"We always welcome new friends": CH1LL on growing Osaka's hardstyle scene

Ask CH1LL for a moment that stays with him, and he goes to the night of 10 May this year, at his own Flow of Euphoria party. Near the end of his set he played one more track, "Don't Care" by Refuzion, and the room tipped over.

"It was near the end of the event, when I played an encore track and extended my set a little longer. Wav3motion, who had already returned to the backstage area, came back to the stage along with K1lo. They joined the crowd in singing along, and the whole moment became really exciting. It was a great moment where the DJs and the crowd shared the same energy."

That is the thing he is chasing, every night he plays.

"What I'm chasing is that feeling of being pulled deep into a track, and of becoming one with the music and the room. Whatever is hard in everyday life, for that one moment on the floor, I want people to forget it, to give themselves to the music and really enjoy it. Not just to get excited, but to be moved."

How he got here

CH1LL is an Osaka DJ and organizer. He found hardstyle in 2013, when he was in high school. A music game he played led him to the Japanese label HARDCORE TANO\*C, and two tracks did it: USAO's "LiMiT" and Massive New Krew's "Yamato." From there he went deeper on YouTube, following Headhunterz, Da Tweekaz and Atmozfears, and that is when he really fell for the music.

By 2017 he was going to club nights to hear it in a room. But the nights rarely played the recent tracks he most wanted, and the gap nagged at him.

"I felt frustrated that even when I went to events, they rarely played recent tracks or the songs I wanted to hear. A friend told me, 'then why not try DJing yourself?' That was the turning point."

He bought a DJ controller, taught himself, and started DJing in 2019. He is a DJ at heart: his focus is the set, and for his sets he makes his own edits and mashups.

Why euphoric hardstyle

Of all the harder styles, euphoric hardstyle is the one he keeps returning to. The pull is two things at once: a sound, and a room full of people.

"The first time I heard Massive New Krew's 'Yamato,' I was struck by how, beneath the catchy melody and warm chords, the hardstyle kick pitch-shifted and wove its way through the track. It was a sensation I had never felt before, and it is still my favourite thing about the music. The other thing I love is that hardstyle is festival music: a huge crowd sharing one sound, sometimes the whole venue singing the melody together. Euphoric hardstyle, especially, puts the beauty of the melody and that sense of elation front and centre."

The four nights

CH1LL did not start HARDER EVOLUTION. By his own account, Herald, the Tokyo organizer behind DefDistortion, started it to rebuild an Osaka hardstyle scene that had almost disappeared during the pandemic. CH1LL took it over from the third edition and has run it since.

"The Osaka hardstyle scene is still growing. Even so, when a guest tells me 'thank you for putting this event on,' that is what makes me most proud as an organizer, and it is a big reason I keep going."

He now runs four series, and keeps their jobs separate. HARDER EVOLUTION is the biggest, built around hardstyle, with lighting that turns the room into something close to an indoor festival. Flow of Euphoria focuses only on euphoric hardstyle; it usually runs small, and scales up with full production, as "HARDER EVOLUTION presents," when an overseas guest comes. HARD TRIANGLE he runs with Kensei, the manager of the TRIANGLE venue; it is not limited to hardstyle, and its real purpose is to help young DJs in Osaka's harder-styles scene grow. RAVE PHASE runs monthly, on the third Saturday, on the ARC floor at GIRAFFE JAPAN, and is as much a place for hard-music fans to meet as it is a party, with a lot of guests from overseas.

Running four is more than he strictly wants to.

"Honestly, I would like to narrow it down to one. But until other organizers grow enough to support the scene, I think that is my role. Hardstyle reaches people through different doors, and the more doors there are, the more people the music can reach."

He is open about who shaped him. Few of the DJs who first built the Kansai scene are still active, he says; many moved to other genres or stopped DJing. What formed him was the DefDistortion crew in Tokyo, and an Osaka party called newÔrder, a different genre and concept from his own, but his best close-up example of how to run and brand an event.

How he sees the scene

CH1LL is direct about where Japanese hardstyle stands. Across the country, he says, it is clearly growing, above all in Tokyo, where DefDistortion's steady booking of overseas artists has pulled the scene up. This year, he notes, hardstyle and hardcore even reached a sub-stage at World DJ Festival JAPAN, in front of a big crowd. Outside Tokyo it is harder, and he names two reasons.

The first is simply access.

"In Japan, there are still not many chances to come across dance music at all. The number of festivals and club events is limited, so a lot of people meet this music by chance, get interested, and only then start going to events. If it were easier to come across dance music, I think more people would get into hardstyle."

The second is the gap between Japan's two hard-music worlds. The country has a big scene of its own, built around HARDCORE TANO\*C, but it still rarely connects to the hardstyle scene beside it. In Tokyo that is starting to change; in the regions the scenes stay separate.

"Each scene has its own culture and appeal, so there is no need to force them together. But if there were more chances to discover each other, all of hard music could grow."

He feels the regional difference too. To him, Kanto crowds tend to take the music more seriously, almost studiously. Kansai crowds treat the whole night as one party, and mix more genres on a single bill. Not better or worse, he says, just different ways in.

Bringing the world in

Booking a euphoric artist from overseas is a gamble, and it comes down to the crowd. Right now, younger fans in Japan lean toward the harder, faster Zaag-style rawstyle and uptempo, and overseas euphoric names are still not well known here, so filling the room for a euphoric show is genuinely hard. He books them anyway.

"The hardest part is honestly drawing a crowd. Overseas hard music is still quite niche here, and the artists are not well known. But we do not run events as a business. If the timing is right, and it is an artist we really want to see, and the cost is realistic, we make it happen, just to bring music we love to Japan and let a few more people discover it."

Where to start

Ask him what a newcomer, or someone overseas, should know about Japanese hardstyle, and he answers without hesitating. The event is DefDistortion, running since 2014 and still one of the scene's leading forces. The artist is Tatsunoshin, already known abroad, with a distinctly Japanese flavour, high production quality, and a steady run of releases.

An open door

He wants HARDER EVOLUTION, which he calls Kansai's largest hardstyle event, to keep widening who it reaches, and the Japanese euphoric scene to keep growing with it. Ask him what he would say to someone who has never been, and the answer is an invitation.

"A lot of people in Japan do not know hardstyle yet. But many of them would be hooked after one listen, and it is easy to find now through streaming and recommendations. If you already listen but have never been to a party: it can feel a little scary at first, but singing and raising your arms with people who love the same music is honestly the best. Come out once. We always welcome new friends."