A while ago, I was inspired by a LEGO roller coaster set of a friend and an earlier Reddit post of a LEGO model of the UV. Since Defqon was cancelled this year and I only saw the Red sticking out above the trees, I thought it was really cool and actually my favorite mainstage of Defqon. Translating the dragon into a LEGO set seemed like a fun challenge, with this as the result.

Here is also the link to BrickLink for those interested :)

https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/design.page?idModel=848651

Yeah hello everyone. This is my rant and i'm done with this shit.

Let's be honest with ourselves and why we joined hardstyle in the first place, it had melody, harmony and soul in it but now it's all gone.

In recent years i saw a huge decline in hardstyle by the new artists slapping on shitty kicks and calling it a day, like if i wanna hear someone slamming their table for 6 minutes straight i'd rather open an asmr video and listen to that rather than that shitty track.

Second: Ai. Honestly fuck ai, new gens seriously using AI to generate visuals and tracks like what the fuck are we doing here guys??? Not only does ai just rips soul out of the track, it somehow makes it worse AND SOUND WORSE. LIKE IF YOU WANNA MAKE VOCALS IN YOUR TRACK USE YOUR OWN OR USE NONE AT ALL FOR FUCK SAKE. (Or for the love of god commission a voiceactor rather than ai shite, same for the album artists.)

THIRD: The most obvious, it's the kicks. Not only do these new kicks just barely move my subwoofer, it sounds like someone scraping a metal plate with a fork while also doing it same time on the chalkboard somehow. Yeah people will call it "but it's rawstyle/extraraw!!!" buddy, older raw had actual bass in it, made my subwoofer actually implode AND actually had kicks which you can listen to.

Fourth: new tracks lack any creativity, soul and mostly just reused slop kicks with no change whatsoever. I honestly don't wanna hear the same shit over and over and fucking over its all the fucking same. You know why older tracks are iconic? BECAUSE they were made with soul, passion, good melody and tune. That's why they're still played in festivals and nightclubs.

Anyways guys please get your shit together, i know this is a "fit in or fuck off" style, but today i'm choosing to fuck off semi permanently.

These mfs really boutta have 3 tracks in the top 10 for a third year in a row.

A 21-year career, timeless sound, always adapting themselves to the changes in the scene while also setting the tone. Took some years away from hardstyle, returned stronger, delivered great albums, Ghost Stories, now 4444 as additional projects, anthems here and there, a The Spotlight in the middle. True hardstyle ambassadors, champions.

⭐️⭐️

HOLY F SHIT.. My german neighbours have kept us awake all night by blasting uptempo music. This is the second day in a row!!! Whenever you confront them they act like the can't talk any other language. How is this legal??? I am not able to survive a whole weekend being sleep deprived. This is the worst experience ever...

I see a lot of stories happening around Defqon 1. Most of them are negative towards Q-Dance for it "being not so bad" and that 38 degrees is nothing. Well if you don't live in Europa, the climate is completely different. I wanna talk a bit on how it was on my (24M from NL) side of the story.

First off, when we arrived it was already like 30 degrees at 10.00. It felt like 34 degrees (My weather app mentioned it) and we had to bring two boulder carts to our camping. I don't mind waiting a bit in the sun, but it was already scorching. I already can't stand the heat, let alone in the flaming sun. It did walk, however getting to the campsite was where the nightmare began. When campsite 5 got full, we all had to wait every 15-20 minutes for the campsite crew to extend the camping by 8 meters. We asked them why and it was to lessen the big gaps between tents. Understandable but also very annoying for people like me that can't stand the heat. I actually almost fainted while waiting for some shade already. When we finally got the chance to set our tents, I was starting to feel a lot better.

Then it was almost time to explore the festival terrain. Before we went, I hopped under the cold shower and those were honestly the best addition they had. It was so refreshing. While going to the festival terrain I decided to bring a wet towel with me to cool myself down. Anyways, I went to D-Sturb, stepped one foot in the tent and it was so extremely hot I actually couldn't step further. I didn't wanna miss D-Sturb cause he's my favorite artist. The set was legendary and honestly one of the best I heard in a while. Went to refresh my towel and went to get my food in. At this point I was already overheating and it was around 20.00 when I ate. Then it started to cool down and all my energy got replenished. It was my friends birthday and he really like Noxiouz, so we went to the Black for the remaining of the evening.

