Endymion

Endymion's raging tones are known across the Atlantic and will re-fuel the BLACK stage at this year's edition of Defqon.1 in Australia with a mighty roar. After the huge success of their first two albums "Demonsworld" and "Catalysed Reactions", the worldwide acclaimed hardcore-act Endymion has released their third album "THREE" last month. Check out more info about their new album including an exclusive interview with the dark knight here.


A little over three months ago, the hardcore scene started to notice that a new megaproject was going to be released. Tweeters and Facebookers were constantly confronted with the word “THREE”. After performing in the Amsterdam Arena and closing Qlimax with Evil Activities, Endymion started searching for a new challenge. The request for Defqon.1 triggered to approach hardcore in a different way and deviate from standard hardcore structures. The result “THREE” has been in stores since the June 17th and can be downloaded at every download portal.

It’s a very busy time for Endymion. During the past two months the trio visited many radio stations and gave countless interviews to promote their new album. A daily update on their YouTube channel made the hype around “THREE” even bigger. It was clear that Endymion wanted to go into a different direction with their own hardcore sound; with their own vocals by different voices and atmospheres and tracks with a different structure.

Let’s immediately talk about the album: after “Demonsworld” and “Catalysed Reactions” you’ve presented your new album on June 17th. You went into the studio and started a new project. What was the philosophy behind “THREE”?
Bart: “We didn’t want to do the same thing like we did with “Demonsworld” and “Catalysed Reactions”; it had to be something new. For the past 10 years we’ve been privileged to play at the biggest events and parties and we’ve had our share of big hits, but we wanted to make different music than we were used to. A different structure, more vocals: songs that were still hardcore.”

Jelle: “We’ve been on a discovery tour. We were reinventing ourselves, but also the audience. Trying to figure out which way to go, and in order to do that, we primarily looked at the outside world. How can we bring more people in touch with this underground streaming? Isn’t it strange that the scene is immensely big in the Netherlands, and in the meantime there’s such a huge potential to develop the international hardcore scene? By developing more variety in hardcore, we’re trying to create a new market for hardcore, so that other people can discover it as well. We’re trying to cross those borders that seem to be around hardcore”.

What kind of borders do you mean? Can you be more specific?
Jelle: “The hardcore kick is the most important thing of course, it’s the basic tool for a track, but the emotion that a track can express, is basically what makes hardcore real music.

Bart: “A kick is just an instrument to give your track an identity”

Bas: I personally feel that hardcore is in need of a boost, and I believe all three of us feel the same on this one. Look, in the past few years a lot of great things have happened and a lot of great tracks have been released, but it should be more, more from everybody. A lot of it has been the same and were trying to change that with “THREE” in a way we think we can expand what we’re doing right now. We want to step outside our comfort zones; it has to be crazier and beyond what we usually do.

Bart: “Not just focusing on the kick, but to the overall picture. More variation, trying to create different identities, these are the things that make it interesting!”.

If I remember correctly, it was Bart who said in an interview last year that hardcore should get a more mature sound, more international. You guys want to contribute to this with “THREE”?
Jelle: “Absolutely! We’ve working with different singers and rappers for the album. By not sampling anymore, but working with your own vocals; you complete yourself as a musician.

Bart: ”We also have the idea that they take you more seriously as an artist when you present your own vocals. This isn’t a dis towards others, we’ve done it too, but for example in the UK they say: “hey this great, but it’s Jay-Z with a hard kick”. We really want to create original things now. Our new tracks have no samples; all the lyrics are done by us and by our vocalists”.

Bas: “We want to bring hardcore to a level where people will say: “these tracks with Endymion are better than the tracks with Jay-Z”. No longer profit from other people’s qualities, but creating and expand our own qualities and use them more often. “THREE” really is a new step in our career.

Was it “THREE” that triggered you guys to change those ideas into results, to do something new?
Bart: “In the past three years we’ve released a lot of music, but it hadn’t been released yet on one cd. That was something we still really wanted to do. And because in the past few years, less cd’s were released than the years before, we had the idea to produce an album with new tracks on the first cd, and the second cd had to become a compilation of all our hits from the past years. That’s where the word “three” already came to mind.

