The Enlightenment 2024: B-Front and Phuture Noize showcasing their new project

The Enlightenment – Back in Tilburg, back at the Poppodium 013. This venue had been home to many special events in the hard dance scene and recently hosted one of the most awaited project-showcases of the year: The Enlightenment by artists B-Front and Phuture Noize!

Both DJs have secured their place in the Hardstyle hall of fame with decade-long consistency, highest quality productions and distinctive styles. With The Enlightenment, this perfect match continues their shared discography and even graces us with an entire album!

Starting at 2 pm with Hardstyle classics by DJs S1ngular and Jones, the crowd was warmed up for an entire day of dancing! Never have I seen the Poppodium 013 filled up during the first set, which just represents how excited fans were for this event. After a bit over one hour, Galactixx and Udex played a b2b that fulfilled every Euphoric lover’s heart!

At 4:30 pm the entire room was eagerly waiting for the first of the two hosts: Phuture Noize showcased a selection of his biggest tracks – and the entire room sang along. The atmosphere gave us goosebumps! Not a single soul stood still and the crowd sang in unity – what a feeling!

This set was followed by the second host of the night: B-Front! I am convinced, had the sound system failed, this crowd would have sung the entire 45 minutes themselves. Every sound, every kick, every break, every word of every line – this crowd knows their B-Front tracks and the venue was bursting with energy and beaming faces. An immaculate set that put us in our feelings and resembled the most fun workout class you can imagine!

After the two hosts had played their separate sets, Devin Wild filled the break to the highlight of the night: The Enlightenment show! Energy and anticipation were high and set one of my favorites I have witnessed of Devin Wild so far! At 7 pm it was finally time to get enlightened: B-Front and Phuture Noize presented their newest project! While the artists played some of their earlier collaborations as well, the new project took the center stage!

Considering most of the tracks aren’t even released yet, it was wonderful to witness how excited the crowd was to sing along! Goes to show that their timeless anthems are not just only sung along to because everyone has heard them countless times, but because the combination of B-Front and Phuture Noize doesn’t just create high quality music, but a feeling! Frozen Tears, which I first got to hear at Qlimax just four months ago, has become a legendary track already now, while most of the album hasn’t even been released yet.

After the set, fans were able to say hi and get a quick photo with the hosts at the Meet & Greet, and everyone was so excited! Once the Meet & Greet was over, I got the chance to ask B-Front and Phuture Noize about The Enlightenment and its story, which I want to share with you here:

You are now also releasing the tracks of this project as an album; can you share the story behind this project?

Phuture Noize:

When we started this album, I told Bob that I always enjoy writing an album around a concept. And he was like: “Oh yes, that’s a great idea! Let’s dive into that together!” We discussed the theme and Bob had an idea!

B-Front:

Marco is really good at creating concepts and thinking about the whole package needs to be, the storytelling.

I’m more like the feeling guy, so I said, let’s do it about some feeling: that at the end everything is coming!

Phuture Noize:

We started with a cliche sentence. We started with it’s not about the ending, but it’s about the road towards it.

That’s technically how we started the album. And it’s kind of like a heavy cliche, but it was interesting to see such a universal theme, where we could take the story and the album tracks for it.

Normally in Hardstyle you go from more melodic stuff into really rough stuff at the end.

Well, that’s normally how you build up a set. You start out a little bit, and you get more BPM, more tough stuff at the end.

But for this album, we decided: Let’s just make it this road towards the end: let’s, instead of ending rough, make it very euphoric and melodic.

We kind of like swapped the standard in Hardstyle, and we tried making tracks that fit the theme of being lost in the beginning, and then more and more you find your way.

B-Front:

It’s more like, dark and distorted and that’s also what you see a little bit in the show. 

You know, we are not in the light yet: The light is behind us and beyond the whole road to the Enlightenment, everything is fully of light, and beautiful again. Life should be black and white and end up in color.

Phuture Noize:

That’s where we started selecting themes, writing track titles, et cetera, et cetera.

Frozen Tears – it’s a hardstyle heartbreak song. How do you produce emotional tracks together?

B-Front:

We already had the title Frozen Tears on paper, so that’s Marcos part.

He is really good in this creative thing, like: this is the title I want to work with.

So he met with a singer for songwriting and he made an ID, then, he showed me some writing he had done and then I’m just gonna do my sauce over it.

And then I’m like: “But let’s do this kind of melody here!” or something like this. Then, I made my melody how I liked it, so he put his sauce. At one point we come to the result we both like.

Phuture Noize:

I think that’s the interesting bit, because then you you look at each other’s stronger points! I’m then invested in the song writing process and write a demo, he enjoys the demo, then he gets inspired by this demo, and he will do something that he wouldn’t do solo. But I wouldn’t do what he was doing solo as well.

I do something, I write something. He enjoys it. He gets triggered to do something, and then it’s your way around as well.

B-Front:

And then we just FaceTime each other!

Phuture Noize:

That’s the same for the closing track as well!

Bob just phoned me one night. He was like, dude, I found, these chords – they sound really good.

Then we were on the phone for, like, 2 hours and wrote the song. That was one of our smoothest collabs.

My salvation was maybe even smoother, but that one was also really smooth.

We wrote all the parts for the break immediately after, and then we could

just throw it all in one song.

B-Front:

 I made like this chord progression he was like: “I do melody ping!”, which you hear the

bells of that beginning, so then we both combined, and I made this first climax, with the big leads, and then with the screech.

At first, he was not the fan of the screech, but then I was like, “But I really like the screeches!”, and he was okay with that.

If you respect each other with the choices you make in music, I think that’s also important, because if you always say no, I don’t like, no, I like, you cannot make an end product.

The show went on with incredible performances:

Ran-D b2b Adaro, who played many of their beloved G4H hits, as well as Hard Driver and Rejecta, – just to be closed by high flyer Aversion, who finished the party with the two hosts together on stage, performing their new track Frozen Tears!

What a day, what a night! After the premiere of this project at Qlimax 2023 we had been eagerly waiting to get more of this album and concept – the waiting was worth every second!

How many tracks of this album will make it into the Hardstyle Top 100 this year? All?

Thank you, Bob, Marco and your entire teams for making this event happen and raising the hype for this years’s outdoor season! We are excited to see this show at all major festivals and hope for another event organized by you soon!

Check out The Enlightenment here!