in February and “World At Peace” in June. Accompanying these three extraordinary releases came many tribute performances by the pair at events such as Remember, Intents Festival in the Relive Area, Defqon.1, Bassleader, Rebirth Festival and many more, including De Tijdmachine which will be held this weekend.

– Noisecontrollers Documentary
Noisecontrollers is always a stand-out, however this year was especially extraordinary for the ‘God’ of hardstyle who celebrated 10 years of Noisecontrollers! This celebration was accompanied by the release of the ’10 Years Of Noisecontrollers’ CD as well as an inspiring documentary that shed light on his interesting, yet successful journey as a producer. Giving insight into just how dedicated Noisecontrollers is with his productions, it’s especially inspirational to all of the budding producers out there on their own journey.
The documentary is an authentic and accurate sum-up of Noisecontrollers’ legacy, his dedication and love for producing music and of course, heart-warming memories from his career.

– Bioweapon Reunited @ Knockout Circuz
It had been one year since De Tijdmachine when Audiofreq and Code Black had stepped on stage, performing together as Bioweapon. Emerging from the shadows, the pair was announced as a part of Knockout Circuz in Sydney and the fans were thrilled to say the least! Experienced on home-soil, their long-awaited resurrection was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful not only in 2015, but in hardstyle’s history!
After working together in the studio on new music, the pair was well-equipped to blow away this crowd of over 5000 Australian hardstyle fanatics! For those who were there to witness this extraordinary spectacle, you are among the blessed.

– “Love For The Game”
Belgian hardstyle pioneer Coone has been under copious amounts of scrutiny from the public, who are convinced that his recent experiments with EDM names are an indication of him leaving the genre and following in the footsteps of other fallen angels Showtek and Headhunterz. However, this is not the case and his recent track “Love For The Game” solidifies his case.

The lyrics represent Coone in conversation with fans that have turned against him, stating:
“Dude what happened? You used to make songs for us. You were my idol, but left your fans in the dust… Ain’t this the dude with pride and love for the game, now it’s all about money and fuckin’ fame…”

Coone responding: “Well I guess I have changed, I’m redefined. But please listen to this with an open mind. You guys are one of kind I will never sell my soul and leave this army behind.”

Quickly gaining recognition amongst the public, Coone got the message across to his fans in a unique way.

– Defqon Legends Set
On the Sunday afternoon at Defqon.1 in The Netherlands, the sun made a triumphant entrance from its hiding spot behind the dark clouds, paving way for one beautiful afternoon! As thousands of hard dance fanatics gathered at the Red stage, the Defqon Legends set finally upon us.

With many speculations that Headhunterz would make his return for this exclusive set, we were instead greeted by DJ Isaac, Wildstylez and Noisecontrollers who treated us to an incredible hour of new music and of course, old classics. This set was the cherry on-top of an unforgettable closing ritual and the weekend itself and was one of the main highlights for the many punters at the weekend-long event.

– Thunderdome Die-hard Day
After the legendary ‘Final Exam’ in 2012, devastated fans grieved over the departed Thunderdome concept, however on the 5th of December, everything changed as the doors of the Melkweg opened to hundreds of Thunderdome die-hards for a day of celebrations! Despite its last edition in 2012, the legacy of Thunderdome lives on and due to such a huge demand, a well-needed reunion was in order! With all the original Thunderdom-ers present, this was a gathering like no other!
The day was accompanied by the release of four CD’s mixed by the artists responsible for making Thunderdome the most successful concept in hardcore history!

It’s true. Hardcore will NEVER die!

– Minute of silence @ Loudness
Following the devastating events in Paris, one minute silence was held at Loudness among many other events across The Netherlands. During this sad, yet beautiful moment in B-Front’s set, the music was stopped as attendees paid their respects to those victims who unfortunately lost their lives during the Paris terror attacks.

– Good-lad Caine donating proceedings from his album to charity
What a good fucking lad! The iconic ‘viking’ of Hardstyle, Caine, has truly shown his big heart recently by releasing “Requital,” an album that aims to raise money for the Macmillan Cancer Support, which is a foundation for Cancer research and awareness.

