T2Kazuya takes listeners on a journey through different eras and subgenres of hard dance on his Paradigm Shift debut!
For many years, American Hard Dance has bubbled under the radar of the dance music scene in the States. Although not necessarily under that name, US producers have showcased hard dance for nearly two decades, flouting rejection from the worldwide and local scenes. As American Hard Dance has evolved and reached a golden era today, it’s important to remember the roots and acknowledge the artists who contributed to the genre’s success. One of those artists is none other than T2Kazuya.
In 2004, he was exposed to hard dance through various avenues, like Dance Dance Revolution and the iconic flash animation “All Your Base Are Belong To Us.” T2Kazuya started producing original music inspired by the harder styles the following year.
His artist project can be traced back to when he extensively listened to Scott Brown‘s Bonkers XI CD mix and DJ Candy Kid‘s A Trip To Raveland. With these two projects as his main inspiration, T2Kazuya embraced the old-school sound and took advantage of platforms like ACIDPlanet.com and Myspace to get his music out to a wider audience.
T2Kazuya experienced his first label appearance in 2007 on J-Core Masterz Vol. 1 by Mob Squad Black Label. From there, he started focusing on UK hardcore with releases on labels like Betamuse, Audio Weaponry, Aural Adrenaline, and Rebuild Music. This led him to create a UK hardcore remix of “Language” by Porter Robinson. Eventually, this remix found its way into Porter’s sets. The superstar DJ and producer even used it as an encore track on the Language Tour, which led T2Kazuya to connect with DJ Breeze and sign to Futureworld Records in 2013.
Since then, he’s stuck to his vision of using hard dance to encapsulate the free spirit of endless and limitless creativity. Comparing hard dance to punk music, T2Kazuya says he’s “enamored with the way the genre pushes boundaries of existing genres, brings together adjacent scenes, and allows its audience to let loose, get rowdy, and feel like kids again.” While he admits that the genre experienced a lull in variety from 2016 to 2019, he’s happy with the rise in sound design-heavy styles like rawstyle and uptempo.
I would like to see hard dance evolve in a way that brings a lot more of the smaller communities together — maybe in a less flashy/commercialized/festival-ready way, because in its essence, that isn’t what hard dance, or even rave music, is about.
T2Kazuya
To sum up the magic of the genre, T2Kazuya remembers when the pandemic began, as he “observed a heartwarming gathering of smaller communities and hardcore crews using websites like Twitch and YouTube, coming together to spread the sound.” With this era continuing to fly by, T2Kazuya hopes to continue shining a light on the subversive grassroots scenes that helped build the entire sound and community in the first place.
Paying homage to the sounds that initially got him involved in the scene, T2Kazuya stopped by to spin up a guest mix that takes fans back into the past while highlighting the future with tons of unreleased records and some great friends like NEIKA and Forbidden Society. Take a sonic journey through different subgenres and eras of hard dance with T2Kazuya’s debut on Paradigm Shift!
My hope for the future of hard dance music is for accurate representation to continue, more homage to legacy acts, and for sonic boundaries to be pushed. Hard dance music has so much potential to be a massive movement with the right representation.
T2Kazuya
Crank up the volume and indulge in T2Kazuya’s thrilling Paradigm Shift guest mix on SoundCloud!
