Swap Fairylights for Strobe Lights with Rick Holden’s Latest Mix, Hardstyle Christmas –

Manchester producer Rick Holden wished his followers a very Hardstyle Christmas with a high-octane seasonal riot that tears away from polite festive playlists. Across this hardstyle mash-up of tongue-in-cheek house and techno, he lines up kicks and synths to get your heart thudding in sync with explosively energetic beats. Forget archetypal Christmas singles; who genuinely needs another saccharine sleigh bell-heavy track that reeks of desperation to claw its way to Christmas number one?

Hardstyle Christmas exemplifies Holden’s ethos as a producer who lives, breathes and bleeds hardstyle, yet still has time for a cheeky wink at the sillier side of the season. If you are the kind of raver who would happily switch fairylights for strobe lights and the King’s speech for filthy bursts of bass, Hardstyle Christmas digs deep under the skin, especially when the drops tumble in like a rave siren call for the misfits who treat Boxing Day as recovery day. It is the sound of tinsel getting ripped down in favour of laser beams and fog machines.

Holden has roots in Droylsden on the Manchester map, where he first started sketching out tunes on home computers in the early 90s before graduating to a Roland XP50 and Cubase, then on to DAWs stacked with modern plugins. Across his catalogue, he toys with dance, trance and hardstyle, folding them into uplifting, melodic, high-energy cuts that carry a proper cinematic streak.

You can hear a sideways nod to the Euro-dance titans he grew up on, from Cappella and Sash! to Scooter and Harris & Ford, though Hardstyle Christmas feels wired to his own instinct for euphoria. The track works as a seasonal in-joke and as a peak-time weapon, perfect for anyone who wants their December soundtracked by kicks and synths instead of crooners and choirs.

Hardstyle Christmas is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast