mixmag netherlands
“The music I made yesterday belongs to someone who no longer exists. An artist is judged by what they create today, not by what they created ten or twenty years ago.”
A CAREER BUILT ON THE PRESENT TENSE
Most artists define themselves through milestones: key releases, festival breakthroughs, signature tracks. But Mad Dog resists that narrative. He refuses to catalogue his legacy as a list of accomplishments because doing so would imply that its weight is behind him.
“I think my greatest achievement is still being on the scene today,” he says, and it
modesty but as discipline.
He has watched generations rise and fade, artists with legendary tracks who couldn’t sustain the
inner engine required to
survive a scene as demanding as Hardcore. Remaining relevant in Hardcore is less about memory and more about stamina. The genre rewards the persistent and swallows the comfortable.
His resilience became even more visible when he challenged the direction Hardcore was taking before the pandemic. High BPMs, louder-than-life kicks,
meme
aesthetics, instant-impact drops: the genre was accelerating but losing narrative depth. For someone who grew up at the origins of Hardcore, the shift felt like a drift away from identity.
“I was tired of where the genre was going,” he admits. “I wanted to recreate a vibe that felt more serious, deeper, darker.”
COVID-19, with its forced silence, created the ideal moment to reconstruct from scratch. The result was a Downtempo Hardcore movement that realigned the genre’s emotional core.
He didn’t plan for it to influence the scene, nor does he claim it did. But the change in BPM across events, artists, and promoters is visible today. Hardcore is no longer
lands not as
His Downtempo work wasn’t a pivot. It was a return to source.
“A genre with more than 30 years of history deserves respect, not gimmicks,” he says, and it
is
perhaps the closest thing to a manifesto he has ever offered.
THE SHIFT INTO HARDTECHNO AND THE RENEWAL OF THE DJ
One of the most he
phases of Mad Dog’s evolution came when
entered
striking the
Hardtechno landscape, a move he never strategically planned. The shift was circumstantial, almost accidental, born from the intersection of Hardcore slowing down and Hardtechno speeding up. Suddenly, the two worlds overlapped, and Mad Dog’s sound landed right in the center of the collision.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Hardtechno was rediscovering the
danger,
rawness, and rave energy that Hardcore once carried in the 1990s. It was a world that valued physicality over perfection, risk over polish. The overlap allowed him to carry Hardcore’s density into a different kind of rhythmic architecture.
For years, he had functioned primarily as a producer who performed his own tracks. In Hardcore, that model worked flawlessly. In Hardtechno, it didn’t.
The culture still valued the DJ as selector, as curator, as someone who interpreted the night rather than only contributing to it. That difference forced him to reopen a drawer he had closed long ago: the art of DJing as a craft rather than a vehicle.
trapped in a linear
escalation of speed. It breathes again. It listens again. There is room for tension, for nuance, for something other than shock.
016
He rekindled the skills he had honed in the late 90s: crate- digging, sequencing, creating contrasts, constructing tension through tracks other than his own. The shift expanded his vocabulary and reshaped his identity on stage.
“Track selection and preparation have become essential again. My sets are different from one another, and I have more fun when I play.”
This hybrid approach has allowed Mad Dog to bring Industrial Hardcore
into Hardtechno
spaces where the genre is rarely acknowledged. It has also allowed him to present energy differently. Not faster, not louder, but fuller.
“Whether it’s Hardcore or
Hardtechno, the level of energy to transmit to the audience must be maximum,” he insists.
That shift also reshaped how
he perceived success. The most decisive moment wasn’t on the biggest stages but during one of his first Downtempo sets in France, before the world noticed the change.
“People reacted brilliantly, and I felt the same energy as a fast Hardcore set,” he recalls.
It was the confirmation he
needed, the revelation that he could reinvent without erasing himself.
DOGFIGHT, LEGACY, AND THE FUTURE HE IS BUILDING
Dogfight Records remains one of the most influential markers in modern Hardcore, a label that entered the elite in record time. But Mad Dog is blunt about its recent slowing down. His life has become an unbalanced equation: touring, producing, building a new studio, managing merchandise, keeping the label alive, and still trying to protect fragments of private life. Something had to suffer. And, for a while, it was Dogfight.
“I don’t like to delegate,” he admits.
It is not pride. It is a responsibility. Dogfight carries his name and his reputation, and he refuses to attach his identity to anything that doesn’t meet his internal
standard. That is why the label has recently focused almost exclusively on his own tracks. He doesn’t have the time to manage other artists with the care they deserve.
Dogfight may one day return to broader
releases, but only
when the right team is in place. Until then, he prefers to protect his reputation with fewer but stronger statements. Ten years into its existence, the label is entering a reflective phase. Slowing down to recalibrate is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of sustainability.
The forward path for Mad Dog is surprisingly simple. After decades of complexity, of reinvention, of adjusting to the tempo of an evolving scene, he has distilled his priorities into a single focus:
More music.
This year, he built his dream studio in Rome, designed by one of Italy’s top audio engineers. A professional space, not an indulgence. A tool that reduces friction and maximizes his limited time. It signals a new chapter where sound design, craftsmanship, converge.
and
longevity
If the last decade was about adaptation, the next one feels like consolidation. Mad Dog has nothing left to prove, and everything went to create. The genres around him may accelerate, mutate, fragment, and collide, but he has returned to the place where identity is most apparent: the work.
The same clarity he found in those illegal raves in Rome.
The same depth he reclaimed through Downtempo.
The same energy he rediscovered through DJing.
The same honesty that runs through every evolution.
stage of his
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
