So here we are, at the end of our short journey through the various twists and turns that the Italian label Titanic took in the past month. We’ve had towering highs in TNT’s Yeah! / Pulsation, but we’ve also experienced disastrous lows in Technoboy’s duo of releases. With only a single release left, can Antonio Donà, known more famously as Tuneboy pick up the slack that his label-mate created?

Tuneboy is a man that has a lot of history behind him. He is essentially one of the pioneers of hardstyle, laying the foundations of the genre with tracks such as Demolition, Dirty and Age of Reverse Bass (the latter as Hardstyle Masterz). He has also participated in the creation of many other classics under the SAIFAM brand of labels, defining hardstyle as we know it today. Tuneboy has proved that he can emulate an older style of music just as well, if not better than the authentic material.

Hear This, the first track on the three track ‘E.P.’ is a sign, along with TNT’s Yeah!, that elements of both old and new tracks can be moulded and mashed into something that works well for both sides of the nustyle argument.

Hear This opens with a normal, uninteresting intro followed by the sound of a record being played, crackling and all, to provide a backing track for an old-school hard house vocal sample, going (what I can only assume) “woo!” with a decent bass accompanying it. It speeds up, becoming indiscernible until a vocal snaps the track back to reality. It tells us “Don’t believe everything you’ve heard so far”, and then a sharp, reverb-laden lead kicks in, taking us through the mid-intro phrase. The mid-intro is very powerful and the hi-hat that goes with the kick drums just makes it one of the best I’ve heard all year.

Exiting the mid-intro, the vocal continues with the titular “Hear this, motherfucker” looping as snare drums gently build up to reveal the same vocal sample and bass pattern, heard during the bridge from the intro and mid-intro. A stuttering, distorted voice repeats the aforementioned sentiments, with the “motherfucker” pitched lower. This leads to a melody that just screams old school with its cold tone, but flows simply enough to make it fit the track like a glove. You can hear the bass, which isn’t reversed, peak through the melody and give an interesting little touch of distortion to the whole production.

The SAIFAM group have been kind enough to include a radio cut of Hear This. It’s pretty short, but if you’re the type of person who doesn’t enjoy intro’s in their tracks, it’s certainly worth it, as Hear This’ intro isn’t quite interesting enough to warrant multiple listens.

Hear This is by no means overproduced. Tuneboy didn’t try for anything elaborate or epic in the production, and it pays off, conveying a feeling that the public hasn’t felt for years;  it’s something that anyone can enjoy, regardless of how estranged they’ve become with the hardstyle scene. Tuneboy has crafted an excellent track that, while not catchy, is just fun to listen to.

The second track on the release is titled Eins Zwei Telefunken. What that means exactly, I have no clue. Eins and zwei are German for one and two, but the only thing I can find on telefunken is the name of a German company and a type of electrical socket, mostly used for electric razors. So the title of the track is nonsensical, which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. Not at all. Some of the best SAIFAM tracks are the ones that don’t make any sense, and this is just one of those tracks.

Eins Zwei Telefunken is reminiscent of Ombrello Maledetto (but only slightly), a track released under the Tuneboy name earlier this year. It’s very drum heavy, but instead of the constant build up, Tuneboy opts for a constant barrage of drums from all directions, aided by a whiny synth that snakes its way throughout the track. It has a very old school feel to it, almost reaching the point of the acidic 303 sound. It’s extremely unique, and makes me think of some sort of oriental dance ceremony and I absolutely love it.

It’s hard not to draw comparisons between Eins Zwei and Ombrello Maledetto, but the former is much more structured than its older brother. It has what one could sort-of label a climax, where the kicks gain a sense of urgency, while the ever-prevalent whine gains a few extra flourishes. The track is interrupted occasionally by an absolutely huge, newer-sounding kick drum which adds something to the track that you would’ve never expected, launching it above and beyond Ombrello’s monotonous drum patterns.

Tracks like Eins Zwei Telefunken are rare. There’s just something refreshing when hearing a track that tries something completely different and succeeds. This whole release is an example of that. Hear This seems like an attempt to bring the hard back into hardstyle, but does so in a way that could be mistaken for being plucked straight out of 2006, given a remastering and then chucked out onto the turntables of DJs around the world. That’s the general feeling that I get from this release, and it’s a feeling that creates warmth in my heart.

Score: 89/100

Well, that’s certainly been a journey, hasn’t it? We’ve gone from good to bad, bad to worse and then back up to the exceptional quality that SAIFAM built its hardstyle brand on. While the Technoboy alias didn’t exactly produce the highest quality tracks, the auxiliary artists under the Titanic label stepped up and produced some of the best tracks you’ll find this year. With TNT (and SAIFAM’s token female DJ in Stephanie) booked for Qlimax on the 27th of November, it’ll be an exciting preview as to what the illustrious label has in store for 2011, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting to see what path they continue down.