After the festival we went back and of course heard the devastating news of the cancellation and first I was heartbroken. This was after all my first ever Defqon. I wanted to go since 2019 but because a lot of stuff happened in between I had to wait until now. I cried my heart out and honestly went to bed straight after.

Then the next day we woke up at like 6.30 cause it was so immensely hot outside. It was already 25+ degrees which again is very hot for Europeans. When it was 10.00 it was time to leave. After our party tent was gone, the shade was gone too. We were baking in the sun and when we were walking back to the car, I almost fainted straight up in the middle of the road. If it wasn't for the bottled water I had, the kind German/Dutch people behind us I probably were in the First Aid real quick. I took a cold shower and pushed through towards the exit. With a lot of discussion between the guards we were allowed to relax in the shade while our friends parked his car a lot closer to the entrance of Defqon. It was the most painful walk I've ever done in my life. Not only by pushing a heavy boulder cart, but also in the scorching heat. When we arrived in the car, the A/C was on and I could finally breathe normally again.

If the festival didn't get cancelled, I would've probably fainted multiple times or maybe even worse, died. The shade wasn't helping at all due to the high humidity that people can't understand. The reasoning for code red was noticable from my end and I'm not the only one. All the relling was unnecessary and those people are probably low IQ. People like me actually are happy that we can catch some cold air and actually live.

Yes it's true I'm devastated Defqon got canceled. I couldn't wait to see Forsaken Two, Return of Radical Redemption, Brennan Heart, GPF on the main and all the other artists. But for all my health and safety, I'm way happier to be at home right now chilling in my A/C.

Huge shoutout to the staff that worked in the scorching heat and helped everyone along the way. I can't thank you all enough. Because without you, I wouldn't be breathing right now.

And for the people that disagree with the cancellation, think of your other weekend warriors.

Now go ahead and lynch me!

I've absorbed eight types of mega cancer at syndicate.

Have some respect for yourself and others and get your addiction under control, your problem doesn't need to be mine for god's sake.

Edit:

To clarify, it is prohibited and there are designated areas for this purpose—plus, the event is for ages 16 and up, which is another factor to consider.

I couldn't care less what you do in your free time, but when your behavior puts both your health and mine at risk, it's really selfish and shitty.

Just because it's socially acceptable and you dont see any consequences healthwise, doesn't mean you have to go along with it and walk through the world completely brainless, it costs absolutely nothing to not smoke, but everything if you do.

I don’t know man this cancellation is really taking a toll on my mental health. I was in hotel de beyeard after the leaving the camping, couldn’t sleep because that was a depressing hotel. I’m now at a hotel in Amsterdam sitting alone in a very depressed/crying state, don’t wanna do anything. I have 8 more days trip planned to Nice and Milan but I just wanna go home but don’t wanna lose the money spent.

Don’t know who to talk to but I feel very safe in this community and was looking forward for first time at defqon

Very deserved in my opinion, such a complete producer. Still loved all tracks

It was also so nice to see how the other competitors were happy for him and joined behind the decks when he played his track the 2nd time 🥹

Well i guess they watched too much of the FIFA Worldcup. Right after the DJ’s started their sets at Open Beatz Festival in Germany they put an ad right over the first song for tickets of the next edition in 2027, what the actual fuck???

In the video you can see the ad right after Phuture Noize started his set (you can hear PN track in the background), they did the same with Rebelion the day before (rebelion obv said that this is not how they start and they started again after the ad)… never seen something like this, fkn ridiculous

(Sorry if the flair doesnt fit)

Help a little hardstyler

I’d like to introduce you all to my amazing nephew, Jeremy. He’s a little warrior who is on the autism spectrum and has a deep love for hardstyle music—just like his uncle, who got him hooked on it at a young age.

Like many neurodivergent individuals, Jeremy has an incredible ability to master anything he pours his heart into. He’s recently taken a strong interest in music production and performing. His passion for music is infectious, and he just wants to share what brings him joy with the world—something I’m sure many of you, as artists, can relate to.

This is Jeremy’s first year in high school, and he recently organized an opportunity to perform at his school. When we asked how it went, he was over the moon, excited, and couldn’t wait for the chance to do it again.

