This was the ‘Artist of The Year’ 2015

By Hard News 06 January 2016

A few days ago we asked our followers on social media what their number one artist of 2015 was. Which artist had achieved the most in the past year or made the biggest leap in his career. And who better to ask than the fans of the genre.

People immediately went off and in no-time several names stood high above the rest. The ‘battle’ consisted mainly of two names, one of them being highly active in the Euphoric scene and the other one leaning far into the world of Raw Hardstyle. Because both artists received an enormous amount of votes, we decided it would only be fair to feature them both, in order of the amount of votes of course.

#2 – Radical Redemption
Yes sir, with an incredible amount of votes Joey van Ingen, also known as Radical Redemption, has ended on the second place. This, literally, big name was introduced by Crypsis back in 2011 when he played their collab “Darkness Is Calling” at a sold-out Hard Bass in the GelreDome.

Not long after Radical Redemption started his rise to fame by already announcing his first album ‘Annihilate’. Joey obviously didn’t want to waste any time. The album only had a digital release, but he decided to give away a limited amount of hard copies for free at one of his performances. That made the CD an instant collector’s item.

With a thought-out strategy, his brutal appearance and his recognizable look every time his fans asked to take a picture with him, Radical Redemption quickly turned himself into a strong brand. Right from the start it was obvious that he is a true producing-machine, because he was constantly bringing updates about his new music. He talks about tracks like “Body of Lies”, “Sexual Accessories” and “Furious Anger”, even though he never released them in the end.

Now, four years later, Radical Redemption has performed at close to every major (hardstyle) event that you can think of and he is flying around the world doing just that. His three albums ‘Annihilate’, ‘The Spell of Sin’ and ‘The One Man Army’ blast through the speakers of every fan and he recently achieved an incredible 250.000 fans on his Facebook page. And if that’s not enough Radical ended up as #72 in the DJ Mag Top 100 last year, 13 of his tracks were featured in the Q-dance Hardstyle Top 100 and seven of his tracks were even featured in the Hardcore Top 100.

The Radical Army, as his fans call themselves, may justly call themselves fans of a great artist of our (hardstyle) time. Radical Redemption is here to take over the world.

#1 – Cyber
The young Seraja Hilbrecht, who is originally from Switzerland, seems to appear out of nowhere when he signed at Dirty Workz in 2014. But that couldn’t be mor wrong, because even though he rather stays in the background, his fans had already discovered his music long before his signing. The fact that he signed at Dirty Workz was more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’.

He had only one release in 2014 on Dirty Workz sublabel ‘Update’, but Cyber quickly moved to the mainlabel last year and released five tracks, next to the release of “DLTBGY” on Q-dance Records. Besides that he also had the honor to create an official remix of the track “Universal Language” by Coone.

‘feels’ is the word that keeps popping up with each of his tracks, because they are literally filled with emotions. Hours, days, months were spent in his studio. Because of that it couldn’t take long for the larger audience to find out about Cyber‘s music. He had only a few bookings in 2013, but was asked to perform at Decibel Outdoor in 2014. He also received a lot of support from artists like Atmozfears, Villain, Wasted Penguinz and Da Tweekaz, which resulted in his music being heard all over the world.

Last year things went even faster when Cyber performed at events like Defqon.1, The Qontinent, Electric Love, Euphoria and Decibel Outdoor. Because of these gigs, and the fact that Cyber spent an incredible amount of time in his studio, more and more music appeared and his fans could keep losing themselves in the melodies that he used in all those tracks.

An enormous amount of votes were pointed at this Swiss Hardstyle artist. Therefore Cyber can rightfully call himself the ‘Artist of the Year 2015’. It’s obvious that we will be hearing a lot more from this talented youngster.