Discuss Tuneboy – Hear This / Eins Zwei Telefunken on the forums.

Out now on Titanic Records (TTC064), purchase at junodownload.

A1 Tuneboy – Hear This  (Original Mix)
A2 Tuneboy – Eins Zwei Telefunken (Original Mix)
B1 Tuneboy – Hear This (Radio Edit)

This was a guest post by Orbi. If you’d like to review a release, let us know!

Okay, so Technoboy’s We Need Protection didn’t exactly take the right path when it comes to sampling older, more popular songs, but it’s only one track right? I mean, every artist has to release something bad at some point, they can’t just be a dream machine of amazing tracks, it’s just not possible. So let’s just hope this was a misstep by Cristiano and not something that will infect his other tracks.

Hot on the heels of his pitiful nostalgia trip, Technoboy decided to take things in a more modern direction with Catfight. It ends in the same way as We Need Protection, except this time it’s not sad but absolutely hilarious.

If you couldn’t gather it from the above paragraphs, Catfight is bad. Awful. Horrid. Atrocious. Wretched. Offensive. Heinous. I can safely say that I have not heard a professionally produced track worse than this in 2010. The melody and kick are among the worst in hardstyle; there is a goddamn CDJ spin sound (yes, the same one you’ll hear at the end of a large number of sets) at the end of the first climax, and there’s a horrendously incongruous piano during the second climax. But it’s not even those elements that make it so bad. It’s the lyrics. They are easily the most cringe-worthy lyrics that have ever existed in a track throughout musical history – and I’m only being slightly hyperbolic. Take a look at this excerpt (taken from lololyrics.com):

‘Cause I’m out working all day from 9 till 6
Stressed out by my bosses, arrogant pricks
When I get through the door I just wanna chill out
Roll up a joint, yeah that’s what it’s about
But the bitch upstairs has the music full blast
My blood pressure’s raising really fast
Every fucking night with the same fucking tune
All I fucking hear is her “boom boom boom”
[...]
Hey I’m the girl from the second floor
- Holy shit, what the fuck is going on?!
- Cool it lady, what the hell is wrong?
You’re driving me crazy with that fucking CD
- Hey bitch, don’t raise your voice at me
This constant noise has got to stop now
- Oh yeah? Says who? You stuck up cow
Who’re you calling a cow? You psycho bitch
- Just get off my case you hysterical witch
Show some fucking respect, I just wanna chill
- Well, get yourself some earmuffs and take a pill

Imagine this with some godawful Lento Violento (or Undersound as Mr. Giusberti likes to call it) in the background, and an atrocious female vocalist doing a forced accent that I can’t even pinpoint to a particular region in the world. Is she British, trying to do a bad American accent, or vice versa? Or am I completely wrong and is it Shayla in disguise? Who knows.

As mentioned earlier, Catfight has one of the cheesiest, hands-up melodies I’ve heard this year. Contained in some amazingly high pitch with some reverb that does it no justice, the melody doesn’t really fit the ‘aggressive’ vocals. It overpowers the bass and highlights some dreadful pitched kicks, while they’re not abhorrent, they transform this track into a complete farce.

For all the slagging off that I’m doing about Catfight, it’s actually one of the funniest ‘hardstyle’ tracks that I’ve heard. All the elements of this track form something I just can’t take seriously. From the obnoxious ‘hardcore’ that you can hear before the vocals kick, which sounds like a mixture of what the mainstream media thinks video games and EDM sound like, to the ill-fitting piano that plays along with the climax; everything is too funny to the point where I’ll just listen to it for a laugh every now and then.

This track just doesn’t make sense; why was it produced? What was Cristiano thinking when he thought of the concept for this track? Heck, why hasn’t this woman just talked to her landlord and complained about the noise? There’s probably an easier way to solve the problem rather than bitching about it in a song. Why Cristiano thought that this would be acceptable for release, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. All I fucking hear is that “boom boom boom”, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

Score: 14/100, purely because of the comedic value it can bring.

Discuss Technoboy – Catfight on the forums.

Out now on Titanic Records (TTC063), purchase at junodownload.

A1 Technoboy – Catfight (Original Mix)
B1 Technoboy – Catfight (Radio Edit)

This was a guest post by Orbi. If you’d like to review a release, let us know!

