10 months have passed since my last post. Time flies... which brings me to this post. Fans of hard dance music have probably heard about tekstyle and jumpstyle. They are like "cousins" to the more popular hardstyle and hardcore, and nowadays the tracks on these genres are usually categorised under the label "tek/jump", which leads people to think they are the same... no, they aren't.

Why is the title "Tekstyle is not jumpstyle" and not the other way around or simply "Tekstyle and jumpstyle aren't the same"? I chose it to be that way because tekstyle is recent and a genre that branched off of jumpstyle, and some people don't realise that and think that jumpstyle simply changed its name. Speaking of which, let's talk about jumpstyle, the music genre, not the dance.

The jumper silhouette commonly associated with jumpstyle.

Wikipedia describes jumpstyle better than I ever could, so here it goes:

Jumpstyle music is an offspring of tech-trance, hardstyle, gabber and mákina. Its tempo is usually between 140 and 150 BPM. However, it cannot be seen as merely a slowed down version of gabber. It is characterized by a 909 kick drum used in a four on the floor beat. It also has influences from hard house and electro house. 

Ok, so now you know what makes a track jumpstyle. But a definition isn't enough, right? Because how are you supposed to know how a 909 kick drum sounds like without hearing it? Here, I'll give you something to listen to. I guess it's also some shameless self-advertising... I made this mix last year containing what I consider "jumpstyle classics". As I'm writing this, it's the most viewed video on my YouTube channel. I never expected it to go that far!

As you can see by the thumbnail, I used the jumper silhouette. You will find it on almost all jumpstyle videos on YouTube, with or without the "jumping is not a crime" text. I won't go deep on that matter because Know Your Meme explains the origins of this image here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jumping-is-not-a-crime.

Jumpstyle was popular on Europe, specially in Belgium and the Netherlands, and I guess it reached its peak on 2007-2008. Some artists that contributed to this genre are: Vorwerk (yes, that guy that is known to be a ghost producer behind many house tracks!), Ruthless, Patrick Jumpen, Dark-E, Jeckyll & Hyde (aka Ruthless & Vorwerk, are the main reason jumpstyle got popular in Holland), DJ Francois, Coone (nowadays produces solely hardstyle), Lethal MG and DJ Greg C.

In the 2010s jumpstyle got totally replaced with tekstyle. It usually maintains the uptempo mood of its predecessor, but now with a more aggressive and sometimes exaggerated faster kick. It is usually closer to hardstyle and electro house than jumpstyle. You can instantly spot a tekstyle track when it has a climax like this (skip to 2:40):

Dr. Rude is one of the biggest names in the tekstyle scene, although recently he is more focused on hardstyle and "freestyle". Another name in the scene that needs to be mentioned is Mark With a K. His tekstyle track "Music Is My Alibi" has gained over 2 and a half million views. Woah. It actually sounds nothing like jumpstyle or tekstyle, it just seems a nice hardstyle track with those vocals and melody but then, at 1:44... yeap, tek fuckin style right there.

I could go on and on about this genre, but I think you got what I meant and I would probably end up diverging from the initial subject. So yeah, tekstyle is not jumpstyle. You can say it's an evolved form of jumpstyle, I'd rather say it's just another branch in the vast hard dance music "genre tree", because personally, jumpstyle just sounds a lot better. :)

For the hardstyle fans out there, tekstyle is to jumpstyle what hardstyle is to early hardstyle and hardtrance. You will hear jumpstyle in "flashback sets" (the best ones in Reverze IMO!) and fitted in regular tekstyle sets for the sake of nostalgia, and it will easily stand out from its "tekky" counterpart.

I'll take a break from hardstyle and share with you guys a classic hardtrance track... made by Derb and it's called Derb. Yeah. I first listened to this track live at DJ Luna's Hard Bass 2012 set.
Well, some background info. Derb is a hardtrance duo that consists of Kai Winter & Boris Hafner and they are mostly known for their 2001 release of the same name, Derb. Some may argue if it's hardtrance or not, but in the end no one gives a fuck when dat Derb melody kicks in. It is divided in two mixes (versions), Derbus and Dernimbus. Both have roughly the same length and are similar, but what matters is they have that melody... that's so addictive (in Dernibums it comes at about 4 minutes and at Derbus at 3 minutes)..