Bas: “But we’ve been working with vocalists, this was an asset; completing yourself as a musician, like Jelle just said. By working with people like E-Life, the London based Warren Morris and Ollie (great guys by the way) you’re already one step ahead; they enrich what you do. We were able to create a more diverse hardcore sound.
Bart: “It creates an interaction between producers and vocalists, they came up with ideas, that changed our music”.

Jelle: “For example, we send an instrumental as a suggestion for a theme. Take Warren Morris for example. We discovered him through Sander Kleinenberg and asked him if he wanted to do something with us too. His input for “No More” completely changed the track; we even changed the arrangement in a way, that it really became a track made by the producer and the vocalist. Instead of; “here are the lyrics, do something with it or whatever”.

By working with several vocalists, each track got a different vibe. From aggressive kicks to being melancholic and even hopeful, it really is very wide.
Bas: “This was a very conscious choice. That’s what we wanted from the start; both male as female vocals and different rappers for a different sound. But also a track such as “Smash” with Melvin (the Viper), is a totally different track than all the others tracks on the album”.

Bart: “I remember visiting Ultra Music Festival in Miami in March and watched Skrillex play. It was so incredibly hard, that I literally had to take one step back when the baseline came in. Completely crazy! I immediately called the guys and said; “hey we really need to do something like this!”
Back in the Netherlands we went into the studio and that’s how “Smash” was born with a dub-step influence. Another totally different track than what you hear in hardcore these days, but a lot of people are already calling it one of the biggest hits from the album. Just because it is something new.

Jelle: Skrillex IS hard too, but in a very different way than Endymion five years ago. As we said before; the emotion in “Smash” gives “hard” a new meaning in hardcore.”

Bas:” This isn’t a very common album for anyone who just wants to have it hard and wants to go crazy all the time. There will be some people who just won’t adjust to this album, because it’s not produced according to the pattern of “standard” hardcore.

Jelle: “And that is exactly the point; what’s hard?”

Bas: Let’s be honest, for a few people it’s a summary of “the more rotten, rude and crazier it is, that’s how “hard and loud” it is”. That’s just not how we see it. The emotion has to be loud and hard. I think Warren Morris is also “hard and loud”; it’s rough and raw.

With “Three” you tried to expand the meaning of hardcore.
Bart: “Let me give you another example. Before releasing the album, we posted a preview of our new tracks on our YouTube channel every day. Looking at how different the reactions were on a certain track, it already proves that the definition of the word ‘hardcore’ and the music stream is very wide. It also shows that there is something for everyone on “THREE”.

Jelle: “But we also hope it will open doors to other underground streams as well”.

Bart: “Of course there’s no album in the world with only good tracks. Okay apart from this one of course because I personally love every track on the album. Haha. But a normal listener will not like every track on “THREE”, that’s just not possible. Everyone has their favorite”.
Bas: “An album doesn’t have to have just tracks that do well on the dance floor. The reason to make an album is to do different things as well.

Feedback on "THREE"
You were able to test all the new tracks on the dance floors in the past few months. What happened when you played your new tracks? Did people respond to them directly, or did they have to get used to the new sound?
In unison: “Big hits of course hahaha!

Bart: “No, most of the tracks were finished in the last three months. But you do see that some people had to get used to certain tracks. But it’s difficult to guess. Sometimes you see someone standing still in the audience, but it looks like that person is listening to the new things he’s hearing. He doesn’t have to go all out right away, when he realizes he’s listening to something else than what he’s used to.

Bas: “But “Overcome” and “Chaos” made the crowd go completely crazy from the beginning”.

Bart: “And with “Smash” as well, which was really cool to see”.

Jelle: “That’s just a very strange thing in the hardcore scene. People always want to hear the biggest hits instead of the new tracks. Look at drum ‘n bass or dubstep and techno, people always expect you to play the newest stuff you got. For some reason, that’s not the case at all in hardcore”.