With Titanic 061 done and dusted, the prestigious SAIFAM group seem to be covering all their bases, delivering quality tracks that appeal to a very broad range to people. With three releases left to review, let’s hope that the main man of the label can continue to carry the torch through his next two single-track releases.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about Cristiano Giusberti from reading his various forms of communication with the pubic, it’s that he loves his 80s music. From the one hit wonder of Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine to the absolute insanity of glam rock band Sigue Sigue Sputnik, this Italian man can draw his fair share of influences from the memory banks.  Enough so, that he’d make a track that samples a very large portion of Picnic at the Whitehouse – We Need Protection.

As you could probably assume, Technoboy’s We Need Protection borrows a large amount from the 1986 pop song. With approximately a third of the six minute fifty length directly ripped from the source material, We Need Protection relies heavily on some basic sing-a-long vocals with a very slow tempo beat. Once the track stops moonlighting as a pop song, it finds its way into an uninspired melody and climax with weak kicks and bass, before falling into the realm of bad hairstyles and hilarious music videos. It then escapes back into the modern era, melody completely unchanged for a second climax and then concludes with one of the most basic outros I have ever heard, with nothing of note at all to be found there.

We Need Protection is just not a good hardstyle track. When I have an urge to just stand and ironically sing along with painful dramatics (a la Bleeding For The Harder Styles), you know you’ve taken a misstep somewhere. It’s out of place anywhere you put it, except maybe possibly the start of a set, as it just kills any momentum. Maybe Giusberti just got too attached to being faithful to the 80s with this track that he forgot that dance music is meant to – you know – make you dance.

Of course, it wouldn’t be SAIFAM without some extra mixes on top, right? The Cut mix just simply removes approximately 30 seconds from first two minute break and changes the outro to be pretty much the same as the intro. While the track is also 30 seconds shorter than the original mix, the difference is so negligible I never noticed a difference between the two versions until I listened to it a number of times looking for a difference for this review. The radio version is much shorter, clocking in at under three minutes. It contains just the first break and climax, so it’s really not worth listening to.

However, Technoboy has been kind enough to include We Need A Dub. Sadly, the name of this track is too close to the truth; this track is in dire need of a dub, removing the godawful vocals in favour of another element. This was used to great effect in Technoboy – Into Deep’s dub, making it a great track that helped pave the way for more melodic hardstyle, eventually leading up to the controversial nustyle sub-genre.

We Need A Dub improves upon the original We Need Protection slightly, but nowhere enough to make it a decent track. Removing the lengthy samples, they’re replaced with a sound that sounds like it was ripped straight out of his Qlimax 2008 anthem, Next Dimensional World. The saw can get pretty grating though, and really isn’t a suitable replacement for Picnic at the Whitehouse’s We Need Protection vocals (as much as it pains me to say so). The result is something that’s just totally uninteresting and bland, and doesn’t contain anything unique inside.

One small thing I do like about this track, is that the intro (and outro in the Cut mix) is very similar to the DJ Gius (who happened to be Cristiano before the Technoboy alias) remix of Zombie Nation’s Kernkraft 400, right down to the cowbell and drum pattern. It’s a cool little reference to the Italian’s past works, and while many may not notice it, it adds some sort of minor auditory pleasure to the otherwise dull track.

We Need Protection is a train wreck through time that just cannot be salvaged, no matter how hard Technoboy tries with the various cuts, edits and dubs that he throws at it. It’s a real shame that such a nostalgia trip ends up falling flat on its face, alas this is the business of hardstyle. If you try something far out from left-field, you really need to put your all into it (or nothing and see if it catches if you’re that type of person) or else you’re going to get burned. And that’s exactly what happened to one of the great godfathers of hardstyle.

Score: 39/100

Discuss Technoboy – We Need Protection on the forums.

Out now on Titanic Records (TTC062), purchase at junodownload.

A1 Technoboy – We Need Protection (Original Mix)
A2 Technoboy – We Need A Dub
B1 Technoboy – We Need Protection (Cut Mix)
B2 Technoboy – We Need Protection (Radio Edit)

This was a guest post by Orbi. If you’d like to review a release, let us know!

Titanic Records are one of the most revered and respected labels in the hardstyle genre, known for being the home of a great number of classic tracks from the talented minds at the SAIFAM group. Now, they’ve churned out four releases in October after staying silent for a number of months, and it’s time to see whether this latest batch of productions can live up to the huge weight of expectations placed upon them.

These four releases encompass SAIFAM’s three biggest names: Technoboy, Tuneboy and TNT (which is just simply Technoboy and Tuneboy collaborating). These are two personalities that have been around the block in regards to production, and what they bring to the table in these tracks can vary from truly disappointing to surprisingly superb. Some may say that the SAIFAM group, owners of Titanic, are back to their old glory, while others will be doomsayers for their failure in the light of ‘commercialisation’. What view you take depends on which tracks you look at.