Dernimbus

Derbus

True electronic dance music lovers have to listen to this at least once in their life.

Loved this since the first I heard for the fat ass kick with bass and amazing delicate melody.
I searched for it but could only find LQ rips with 4 minutes, but after some searching I found and downloaded  the M!D!FY Sampler 001 (I also have 002, 003, 004 and 004), which has this song in it.
It took me a few tries on dead links to find the lucky download link that was working.
Now I've decided to share with you LSD (Love, Sadness & Desire), by Brennan Heart, an artist I didn't always admire because of the cheesiness and mainstream crap he brought to hardstyle, but damn back in 2010 he struck gold with this one.
So here it is, for your listening pleasure and also for download, the full 6 minute version in high quality (press "SD" on the top right of the player to switch to "HD"), with intro and outro.

Dat melody at 2 minutes. <3 Grab it before it's removed!

Download not working or you want the full Album Samplers (001-005)? Then comment!

The artists of the Noize Suppressor project, Alessandro Dilillo Stefano Soprani, have recently done for the first time (not sure about this, haven't done any research, but nobody cares) the awesome job of playing music at space, 95 000 ft in the air, which is roughly 29 000 meters!

The track is hardcore and I can't find the name for it, probably a TBA. If you don't like this style of hard dance music (which is itself a family of EDM), don't bother commenting about this, it's all tastes and respect people that like it like me. This post it to acknowledge this really cool idea.

These 2 Italian guys travelled from The Netherlands to the desert in the USA and with the help of a few people they launched a balloon that played music up produced from them up until it reached 95 million feet, which ended up destroyed and landed on the sand, keep the camera intact to show the footage. If you have 11 minutes of free time, take a look at the video!

This is what I love, and can't stop loving
Get wasted at parties, from 9 'till 7 in the morning
I live for the music, rolling blunts, feeling high, getting loaded or take some pills and go to La La Land
Spending all my money on dope and extreme high priced tickets
But in the end it's all worth it
I like to live in my own world
Fuck regular life, fuck a 9 to 5 job
I'm told to enjoy every moment, every hour, every minute
That's what I do on Fridays and Saturday
Why should I take life so seriously?
I just wanna do what I like to do
Being far from reality, cause I can't stand society
This is my own world, I just wanna hear the music
I think the whole system fucking sucks
Everybody's working their fucking ass off during the week
Getting totally fucking stressed out
So what's wrong, and what's right?
I live for the weekend, I live for hard styles, I live for hardstyle baby!

Original Mix | Hard Mix

I have this Masters of Hardcore wallpaper stored in my images folder for an unknown reason.

In the darkness, a new kind of species arises
When they will be released
All hell will break loose
In ten years, Masters of Hardcore
Survived all those against hardcore
Became known as the leading hardcore name in the world
Ten years of true dedication to hardcore
Will be celebrated as never seen before
The names of the future are stamping of impatience
The earth will shake, the world will shiver
The hardest motherfuckers on the planet

Yea, I listen to hardcore. No, not "hardcore punk", "hardcore rock" or whatever else. Hardcore techno. Mostly known by its sub-genre "gabber" (Dutch word for "friend").

Only a few appreciate this style of music. Many call it repetitive, I call it a lifestyle. The high BPM, the distortion, the kickdrums. It all comes up to form an amazing hard track.

This whole deathmask alias is based on Angerfist. You have probably heard about him. Or, shall I say, they. 

Saving you time from checking Wikipedia, Angerfist consists of Danny Masseling (DJ) and MC Prozac (live MC). Prozac is very mysterious, only his real first name is known, "Minne".

I don't remember exactly when I started listening  to this kind of music, only that it was shortly after I found hardstyle. They are closely related genres, hardcore being the "evil faster twin" and hardstyle the "good fast twin which can be evil sometimes".