My colleague was so “nice” to introduce me to a “Dj/Producer” “duo” earlier this week: Hardstyle Bitches. When I first tried to understand what the fuck was happening in the video i was (somewhat) thinking of Blutonium Boy, Danielle Mondello & Express Viviana’s cringeworthy productions (The love are(!) all around me)… To Mondellos defense: the guy really dj’s like an ace. I’m not sure if i can say the same about Hardstyle Bitches. But before it gets too confusing, let’s dismantle this chaos and see what the fuck actually happened.

On the 9th of March two women in their best age released two tracks on hardstyle.com called ‘Home’ and ‘this is your Brain on Hardstyle’. Not just did they release those two tracks, but also a video, so cringeworthy it makes you physically uncomfortable.

If that wasn’t enough, here is where it gets interesting: A case of unfair competition. After the release of their tracks Hardstyle Bitches animated their fans to buy the tracks of course – unfortunately with any means. The started a “Pioneer Givewaway” (oh, the ‘Nigerian Prince Scam’ under the DJ and Producer related scams): “Buy our tracks on hardstyle.com, send us the bill and take your chance in winning this Pioneer set!” Apparently it worked; Hardstyle Bitches ranked 1st place in the Hardstyle charts for some time. After complaints from customers hardstyle.com reacted with somewhat of a public ‘cease-and-desist’ towards Hardstyle Bitches and took their tracks down.

But wait, there’s more! Anyone with some kind of common sense would have been like “Ok, I tried.” here – not so Hardstyle Bitches. They actually went to some Dutch local newspapers and “complained” about their situation. “The winning action wasn’t the only reason we went up so fast! They simply do not want to se us rise this fast. It took two years to set this up!”, they complained to the AD (click here to read). “Our name is ruined and we demand this to be set right”

This isn’t the first project of Jolanda and Gaby. As “Miss Smile” and “No Sugar” or simply “female djs” they performed even with a live saxophonist and percussion – since 2005 (believe it). According to their homepage (https://www.femaledjs.nl/) in 2006 “they started with producing and remixing tracks for other artists as “ghost producers”. Unfortunately we can not tell you exactly for which famous artists they produced music but we can tell that these artists are in the DJ Mag top 100 list.” – Yes. Ok. Well. No. While researching neither discogs (online discography portal) nor any other claim on intellectual property released under a different alias other than “Hardstyle Bitches”, “Female DJs” “Miss Smile”, “No Sugar” or their real names could have been found. And not even for those aliases I found intellectual property claims of any kind. Oops. Furthermore they run a DJ  and Production(!!!!) School (https://www.djschoolnederland.nl/) called ‘DJ School Nederland’.(On this point shoutout to harderstate.com for the additional help with research)

But why would anyone do this? Why would anyone start a completely new alias, release sub-standard quality music and then start complaining about it when things go wrong? Every starting producer goes through a phase where he suddenly realizes what is still missing and where to take on “problem areas”, a beginning producer should always be aware of his or her quality standard. To keep it blunt: If you make “Hardstyle Bitches” you won’t be “Stephanie” by tomorrow. Today’s Blutonium Boy isn’t tomorrows Frontliner.

Was this an performance art project to show how the middle-aged woman is being expected to behave in society? Was this a underground conspiracy against Hardstyle itself? (inb4: Illuminati.) Is someone trying to sabotage the scene or the reputation of female DJs in the scene? Did they actually and wholeheartedly believe that this was a good idea, their tracks were quality and everything was fair? …Mid-life crisis?

No one knows. Hardstyle Bitches made the scene itself look ridiculous in the public and again some up-comer project failed to show authenticity paired with quality. Shame.

Picture Credit: Rob Min (1), Hardstyle Bitches (2), hardstyle.com (3)

Edit 1: Added Screenshot
Edit 2: Added additional info on ‘Dj School Nederland’
Edit 3: Screenshot removed