All that aside, let’s start with Titanic’s 61st release:

TNT – Yeah! and Pulsation really don’t feel like TNT tracks. Instead, they just simply sound like Tuneboy solo productions. Although Giusberti will have participated in the creation of these tracks as he does for almost every SAIFAM production, the use of elements from a previous Tuneboy release (Tunebeat / Ombrello Maledetto) in Yeah! give the impression that Giusberti didn’t have as much input as he probably should have for a collaboration.

Of course, that’s not a bad thing. Yeah! is a very decent track that uses reverb-laden lead and drum patterns, reminiscent of Tunebeat and Ombrello Maledetto respectively, to great effect. It’s very melodic but TNT’s crunchy kick and bass soon springs into action, keeping the track in check. The vocals are absurd, talking about how people are born with special gifts or powers and how some have the ability to make music from a single sound. It works well coming into the climax though, with the titular “Oh yeah, like this!” serving to get the crowd pumped up. Speaking of the climax, the Italian duo add a “second sound” to the mix during the break. This unique melody could be considered cheesy, but like the rest of the track, a healthy dose of distortion on the bass really helps rein it in to make a track that is simply fascinating to listen to all the way through.

Yeah! / Pulsation also comes with an Old School mix of Yeah! where the change is the addition of reverse bass to the kick instead of the usual crunch, with parts of the track changing to fit it. It’s not a bad choice by any means and will be welcomed by the older SAIFAM fans, but the implementation isn’t as good as it could have been. When the bass comes in during the mid-intro, it cuts very suddenly to the reverse bass without any other sounds supporting it, so it sounds very sparse. While that does emphasize the bass, it just feels lazy. The climax hasn’t been changed as well, and you can barely hear the reverse bass during it, which doesn’t sound nearly as good as the original mix.

Now, I may be misinterpreting the intentions of the producers, but this Old School mix seems like a way to say “Hey! We still make stuff that you like, come and listen to this!” to those who’ve moved away from hardstyle over the past few years but it’s hard to tell whether it’s an honest plea or not. I honestly don’t know. The pessimist in me wants to say that they’re just doing it to recapture an older, more active demographic, while the optimist is just rejoicing the fact that they’re acknowledging that there are now multiple types of hardstyle and accommodating for both.

Pulsation, the second track of two on this release, continues on with the style of bass found in Yeah!, but sharp synths and a female vocalist talking about the “ultimate seduction” give it a different feel. It’s not dark, but definitely heavier than the ‘A-Side’. There’s no melody per se, but it doesn’t need one, with the sounds keeping the listener’s attention through the length of the track. There’s nothing that really manages to make Pulsation memorable, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s just a plain decent track.

Yeah! / Pulsation is just one of those releases that offers something for everyone, from those jaded ex-hardstyle followers to those that enjoy their melodic, trance-esque, cheesy ‘nustyle’. That’s a good thing to see SAIFAM attempting, as hardstyle is a genre that seems to be going in only one direction, with only a limited amount of producers trying to swim against the tide. Neither track will become a classic, but for the time being they’re a great change of pace.

Score: 84/100

Discuss TNT – Yeah! / Pulsation on the forums.

Out now on Titanic Records (TTC061), purchase at junodownload.

A1 TNT – Yeah! (Original Mix)
A2 TNT – Yeah! (Old School Mix)
B1 TNT – Pulsation (Original Mix)

This was a guest post by Orbi. If you’d like to review a release, let us know!

Antonio Dona, better known as Tuneboy and Hardstyle Masterz, and co-producer of projects such as Technoboy, K-Traxx, The KGB’s, 2 Best Enemies, Dark Oscillators, Zappaman, TNT, Builder, The Raiders and DJ Phil Ty, just to name a few, has finally launched his artist website, tuneboy.it.

In recent months we have seen an explosion of artist to fan interactions, such as the establishment of Twitter accounts, official label YouTube channels and various brandings of both artists and labels. This, like many other new artist sites, does exactly that. It serves as a way of putting a face to a name, or many names in this case. Tuneboy is also now sporting a sexy new logo to match the sexy new site, further aiding the brand.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we begin to see Tuneboy appearing at a few more events in the future, and I for one couldn’t be more pleased, because if any man with such a long history in the scene and the skills to match (just check out the discography on his site) deserves it, it’s Antonio Dona.

I tip my hat to you, Mr Dona.

Fun bonus: A high quality preview of Tuneboy’s new track ‘Overkill’ is available on his site.