Drop the Bass, Not My Heart

prologue.

"House is for the lovers,
Trance is for the dreamers,
Hardstyle is for the ambitious,
Happy Hardcore is for the content,
Dubstep is for the believers,
Techno is for the partiers,
EDM is for those who are alive."

When you're young and wild and free, many a time various dreams and aspirations will go through your mind, picking at your interest from time to time. I would know, it happened to me. I remember wanting to be a paleontologist when I was little (my love for dinosaurs was colossal) before thinking marine biology would be a more realistic aspect (I wanted to save the narwhals). It was soon followed by the want to be a performer, an actress or a singer (pfft who hasn't dreamt of this?) soon to be replaced by the thoughts of being a writer (I have too many uncompleted stories).

The thought that hadn't quite crossed my mind at the time was becoming a disc-jockey, aka a deejay (dj). I started to be influenced as a tween and it soon became a hobby of mine, searching up and researching EDM (electronic dance music) tracks and artists to the point where I convinced my parents to start my hobby by picking up some pricey beginner turntables for me to mix tracks on.

To tell you the truth, I hadn't really gotten started on my own original mixes until I was picked up by a label, I was stuck doing mashups for a while due to a lack of a new laptop and proper studio workspace and hence worked off my phone in the study or dining room. Neat huh?

Remixes came with age and soon I was producing quite some decent tracks, good enough for them to be featured once or twice on Proximity's playlist after I posted the majority of them on my Soundcloud. It gained the attention I needed to kickstart my career when low and behold, Nicky Romero, yes the one and only, stumbled upon my remixes and dropped me an email asking if I'd like to come into the studio to meet someone.

Enter Edward Florence, or as we all knew him, Teddy. He was from New Zealand and had been picked up by Nick at the time. Nick introduced him to me by his stage name 'Tedrik" (mine's "Holtfire") and had this idea to get the two of us to work together and produce a track, which seemed like a terrible idea at first seeing that the both of us barely knew each other but surprisingly enough, it actually worked.

Teddy had a knack for transitions and rhythm which was useful since I lacked in those areas but was good with timing and I had a good ear for composing melodies. In a month, we'd made our first ever original mix called 'Boom' paying homage to the name that we had decided on together as a duo. Yup, it's cheesy as hell but it fit the bill.

Teddy and Talia

TNT.

*boom*

And just like that our careers exploded as we were signed onto Protocol Recordings and became some of the youngest deejays ever, beating Martin Garrix who became a close friend of ours over the years.

(Perks of being a young DJ, Nick's like the older brother I never had and he had custom headphones made for both Teddy and me, mine with cat ears that lit up and Teddy's with a visor. SICK)

Despite this, things got a little tricky after that month because we flew out to Nick's studio in Netherlands during our summer breaks since we were both still in the school system and it was hard for us to meet up after since Teddy lived in New Zealand and I was from Britain.

We did thankfully have Skype but it was close to impossible for us to make proper mixes so for a while, we settled for taking turns making mixes and mailing them to the other to edit and getting our managers, producers and what not to settle the rest before we came up with the final product. Those tracks were put aside into storage for the time being. All in all it wasn't the most functional process of working together.

However, that problem only lasted for about the year before we both graduated and Teddy got a bond-free (THANK HEAVENS) scholarship to come to the UK and study. Which was a relief so he and I picked an apartment to share and we spent the next few years or so churning out studio quality mixes from our study-turned-studio.

While I attended Durham University, Teddy, being the bloody overachiever that he was, attended Cambridge, the smartarse. He became my best friend and go-to-guy whenever stuff cropped up at school or back home. He had my back and I had his and I'd never be able to thank Nick enough for introducing him to me.

Nick flew in a few times to check in on us and meet up for gigs and drinks occasionally and eventually became apart of our little group which slowly expanded as artists like Sonny Moore (aka Skrillex), Tim Bergling (Avicii) and Anton Zaslavski (Zedd) starting working together with us and collaborating on tracks, individually and as a duo.

That led to us getting in touch with more people like Wes (Diplo) and Dillon, not to mention Nick introducing us to, holy mother of god, ROBBERT VAN DE CORPUT AKA HARDWELL (it had taken everything, quite literally, not to completely lose my cool when we met) and peeps like Daan (Dannic) who became my really good friend and Jordy (Dyro).

Eventually Teddy had established our own little group consisting of Nick, Martjin, Anton, Jordy and Daan. They became our second family and seeing them always felt like home.

Anton was older than us both but he still acted like he was the younger brother of the trope.

Nick and Daan were the obvious responsible older brothers (not).

Martin and Jordy were the pranksters and Teddy and I were the nerds of sorts, always having our noses buried in books when we weren't mixing.

More often than not.

It was a nice feeling, having a family abroad and that family was just about to have a pretty brilliant adventure along with a few other members...

A/N : hey so I've had this idea for the longest time and I've finally decided to put it out there and see where this takes me :) hope you guys enjoy!! Much love and until the next chapter~~

- dragonis -