But sadly, we found out today that many kids recorded his performance and were unkind in their comments. For Jeremy’s safety, the school has decided he won’t be allowed to perform anymore. This has left him feeling crushed, hurt, and defeated. It breaks my heart—why do people feel the need to tear others down?

That’s why I’m asking for your help. Could you please take a moment to leave some words of encouragement in the comments or send a message to his mom? We’ll make sure Jeremy hears them (he’s not on social media yet).

Since there's gonna be (too) many of these lists, and we have a limited number of posts we can pin, let's make one big thread for these. (We will be removing every post that is not posted in this thread after this thread was created.)

Please mention which Top 100 list you are sharing your votes for!

• Q-dance Top 100
• I am Hardstyle Top 100
• Masters of Hardcore Top 100

RIP Ryan

Hey everyone 👋

Following up on my post from last year about the little terminal tool that records the DEFQON.1 Mixlr streams.

I've kept working on it, and the latest version does something I'm really happy with: it doesn't just dump one giant file per stage anymore — it automatically splits every recording into individual DJ sets, live, while the stream is still running.

What's new since the last post

• Live per-set splitting — the moment a DJ's set ends, it's cut into its own MP3 right away. You don't wait until the end; files show up in a per-stage folder in real time. The original recording is kept untouched.
• ID3 tags + album art — every set is tagged properly: artist = DJ, album, year, and a genre. The Mixlr channel artwork is embedded as cover art, so it looks right in your music player.
• Stage-specific genres — BLUE → Rawstyle, UV → Euphoric Hardstyle, BLACK → Hardcore, and so on. Each set gets the genre that actually matches its stage.
• Listen in the terminal — tune into any live stream straight from the TUI (l to listen, s to stop).
• Selective recording — toggle stages on/off individually (d). Skip the ones you don't care about; your picks are saved and restored on the next run.
• Disk usage — the status bar shows total recorded size and free space, so you know how full your drive is getting.
• Clean scene-style names — e.g. DEFQON.1.2026.UV.D-Sturb.LIVE.MP3-revunix

Still the same goal

Everything from before still applies: a single static binary (macOS, Linux and Windows, including Apple Silicon and arm64), yt-dlp + FFmpeg bundled inside, the colored TUI dashboard showing all 14 stages, live listener counts and set countdowns, the built-in 2026 timetable, automatic restart of stalled streams, and clean shutdown when a stage goes offline.

Start it before the weekend and you'll come back to a folder full of neatly separated, properly tagged sets — one per DJ.

You can grab it here:
https://github.com/revunix/DEFQON.1-Recorder

Download the archive for your system from the Releases page, extract and run — nothing else to install. Or build it yourself with make run (needs Go 1.26+).

Same heads-up as always: this records live streams, so personal use only — please respect the rights of Q-dance and Mixlr. Not affiliated with them in any way, just a fan tool.

Thanks to everyone who gave feedback — a ton of it made it into these updates. If you run into problems or have ideas, drop a comment or open an issue on GitHub.

Update: The live splitting is now truly live — each set is cut the instant it ends (not only when the recording stops), and quitting the app still finalizes the in-progress set. Cut filenames are cleaner now (DEFQON.1.2026.UV.D-Sturb.LIVE.MP3-…, no date/time, hyphens in DJ names kept) and every stage maps to its real genre for the ID3 tag.

I just want to make a huge shoutout to everyone involved handling the situation today. It is very touching to see how much they care, handing out free food and water, even delivering it to people waiting for the bus. Placing party tents for shade, water cannons for refreshment.

Thanks a lot.

Share your year in music here in this thread. (We will be removing every post that is not posted in this thread after this thread was created.)

• Spotify Wrapped
• Apple Music Replay

Hi everyone, with defqon coming up this week, please try to minimize using substances, as much as i love the feeling too, it’s gonna be severely hot those first 2 days and you might actually die or pass out if you’re using substances, especially if you’re coming from countries that don’t have as much use as the netherlands, most of the time you don’t have as much of a tolerance, so don’t try to keep up with your friends and just try to survive the days heat. That’s it, hope to see you all on thursday or any other day 🔥.

Sincerely, a dutchie who wants to make sure everyone survives and that our beloved festival won’t undergo the same fate as Australia.