Bas: “You won’t believe how many times I see a mobile telephone that says they want to hear “How long” or “A New Today. People want to hear the things they know”.

The reason for that was of course the video, that didn’t do too well with some people.
Bas: “Which was kind of sad actually, we really wanted to do something, which hadn’t been done before; make a completely over the top video. Damn that cost us so much money haha! But it’s kind of sad that some people didn’t understand the joke in that and actually believed that we were living like some sort of pimps. It was just something completely crazy that we really wanted to do for fun”.

Bart: “Next time we’ll do it even more over the top hahaha! Anyway, we should care les in hardcore from now on. Look at Ophidian, he does things different from everyone else but it’s still brilliant”.

Bas: “When he send us the demo for the “Anger” remix, we were listening to it with a huge smile on our faces. It was exactly the one thing that was missing on the album. His remix made “Three” even more complete. The same goes for Placid K’s remix of “Art” you never know what you’re going to get from this guy and Kel (Evil Activities) made “Drunk with A Gun” relive again with his wonderful remix”.

Is there a difference between feedback on tracks in other countries compared to the Netherlands?
Bart: “People from other countries are always more open-minded anyway. A while ago I played at Colourfest in Scotland, before Headhunterz, but it could’ve easily been a drum ‘n bass DJ. They think more out of the box than we do in the Netherlands, which can be kind of disappointing sometimes. But on the other hand, we have such a big market for parties and events in the Netherlands, which creates a very critical group of visitors that go to these events. They go to these events with a different expectation than for example a group in Scotland”.

Bas: “Wouldn’t that be great to have that again in the Netherlands? Playing different styles right after each other, instead of having to walk to a different area to hear different music? It also creates a group of different people, and not just like “hey look it’s the gabbers, or hey, there you have the hardstylers” no, just everyone together!”

Jelle: “It’s kind of funny to see how it evolves on the internet. Usually the track where people complain about the most……”

Bas: “usually becomes the biggest hit! We already saw that with “A New Today”.

Jelle: “ You can also see different types of generations, someone who’s very young, wants to hear new stuff, something we all wanted in the past, because then you hear things you’re not used to. When you get older, you usually start listening to different kinds of music; it’s been proven in so many styles of music”.

Bas: “Looking at myself, 15 years ago, I went to a party because Ruffneck was playing. I was looking forward to watch Patrick play. I knew all of his records and I would go completely insane when he started playing”.

What exactly has been the role of the artist you’ve been working with on the album “THREE”? Did they understand the direction you were heading with this album?
Bart: “We really wanted to create a good product with them as a team. Erwin really liked it; he listened to everything here in the studio and really understood where we were going. Of course with Kelly we already made “Broken” and “Changed the game” for Neophyte Records. But what we did with Melvin is probably the most surprising part of the whole album. So that’s why it’s really cool that from of all the tracks, “Smash” is the one that other artists really like.

Bas: “Eventually, most of the artist will choose one or three tracks that they will support”.

Bart: “It’s just really cool to see how people from the music scene react to our tracks. Take E-Life for example, he called us out of the blue, to tell us how much he like’s “No More”, this is something we don’t expect, but it’s really great to hear! Same goes for Mental Theo, who played it on Slam FM radio an hour after he received the track.

Bas: “It’s not a “must” for us that our tracks are played on the radio, but it does prove we did something right. It’s getting attention because it’s different”.

Jelle: “This sound being played on radio stations? That’s great right?

Speaking about radio, in my opinion you guys also grew in different countries because of the support of BBC Radio 1 DJ Kutski, who seems to think you guys’ rock.
Bart: “We’re going to record an album special for him, that’s crazy right? For the biggest harddance radio show in the world? We of course remixed “One” for him a while ago en he’s indeed very enthusiastic about us. He posted a review of “A New Today” in DJ Mag and he’s now even trying to make our album ‘album of the month’ in that same magazine. He obviously has a huge group of followers which is great”.

