The conception of the ‘Dark Arts Studios’ was conjured from the abyss when Benjamin Ellis met up with Anthony Mahon in 2003 – This is the story….
They both decided to start working on some form of harder edged production after Ben parted ways with his ex-production partner and wanted to get rid of the 'hard trance' stigma he had gained with his productions under the moniker 'Klasic & Sanders'. Shortly after, Ben met Anthony ‘DJ Hellraiser’ who was already pushing at the forefront of a new wave of intense dance music called 'hardstyle' as a DJ and sharing very similar taste in hard electronic music.
They immediately realized how powerful this combination could be with Ben having extensive technical knowledge and five releases under his belt, and Anthony having had a 13-year long background as a professional DJ playing everything from Hardcore & Gabber through to the energetic mid 90's sound of Bonzai. With also 19 years of dance music knowledge with a bit of dabbling in the field of live sets this new duality was ready to be unleashed.
Starting on an extremely dark edge Anthony conjured up the artist name 'Ad Nauseam' (later to be dropped) and signed their hard and experimental monster 'The House Of 1000 Corpses' to the massive Ãœberdruck records in Germany. With the likes of many big names in Holland playing it out they knew something was about to happen.
After a night of experimenting with the sounds of hardstyle and the legendary acidic sounds of the Roland TB 303, the pair conjured up what was to be the first 'true' anthem of their career; 'The Outer Limits'.
Immediately after a request from Kai Tracid ‘owner of the mega label 'Tracid Traxxx', the pair made a massive business decision to drop the 'Ad Nauseam' moniker to use the more powerful and fitting 'DJ Hellraiser' moniker. They happily signed ‘The Outer Limits’ to ‘Tracid Traxxx’, and went on to team up with Kai Tracid to release the massive hardstyle acid anthem 'Warmduscher Battles DJ Hellraiser' also featuring the acid killer 'Devil Fish'.
After a few more business changes and a lot of production, the pair created the next of what was to become another hardstyle acid monster 'Acid Noir'. This time though they had realized how much the market in Holland was impressed with their productions, so after some discussion the production outfit was signed over to the powerhouse Dutch label 'StraightOn Recordings'.
The results were bigger than the pair could imagine when 'Acid Noir' became a massive hit through The Netherlands, UK, Europe, USA, Canada, and Asia. To top it off, the upcoming mega artists ‘Kamui’ from Germany jumped on board to help out with a brilliant hard tech trance remix and within days the track was hitting the number one sales spots on online record stores all over the world and getting play by some of the biggest names in hard dance.
After that, Anthony then decided it was time to hit Holland as a DJ to help push the production name even further and teamed up with one of the Netherlands biggest hardstyle acts 'DJ Pila' along with Ben and the StraightOn label owner ‘the Scientist’ to create the dark epic monster 'Legion: For We Are Many'.
2007 is all set to be a strong year for the two with the next three releases underway including projects with many well respected overseas acts and a myriad of remixes to be released over the next year. On top of that, the pair have a dirty electro project happening and are in the midst of recording their latest experiment – an industrial / metal / hard electronic live band entitled ‘Heaven Spent’ that should come to full fruition in mid 2007. Be Prepared…
This is why DJ Hellraiser and The Engineer are regarded as the biggest hard-edged producers to come from Australia, and are always known as the pioneers of the Australian hardstyle explosion. Legion: For We Are Many!
DJ Hellraiser - Sade Finland Halloween 2005
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DJ Hellraiser @ Pharmacy Black 2006!
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