Headhunterz

Headhunterz (real name: Willem Rebergen; * September 12, 1985 in Veenendaal) is a Dutch DJ and music producer. He is also known under the name Antifact or Shilo. He owned the record label Scantraxx Reloaded, which was a sublabel of Scantraxx. Together with Wildstylez, Rebergen also forms the project Project One. At the beginning of his career he was almost exclusively active in the field of hardstyle. When styles like Big-Room dominated the EDM scene during the 2010s, Headhunterz also combined them with his hardstyle style. As part of the "Return of Headhunterz" event organized by Q-Dance at the Ziggo Dome Amsterdam, he officially returned to hardstyle after more than three years on September 30, 2017.

Career

Until 2004: Musical beginnings

Rebergen was already musically active in the children's choir at the age of nine, and later recorded CDs and appeared in films. These experiences helped him later in the studio, although the hardstyle scene only heard him later during the DJ set at Defqon.1. The first time Willem came in contact with hardstyle was at Qlimax 2003. He was so fascinated by the music and the DJs that he took the path of music production.

In 2004 he performed at Defqon.1 Talent Area together with his colleague Bobby van Putten and reached the first place. Just one year later, in 2005, he went to the Rock Academy, where he found that Hardstyle was not promoted there. At the same time he was signed with van Putten at Hard Control under the name "Nasty D-Tuners".

2005 to 2012: Big success in the hardstyle scene

However, Rebergen was still drawn towards Scantraxx. He began to send demos. But at first these remained without consideration. Only after the production "Antifact - War Figures" The Prophet was interested. He is known for it and says it himself that his psychology is intentional when it comes to "applications". But Rebergen remained persistent and so in 2005 he left Hard Control and signed the contract with the Scantraxx label. For legal reasons he was not allowed to take the name of Hard Control. Headhunterz was born. In 2006 he performed under this name alone for the first time at Defqon.1.

Rebergen made his debut as a producer on the production of D-Tuned, which was released on the Scantraxx label. In early 2010, his album Studio Sessions was released, presented under the slogan "2010 will be the Year of Headhunterz". The individual productions of the album were gradually made available for download on his website and could only be downloaded using a code that was included with the album.

In October 2011, he reached 17th place in DJ Magazine's annual international voting. On March 15, 2012, the new album Sacrifice was released as a digital EP. All proceeds from the album will go to the AIDS foundation dance4life.

Headhunterz is also the first hardstyle DJ to have an event dedicated to his podcast by Q-Dance. On October 20, 2012 it took place as the first hardstyle event in the Ziggo Dome Amsterdam. The anthem for it is "Power of Music." Just the day before, he was voted 11th in the DJ Mag Top100 after a previous year's ranking of 17th.

2013-2016: Genre change to the Big Room

At the beginning of 2013 he signed a contract with the music label Ultra Music. In the same year he founded the label HardwithStyle Records. At the beginning of 2015, he switched to Hardwell's record label Revealed Records. Only a few weeks later, the single Once Again was released with which he combined the genres of big room and hardstyle, similar to the tracks Shocker and We Control the Sound together with W&W. That spring he began collaborating with Israeli hardstyle duo Crystal Lake, resulting in the song Live Your Life, which uses a sample from Daft Punk's instrumental track Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

Parallel to Live Your Life, a collaboration with Steve Aoki also made its way through the internet. Power of Now was released on October 2, 2015. This one also continued the crossover hardstyle and big-room. But for unknown reasons, any success failed to materialize even on Beatport, where both landed in the top 10 with almost every single. Even the vocal version Feel, which was used as the soundtrack of the movie Point Break, could not bring any great success. The second collaboration with Crystal Lake is titled The Universe Is Ours and was able to follow the success of Live Your Life. The vocals were sung by Kifi and were originally heard on his song Alive with Reunify.

Also together with Kifi, Headhunterz recorded the song Live Before We Die in spring 2016. With this he moved away from his hardstyle as well as his big room style for the time being. Here he experimented for the first time in the direction of future-pop, also known as future-bass, which became established in the EDM scene between 2015 and 2016 through The Chainsmokers' Roses. Lift Me Up followed in the same style on April 8, 2016, with Mike Taylor contributing the vocals.

On May 9, 2016, the long-awaited single Kundalini was released, produced together with Skytech. The song premiered in December 2015 at Hardwell's performance at the "Lights All Night Festival". Due to the strong resemblance to Bazaar by KSHMR and Marnik, the track was long held as, the announced collaboration between Heady and KSHMR. Dutch DJ and producer MOTi finally announced in March 2016 that it was a production with Skytech. The vocals were provided by a sample of the Indian folk song "Kulli vicho ni yaar lab le" by Indian singer Swarn Noora. On Snapchat, KSHMR introduced the actual joint single at the same time, which is the intro to the, in March 2016 released seventh episode "This Is KSHMR", where the track is marked as "Unknown".

Since 2016: Return to hardstyle

On June 27, 2016, during the performance of Technoboy and The Prophet on the main stage of the hardstyle festival Defqon.1, Headhunterz made an unexpected appearance. The latter climbed onto the mixing desk during the sounding of the first notes of Dragonborn. Due to the surprise effect, a strong cheering of the fans followed. The reason for this effect was especially that "Heady" has not turned to hardstyle in any relation for a long time. He told that he wanted to make clear with this performance that he had not left the time of hardstyle completely behind.