Even before the album was released, there already had been a lot of criticism; no complete versions on “Three” but special edits. Considering the controversial album by Mad Dog; a very unique choice.
Bart: “The weird thing, is that it’s not really something of this year. In the old days your parents would buy vinyl singles with 7 or 8 minute versions of Donna Summer tracks. Or another example, last weekend, I was driving in my car with my nephew and I played the complete versions, do you know what he said? He said “the complete versions on the album are way easier to listen to”. And that’s what it’s all about; more people will listen to those versions than the ones that are played in clubs you know?”

Bas: “Though, there is a difference with Mad Dog’s album. The first three full length tracks were already released before releasing the album, on Enzyme 38, with all the tracks we made with Nosferatu. On the day of our album release we released the first vinyl sampler and the other two samplers are available June 15th and August 15. So we will release the tracks for DJ’s in two months. The big artists already received the promos so they will be able to play them as well.

Bart: “We also announced it before the release on our website and social media; if you want the complete versions, then don’t buy the album but download them through download portals. So yeah, people have been warned”.

Okay, so now the following hypothesis; the album will sell like crap and will be completely killed by everyone and there won’t be any success. Would you consider the project to be a success anyway, or would you change your directions in the future?
Bas: “Absolutely a success. We’re behind this album for a 100% ; we’ve done what we wanted to do”.

Jelle: “It’s very easy to do what people want you to do, but sometimes you just shouldn’t do that. Because we think that hardcore is in need of a new boost, which means you have to do something completely different to keep it refreshing.”

Bart: “You’re a musician right? An artist? Then you have to what you want. I can’t imagine that “Three” would be completely turned down by people, considering what’s happening on the dance floors right now and the reactions we receive from people and artists”.

Bas: “I’m also convinced that most of the haters on the internet download everything illegal and never go to parties anyway”.

Bart: “We didn’t choose the easiest path with “THREE” though, sometimes things need time to evolve itself”,

Bas: “It’s no surprise that music changes through time; sometimes you have to create something new in hardcore to keep it interesting”.

Endymion THREE World Tour
The “Endymion Three World Tour” kicked off at Defqon.1 in The Netherlands. The tour will hit 10 different countries. Let’s start with Defqon.1. What happened during the album showcase?
Bart: “Let me tell you this; our booking for Defqon.1 has been the reason to make the album in the first place. We really wanted to do a special act for Defqon.1. So that’s why this event triggered us to start working on a new album. Kind of hard though, because we had to give ourselves a deadline; it has to be done before Defqon.1. But we did it.

Jelle: “So after the release of our album, we’ve been working on our live act fulltime in the weeks before Defqon.1. We worked on edits in the studio to make the tracks a little bit different than people are used to.

Bart: “And we obviously have a lot of people who’ve worked with us on the album so they joined us on stage. Warren Morris came over from London to sing live with his son Josh (Run Ridium) who accompanied him by playing the guitar , Nosferatu made an appearance, E-Life and Ollie joined us, Lilly Julian sang live on stage and even the Viper joined us for “Smash”. It was 45 minutes of total chaos. It was the greatest thing ever!

Will this be something for the future? I can imagine you will do this even more in the future?
Bas: “One step at a time you’re heading to a different way of performing and eventually end with doing live music. There’s definitely a future in this, and the live performance at Defqon.1. Went great! “.

Bart: “Indeed it is a new step, but we’re ready for it. We were really looking forward to it and it went great. But it wasn’t the first time we performed with vocalists. We already did many Endymion vs. Nosferatu live performances, Lilly already performed live with us before at Trillogy, E-Life has a lot of experience. It’s something new, but we think it will work out very well.

Jelle: “It’s becoming more and more live, which makes it very interesting for us as well”.

Let’s make a little fast forward jump in time, but keep in it in the Netherlands. You guys heard you will be closing the Decibel main stage this year. Do you guys know that you are one of the few hardcore artists that day?
Bart: “HOW cool is that? The best part is, we already knew we were closing in December, which was before B2S knew we were working on the album”.

