The history of Cristiano Giusberti, better known as Technoboy, is nearly as important to the hardsytle scene as Ferry Corsten is to global trance community. Simply put, without Giusberti, hardstyle wouldn’t be the scene we know and love today. Back in 1992, Giusberti was mixing vinyl and cultivating his now legendary charisma – Technoboy’s veteran tenure is especially impressive given that the scene’s first massive hardstyle event did not take place until a decade later, in the early 2000’s.

During his early career, Giusberti was dissatisfied with simply affecting change behind the decks: in an effort to impact the business side of dance music, he became an A&R manager for multiple labels. With this new, more powerful role in the scene, Giusberti was able to foster the positive growth of the burgeoning hardstyle market.

After thriving in Europe for years, Giusberti achieved global status in 1999 when he charted a worldwide hit with his remix of German techno-electro group Zombie Nation’s Kernkraft 400. During this key period in hardstyle’s evolution, he helped to characterize the genre in its infancy with a tempo of 140-150 beats per minute, a compressed kick drum sound, a very short vocal sample, and the use of a reverse bass which is meant to be heard on the offbeat between each kick drum blow.

As Giusberti’s stature and stylistic choices continued to grow in prominence he decided that he needed to revamp his image. Officially ditching his early identity of DJ Gius, Giusberti finally dubbed himself as we know him today: Technoboy. Why Technoboy? Giusberti wanted to embody the music he loved, and at the time, techno was a blanket term (much like EDM is today) for all sub-genres of dance music. It made complete sense then – Technoboy was the perfect fit: dance music incarnate.

In 2001, when he played his first gig as Technoboy, he had already been fostering the scene’s growth for over nine years; nonetheless, it would still be over a year before world-renowned Dutch hardstyle company Q-Dance would register the word ‘hardstyle’ as their official brand. Today Q-Dance is globally recognized as hardstyle’s festival face, yet Technoboy predates every mainstream leap that the genre made.  Sift through hardstyle’s ground breaking events and the genre’s earliest successful tracks—Giusberti was there.

Today Giusberti continues to push the genre forward. Just as Ferry Corsten has more aliases than any other trance artist, Giusberti dominates hardstyle with over 30 different aliases, many of which are still pumping out high-quality floor-stomping beats. Behind the decks Giusberti fist pumps with the same vigor as the adoring crowds who hang on his every drop.

Vancouver: the king of hardstyle is coming to FIVESIXTY and we can’t think of a better way to start the second year of our award winning SoundLab Saturdays. Join us for the start of our second chapter – we have so much more to share with you.

Purchase tickets to see Techoboy at FIVESIXTY HERE.