Stormi and Hardstyle Music

https://www.facebook.com/share/g/161YPhiQAz/

This month, St. Louis DJ, Stormi was willing to answer some questions about hardstyle! The next hardstyle show in St. Louis will be Lil Texas on April 5th! What's the story behind your love for hardstyle?

The story behind my love for hardstyle began one fateful day when I was in 6th grade. My class had the privilege of using Chromebooks to "facilitate" our learning, but they ended up helping me discover my love for EDM instead. One day during middle school art class when I had unbridled internet access, I stumbled upon this creator named "S3RL", and quickly got hooked by his catchy melodies and fast, four on the floor beats. I had discovered happy hardcore, which naturally led me down the hole of other S3RL music in which he wrote about kandi, raving, and DJing. I then began listening to adjacent "harder" style music from there, mostly powered by the Youtube algorithm, which led me to discovering traditional hardstyle and other genres like reverse bass, gabber, j-core, and more.

About my hardstyle facebook group and why you should join: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/15zdbsFv1f/

After noticing a distinct lack of hardstyle representation in the Midwest, namely Saint Louis, I took it upon myself one night to create a Facebook group called STL Hardstyle Scene in order to establish a place for hard dance lovers in STL and beyond to discuss a genre we love. The rave scene in the United States in general leans heavily toward dubstep and house, and most ravers do not listen to hardstyle or know any leading names, festivals, or DJs in the genre, so my group also serves as a place for new faces to the hard dance scene to ask questions and get familiar with this huge subculture of EDM. It also serves as proof hard dance is on the rise in the US, and with over a thousand members, many beautiful connections have already been made through my group which brings together not only St. Louis but the US hard dance scene overall.

Hardstyle shows compared to other raves?

While a hardstyle rave still has familiar aspects like kandi, bucket hats, outlandish outfits, and PLUR, something that sets hard dance shows apart compared to other genres is the unique dancing. When BPMs get faster and faster, the way ravers dance to the music changes. Since hard dance can often see BPMs over 200, unique dance moves have been created and perfected over the years to keep pace. A very common move is hakken, which originates from the dutch gabber scene in the 1990s, when hard dance was coming into existence. Other cool dances include, jumpstyle, the melbourne shuffle, and muzzing, but moshing and fist pumping is also common. Hardstyle shows are very fun and high energy and often feature remixes of popular songs as well as sick original tunes by the DJ, and they are never a disappointment!!

Suggestions for people who think hardstyle is too harsh:

While it's true hardstyle is a HARDER STYLE of music, there are indeed certain subgenres that can be grating to the ear or "too harsh" for some listeners. Just like dubstep has different subgenres like deep dub and tearout that range in BPM and timbre, hard dance has potentially hundreds of subgenres that range from melodic,150bpm tunes to 200+ bpm rippers. Some subgenres of hard dance include hardstyle (euphoric, oldskool), gabber, happy hardcore, frenchcore, rawstyle, uptempo, and more, and they are differentiated by the type of kick used, the BPM, and if there is a melody. There is truly a subgenre out there for everyone, so if one track or kick is too harsh sounding, I guarantee there is another producer out there creating a more enjoyable sound- it is just a matter of putting in the work to discover small artists and new music!!