Bas: “Actually, I don’t think we even knew we were going to make an album haha! Decibel was really on top of our list. There’s literally no bigger festival stage a hardcore artist can think of than closing the main stage at Decibel. We already closed at the Amsterdam Arena and Qlimax, so this one was basically still missing”.

Do you notice a difference in hardcore when you perform, especially in other countries?
Bart: “When you look at the UK audience, they are crazy everywhere, it’s unbelievable. But there is a difference between countries anyway. It’s the same everywhere, even locally instead of international”.
Bas: “At Masters of Hardcore or Defqon.1 people go crazy for different tracks than at a club for example. There’s a different audience at big events and festivals, they visit these events for different styles of music and not for just one sound specifically. That’s what makes it so much fun for us to play at these big events”.

Compared to now, is it different to play in different countries than, let’s say two years ago?
Bas: “Hmmm, not specifically in two years, but definitely different than 5 years ago. It does start with growing internationally. Especially the United States will be very exciting for us. We don’t expect to play in front of thousands of people, because it’s really new over there. Angerfist did a tour in the States a while ago; we also have several gigs in a few big cities in the States.

Bart: “But looking at how much potential there is for hardcore in the United States, it’s crazy. Look at what David Guetta did for dance music over there in such a short period of time, you can definitely expect that there’s room for underground styles. You see the same thing with hardstyle DJ’s, they are even performing in countries such as South Korea and Malaysia, so it really is possible! How about Skrillex? Extremely hard, but he still performs all over the world in front thousands of people”.

Jelle: “That raw stuff, there’s definitely a market for it worldwide”.

There is one country that seems to keep popping up in your interviews; what in God’s name do you guys have with Japan?
Bart: “If anything would possible anywhere around the world, it would be in Japan. That country is so crazy, so extreme”.

Bas: “Come one; gadgets, Manga, electronics, everything from that country is cool right? Hahaha!”

Jelle: “But it’s the same as the fact that we played hardcore in Ibiza. I think no one besides the Stunned Guys has done that before. You can see that Showtek is going there again, but that’s hardstyle. We’ve already done so many cool things and it’s only getting better.

Bart: “You can achieve that by promoting yourself very well. Work well with the internet and keep your social media updated”.

Internet and critics
Thanks for the reminder; your social media was just the thing I wanted to talk about. You have been very active with the power of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Where does that come from?
Bart: “We’re not only looking at the hardcore scene, but also outside of it. We’re always busy keeping an eye out to what’s happening in the music world. Internet is a big part of that.

Bas: “Take YouTube for example, I believe we’ve posted over 250 movies online, we’ve been very active with that for a long time now. We started early, and you can see that more and more acts are doing the same thing. For example, after movies of big events, it can take weeks before they’re posted online because it has to come from the organization itself. We try to post these videos on Monday after the weekend we played at the event”.

Bart: “Also sharing your playlist on your website; for years we’ve kept lists of the tracks we play during our sets, so we can post them on the internet afterwards”.

Don’t you guys get sick of the legendary ‘Gabbermovies’, because you’ve been posting them every week? For which I (and thousand others) want to thank you for making us laugh every week, but people are expecting more and more of these movies.
Bart: “It started out as a joke, but it became so immensely big. I believe we recorded the first one in 2001 in Maastricht (the Netherlands) and ten years later people still like it”.

Bas: “But yes, we used to do a lot more, now we only shoot the movies at specials events. It’s fun to do it at extreme and cool locations. No offense but if we do it at every little party or event, it will get boring. I can tell you that there are a few very cool movies are coming up soon, at places we didn’t expect to be able to shoot a Gabbermovie at all haha!”

You also released your new website at the day of your album release.
Bas: “The last one was already kind of old, you really had to search to find our social media. Now social media is a vital part of the website. In the music section we have 55 tracks that people can listen to and also buy them if they’re available on download portals. Of course we kept playlists , charts and our schedule.

Bart: “It’s also kind of funny, when we don’t post a chart the second day of the month, people immediately email us why we haven’t posted our top 10 chart, so it’s nice to see that people keep an eye out. So yeah, check it out at www.endymion.nl!

