Partyraiser

Whole genres rarely trace back to one DJ’s habits, but uptempo hardcore does. Wesley van Swol (Partyraiser) started DJing in 1993, played his first hardcore party in 1995, won his first mixing competition in 1996, and pressed his first record, ‘A New World Order’, in 1998 with Endymion’s Bart Revier.

The B-side gospel

The pivotal move came in 2004: Van Swol began building sets from the nastiest, fastest B-sides in hardcore, the tracks other DJs skipped. Crowds and colleagues started talking about ‘Partyraiser style’, and by around 2012 the scene had a proper name for the tempo-pushed sound: uptempo.

Godfather status

In 2013 he founded Partyraiser Records as a platform for himself and new talent, and since 2016 he has doubled up in Scarphase, his exclusive live act with Italian hardcore heavyweight F. Noize. The hits kept ratifying his title: ‘Sound Becomes One’ with DT was named hardcore’s number 1 track of 2015, and ‘Ode to the Godfather’ took the same honour in 2017. The title says it all. Today’s uptempo generation, from The Dark Horror to Deadly Guns, works in the space he cleared.

Still raising parties

Three decades in, ‘A Little Bit Of Beats’ (2024) currently leads his Spotify catalogue in HDRR’s tracking, proof the godfather still delivers.

Every new Partyraiser release lands on the Uptempo Release Radar the day it hits Spotify. The full tracked catalogue is listed above.