With Wildstylez, Headhunterz announced on November 19, 2016 at Qlimax 2016 during their performance that they had relaunched the project "Project One". They also played their latest production Luminosity there. The song already achieved notoriety through Headhunterz's video blogs, which he has been uploading regularly to YouTube since September 19, 2016. There he used the track as an intro.

He announced his final hardstyle comeback in 2017 at Defqon.1, where he presented his first hardstyle single in three years in addition to his performance at "Defqon Legends". This one is titled Destiny. In an interview with the Dutch music journalists of "Hard-News" he explained his decision to return to hardstyle one more time.

On February 2, 2018, he and Wildstylez unveiled a new label called Art of Creation. The name refers to the Project One song The Art of Creation. Shortly after, his new album The Return Of Headhunterz was released as the label's first release.

Voice actor

Rebergen is also a Dutch voice actor. He voices Troy Bolton in the Dutch version of the movie High School Musical, which is played by Zac Efron. In the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The King of Narnia (in Dutch: "De Kronieken Van Narnia: De Leeuw, de Heks en de Kleerkast") he dubbed William Moseley. In the Dutch version of the Harry Potter films, he dubbed the twins James Phelps and Oliver Phelps. For the animated series Rocket Power on Nickelodeon, he lent his voice to the character "Sam Dullard". In the animated series In a Land Before Our Time, he lent his voice to the dinosaur Littlefoot.

Headhunterz live at Airbeat One Festival

Discography

Albums

Project One - The Album (2008)
The Best Of Headhunterz (2009)
Studio Sessions (2010)
Sacrifice (2012)
Hard with Style (2012)
The Leaked (2013)
The Return of Headhunterz (2018)

Singles

2006:

The Sacrifice / D-Tuned
Aiming For Ur Brain / Left Some Answerz
Time 2 Rock / Victim Of My Rage

2007:

Forever Az One / Digiwave
High Rollerz / Scar Ur Face (with The Prophet)
Rock Civilization / Speakafreak
Scantraxx Rootz / The End Of My Existence (vs. Abject)
The Power Of The Mind (Qlimax Anthem 2007)

2008:

Path Of Righteousness (as Antifact)
Blame It On The Music / Project 1 (vs. Wildstylez)
Call It Music / W.U.W.H. (meets Tatanka)
Subsonic / Hate It Or Love It
Last Of The Mohicanz / Reloaded Part 2
Life Beyond Earth / The Zero Hour (with Wildstylez as Project One)
The Art Of Creation / Numbers (with Wildstylez as Project One)
Fantasy Or Reality / It's A Sine (with Wildstylez as Project One)
The World Is Yours / Halfway There (with Wildstylez as Project One)
Best Of Both Worlds / Rate Reducer (with Wildstylez as Project One)
The Story Unfolds / Raiders Of The Sun (with Wildstylez as Project One)
Just Say My Name / The Lost Soul
The Fear Of Darkness / A New Day

2009:

Tribute To Saifam
Tonight / Famous (with Wildstylez vs. Noisecontrollers)
Scrap Attack (DefQon.1 2009 Anthem)
Megasound / Muzikal Revolution
Summer Of Hardstyle (as Proppy & Heady)

2010:

Psychedelic / Dreamcatcher / Emptiness
The B-Side (as Proppy & Heady)
Stuck In Your Head (with Wildstylez & MC Villian)
The MF Point of Perfection (with Brennan Heart)
The Space We Created (with Noisecontrollers)
Save Your Scrap For Victory (Defqon.1 Australia Anthem 2010)
Robots Dream (with Noisecontrollers)
Woznotwoz
Back In Town (with MC Villian)

2011:

From Within / The Message Is Hardstyle

2012:

Dragonborn (Skyrim Tribute)
Eternalize (Hard Bass Anthem 2012)
From Within (Lotgenoot Edit)
Back in the Days
World of Madness (Defqon 1. 2012 Anthem) (with Noisecontrollers feat. Wildstylez)
Reignite (with Malukah)
The Power Of Music
Now Is The Time (with Miss Palmer)

2013:

Colors (feat. t.A.T.u.) (NL: Gold)
United Kids Of The World (with Krewella)

2014:

Breakout (with audio freq)
Synergy (with TNT)
Shocker (with W&W)
We Control the Sound (with W&W)

2015:

Once Again
Live Your Life (with Crystal Lake feat. Sir Llewy Project)
The Power of Now (with Steve Aoki)
Won't Stop Rocking (with R3hab)
The Universe Is Ours (with Crystal Lake vs. Reunify feat. KiFi)
Live Before We Die (feat. KiFi)
Lift Me Up (feat. Mike Taylor)

2016:

Kundalini (with Skytech)
Dharma (with KSHMR)
Unique (with Conro feat. Clara Mae)
Eres Un Culo De Mujer

2017:

The Jamaican Way
Landslide
Destiny
Takin it Back
Luminosity / It's An Edit / One Without A Second (with Wildstylez as Project One)

2019:

Oxygen
Amen (with Sub Zero Project)
Follow Me (with Sound Rush feat. Eurielle & Ryan Louder)
Orange Heart
Home
Dragonborn Part 2
Takin It Back (Live Edit)

2020:

The Hunter And The Prey (feat. Sian Evans)
Dragonborn Part 3 (Oceans Apart) (feat. Sian Evans)
Transcendence (with JDX)

Remixes