We’ve already discussed this but, I still want to talk about it a little bit more. The internet has its good and bad sides. One of those bad sides is the critics. You guys are also a regular subject on forums and community sites.
Bas: “I’m noticing that most of the critics we get are posted on YouTube. If one person says something, usually a lot of others follow. Most of the time it’s about the movies; like the video for “A New Today” yes there it is again, is was totally misunderstood.”

Bart: “There were gabbers who actually thought we wanted to show the world how fucking much money we make. To those people I’d like to say; you guys have absolutely NO idea how much money it costs to shoot a video like that, and that it actually cost us a lot of money. Just like this album; we won’t be getting back the amount of money by selling them. Making an album actually costs a LOT of money. I’m not going to be acting lame about it, but I’m getting really tired sometimes from the simple negative comments on the internet from people who have absolutely no idea.”

Bas: “€ 600, - for renting a limousine, just to shoot one decent camera shot, kind of crazy, but the results are so much fun haha. Investing in new computers to edit these movies, software and not to forget our studio, it costs so much money! But it’s not just the money; it’s also the amount of time and energy you put into these kinds of projects. When we were making this album, we had weeks of starting at 9.00 am. every morning, and would leave at 2.00 am. at night, and starting again at 9.00 am the next morning. I haven’t seen my girlfriend for two weeks because we were in the studio everyday next to performing every weekend as well.

Bart: “It does hurt when people think we make so much money. We invest a lot in ourselves as Endymion, in music and in hardcore”.

Bas: “Speaking of video’s; we’re working on a video for “No More”. My God talking about investing; we flew all the way to London to shoot the video with Warren haha!”

Jelle: “Making money in hardcore, that era has passed a long time ago. You won’t make it by just producing music”.

Bart: “When it comes to that, we were a little too late. De financial big guns were made in the nineties. Our highlight would be selling three to four thousand vinyl’s of an EP, and that was in 2006/2007. You can’t expect that anymore these days, not even with downloads”.

Bas: “We expect to get more bookings because of the album, that’s how you earn back the money”.

Jelle: “An album has become one of the biggest promotional tools of this time”.

The Future of Hardcore
Apparently this is the idea that a lot of DJ’s are working around these days; Mad Dog and you guys released an album in 2011 and we can expect more new albums by The Viper, Neophyte and Angerfist. It’s not a bad thing for you guys to release this album before the summer.
Bart: Yes, we wanted to make an album and release it before Defqon. 1. it’s also a good thing that we can play all of our new stuff at all the festivals.

Another much noticed development in hardcore is that DJ sets are representing the label of the artist itself. How do you feel about that?
Bas: “Honestly , I hope that this will keep developing in the future. You can indeed see it with Traxtorm, who keep their new tracks for themselves the first few months to keep their music exclusive, so their artists are more interesting to book them for an event”.

Bart: “Patrick (Ruffneck), has been doing this for a long time now. But yes it is a development, these days. You won’t find artists who play tracks from artists who play after them, or even from the label they represent, it became more of an unwritten rule”.

Jelle: “It’s actually kind of normal; you’re a part of a certain label and the sound that it represents. That’s how you create a diversity of the scene in one night”.

Speaking about labels, Enzyme 39a, b and c are yours. You’re already expecting this one; will Enzyme 40 be another new ‘A Gathering of Styles?
Jelle: “Hehehe uhmm, I’m won’t say much about it but I can confirm this: yes, “A Gathering of Styles 4”is on its way. That’s all I’m going to say about it. No really hahaha! Just keep an eye out for it!”

How do you see yourselves as producers/musicians in the future? I can imagine that the philosophy behind “Three” means that you might want to produce other artists and produce songs more ‘music-wise’?
Bart: “It’s a possibility yes, but for now we’re way too busy with Endymion. Lots of performances and a lot of work in the studio”.

Jelle: “It would be great thing if more talents will show rise, we really think it’s what the scene needs right now”.