Newly-signed to Theracords, this Scottish producer proves that the love of music goes a lot further than money; revealing on social media that the album is dedicated to his Grandmother and Grandfather who he unfortunately lost to Cancer. The album “Requital,” contains 10 tracks in total and is available as a digital download for a sale price of £5. Not to mention, the tracks are great and we’re so excited to see what the future holds for this crazy and bearded Viking!

BUY HERE: https://cainehardstyle.bandcamp.com/releases

– “Rebel To The Grave”
This story just goes to show how caring and cohesive the hardstyle community is and how we come together during difficult times. On the 5th of November an incredibly beautiful night was dedicated to hardstyle fanatic Mark de Groot, who unfortunately lost his life to cancer in 2015. “Rebel To The Grave” was organised by Mark’s wife and friends to honour and celebrate his life and love for hardstyle. The sold-out event’s proceedings were donated to charity to help stop brain tumours.

The heart-warming night’s line-up consisted of Mark’s heroes, including Digital Punk, B-Front, Warface, Adaro, E-Force and many of his favourite songs were played on the night as a tribute to his life.

Our thoughts and love go out to Mark’s family and friends.

– Hard dance in DJ Mag Top 100
Among the copious amounts of bullshit, fakery and ghost-production in the DJ Mag Top 100, quite a few hard dance names managed to get voted in! It was great to yet again see that hard dance is a force to be reckoned with and that the artists voted in have the opportunity to show mainstream EDM who’s boss around here.

The most surprising thing however was the amount of artists who had a tremendous amount of votes, but just scraped outside of the top 100. When DJ Mag released numbers 101-150, quite a few hard dance names were in that list, proving that 2016 will be the year that we take over the list!

Artists voted into the top 100:
Angerfist
Coone
Brennan Heart
Radical Redemption
Frontliner
Da Tweekaz
Zatox
Miss K8

Artists voted in 101-150:
Ran-D
Noisecontrollers
Adaro
Atmozfears
Wasted Penguinz
E-Force
Psyko Punkz
Gunz For Hire
Korsakoff

– Digital Punk’s entrance at Supremacy
The anthem-maker of this years’ edition of eminent indoor event Supremacy made an entrance that every DJ was seeing green about! Digital Punk literally hovered over the crowd in a booth, flying down through the packed venue whilst simultaneously dropping the anthem “Supreme” ft. MC Nolz. This ‘entrance’ was a highlight not only for Digital Punk but for those who were lucky enough to witness it first-hand!

– Hardwell gets involved!
Dutch EDM heavyweight Hardwell has been showing quite a bit of interest in the hardstyle scene as of late. First came his surprising appearance at Pussy Lounge in his hometown Breda, then came remixes for “Mad World” by Sephyx and “Sally” by Frontliner and who could forget about his performance on Tomorrowland’s mainstage when he dropped “Gimme Apollo” by Noisecontrollers?!
This house sensation’s curiosity for hardstyle has grown to the point where he collaborated with Atmozfears and also worked on his own solo crossover of house and hardstyle. For a first attempt it’s not a bad effort and we can’t wait to see if Hardwell will be lured over to the dark side!

– Proposal at Masif Saturdays
Seeing as this occurred at the very beginning of the year, many of you may had forgotten about it; however it’s a beautiful moment forever in the memory of the bride and groom! Masif Saturdays is notorious for DJ’s creating some of the most beautiful moments, however this one takes the cake! During Code Black’s set at hardstyle club Masif Saturdays in Sydney, Australia, a happy couple took the stage as the groom got down on one knee, proposing to the love of his life! Every heart inside of the club melted that night!

– Defqon.1 Chile
We’ve made our fair share of jokes about the whole “Come to Chile!” movement, however at Defqon.1 in The Netherlands, Chilean hardstylers dreams became a reality when the news was announced that Q-Dance would (literally) be coming to Chile! The first edition of Defqon.1 Chile was small, yet extremely successful and hosted huge names like Wildstylez, Psyko Punkz, Gunz For Hire, Noisecontrollers, Angerfist and many more!

Chileans finally got their wish and a whole new development in the harder styles was born.

What a fantastic year we’ve had! There’s been so many incredible events, releases and occurances that connect us to one another. What were your favourite hard dance moments of 2015? Let us know in the comments below! On behalf of the Alive At Night team, we wish you a drunken Christmas and a skitz New Year!