Tatanka goes back to his roots with 'Beyond Time'

The Italian producer embraces the mindset that shaped his earliest productions in one of his most personal hardstyle tracks to date

Nowadays, producers have almost unlimited resources when making music. New sample packs, plugins and sound libraries are released every week, making the creative possibilities almost endless. However, Tatanka decided to take the opposite approach for his new release, ‘Beyond Time’, out now on Scantraxx. After limiting himself to the mindset that defined his early productions, the Italian producer delivers a track that captures the essence of classic hardstyle through a very personal lens.

Advertisement

"It's a trip down memory lane about what hardstyle stands for to me… embodying different peculiarities of the evolution of the genre within a specific time range in a way that makes their coexistence possible”, Valerio told us.

"No one does that anymore with the same mindset"

Although ‘Beyond Time’ is heavily inspired by the early days of hardstyle, Tatanka makes it clear that this is far from being a nostalgic recreation. Instead, he wanted to create what an old Tatanka record would sound like if he made it today, keeping his signature style while embracing the philosophy that inspired his earliest productions.

"It's a classic oldschool hardstyle piece. Very few producers still approach it with that same mindset”, he added. “I just wanted to make an old Tatanka track with my own trademark. It's inspired by the old scene but re-imagined in a very personal way."

One of the biggest reasons why the track feels so authentic is the way it was produced. We've asked Tatanka about the creative process behind Beyond Time, and his answer reveals one of the most unique production concepts we've heard in a long time: he used only one sound library!

"Production process… there's too much available these days. Back in the days we had limited resources so I thought: 'I'm gonna produce this whole track with ONE library only and tweak everything until it doesn't sound tatankysh'. And that's what I did!", Valerio admitted. He added that, despite using an impact FX, the clock sample or a noise FX from other libraries, "the core of the track really was about squeezing what I gave myself as a limited folder."

This philosophy can also be heard throughout the track itself. Rather than pursuing today’s hyper-polished aesthetic, ‘Beyond Time’ intentionally preserves some of the rawness that defined early hardstyle.

"Sometimes the feel is more important than the quality of the take"

Another interesting story behind ‘Beyond Time’ is its vocal. As with many of his productions, Tatanka first recorded the demo on his iPhone before searching for a vocalist to replace it. However, after seven months of auditions, he realized none of them could recreate the emotion of that original take.

"In my workflow I always record the vocal lines through my iPhone and then, once I find the proper MC, I let them re-do the take and replace it with my old crap", he explained. "I've spent 7 months looking for some vocalists that could nail tone and emotion, but after auditioning many I found none. Sometimes the feel is more important than the quality of the take or the correct pronunciation. So I ended up preferring my old take."

For Tatanka, those imperfections are precisely what give the track its identity. "That has given the track some imperfections… which makes a track perfect in my opinion". He also added that “I wasn’t trying to recreate the past. I simply wanted to reconnect with the mindset that made me fall in love with making hardstyle in the first place”.

"Nobody can hear it, but if you remove it, the rhythm feel is gone"

There's also a hidden easter egg in ‘Beyond Time’. We've asked Tatanka if listeners might have missed any detail, and his answer gives fans the perfect excuse to replay the second climax. "I also used my own voice as a rhythmic triplet groove that nobody can hear, but if you remove it, the rhythm feel is gone. A mysterious thing about music!", he revealed. "Anyway that very thing can be spotted at the end of the 2nd climax."

Interestingly, the whole idea behind ‘Beyond Time’ came after a podcast interview. Whether this release marks the beginning of a larger oldschool-inspired chapter remains to be seen, but Tatanka himself doesn't rule anything out: “That totally depends on my inspiration in the future. If I thought about this track being possible in 2026, I would have thought myself to be insane… but life is unpredictable, as you can see”.

‘Beyond Time’ by Tatanka is out now on all streaming platforms and available for download in the Hardstyle.com store.