Bas: “Someone like Amnesys, you can’t call him a talent anymore, he’s really become one of the biggest. We’ve also been asked to do tutorials for upcoming producers. When we find the time, we would really like to start working on that too”.

Jelle: “People really think that we hardcore producers want to keep everything a secret, but that’s really not the case. The more new guys in the scene, the more music and ‘so-called’ competition you get, which is better for the hardcore scene anyway.

Bart: “The level is really high though, which is a legitimate complaint you here very often. We did welcome a new talent to the Enzyme crew (Pandorum) you’re definitely going to hear more from him in the near future.

Technically speaking, is it even possible to go even ‘harder’ considering the ‘loudness war’ that’s been going on lately?
Jelle: “No, and it’s probably hard to explain to people who don’t produce, but the so-called audio spectrum is already full. It means that you have to cut certain frequencies in sounds very roughly in order to produce a well sounding track. There’s almost no room left for more sounds in a track. There are certain tricks for it, like the famous side-chain compression, that we used a lot in “Abduction” for example.

Bart: “Actually, hardcore should become more softer again, we need to stop with the hard mix downs. We already talked about this with a few other label en everyone agrees. But, yeah, who’s going to start doing it. It seems that no one wants to take that first step. But yeah; hard doesn’t necessarily means it’s better!

Last question: did a certain form of pressure fell of your shoulders now the production process of the album is finished? Now you have time for other things.
Bas: “There is a certain form of relief. But you do have to keep moving on”.

Bart: “We already rocked it at Defqon.1, which at that point was the most important thing. We’ve worked so hard to present this album to the World. I believe we’ve visited all the major hardcore radio shows to do interviews but we’re nowhere near to being finished”.

Jelle:”There are so many cool performances coming up, we’ll be busy for a while with that”.

Bart: “This album shows that there are so many different possibilities in hardcore. Look at Promo and his hiphop project; we were at the album presentation of “Stijlloos” at Trouw (the Netherlands) and we thought it was the bomb! We should all should care less and need to do more stuff again. And not to forget: later on this year we’ll release the EP with Art of Fighters, but that’s going to take a while”.

Jelle: “That’s a good thing though, you shouldn’t be wanting to do new stuff all the time, now it’s evenly divided”.

Bas: “We still have a lot of new ideas how to present a liveset in the future, even more new stuff on stage. We’ve seen things in different styles of music, that we really want to consider. And no. We’re not going to tell you what it is, cause someone else might want to do the same thing hahahaha!”.

Bart: “There’s still so much more to gain and so many things to do. Let’s just say, we’re not even close to being finished”.

The Album
“THREE” consists of two different cd’s, which first disc is filled with nothing but brand new Endymion tracks. Endymion has created songs with multi-layered exciting arrangements, which makes the sound of “THREE” more mature than their previous work. Because of their worldwide performances and shows on events with various music genres and performers, Endymion got inspired to develop their trademarked sound. Besides many new solo tracks, Endymion has joined hands and minds with several artists like Nosferatu, Evil Activities and The Viper for “THREE”. Previous collabs with these artists have never failed on the crowd: a lot of their ventures turned out to be instant classics. Also, Endymion invited Dutch-hiphop icons E-Life and Ollie for hyping rap vocal contributions and London-based singer Warren Morris gives a showcase of his raw unpolished talents on “THREE”, which also contains a new co-op with Lilly Julian

it was Bart who said in an interview last year that hardcore should get a more mature sound, more international.

This year we had Endymion, we wanted to take hardcore to the next level, make itreally musical. So we sat together what can we do. They had a London singer and a guitarplayer and a dutch singer Lilly and two rappers E-live?. E-live was really, no I don't want to be associated with hardcore. When they shooted the clip, he didn't want to be in it, afterwards he said ok a little bit. And then he performed at Defqon and it was so crazy and he said Let's do it, when is the next gig, when is the next track. It's the energy that harderstyles have, the energy of all the people together. Not about look what I'm wearing, it's all about the togetherness and the love for the music. And that's I think we have in our scene is really the togetherness that we create with the music.