Martin Garrix & Jay Hardway; The Wonder Duo And Their Lost Treasure – ‘VALID’!

The wonder duo, Martjin Garrisen and Jobke Pieter Hendrik Heiblom, have been good friends for the past 7 years, before their huge breakthrough collaboration ‘Wizard’. Both have created legendary tracks together with the likes of ‘Error 404’, the startup track of the duo ‘Registration Code’ (released as a free download), and the recent track ‘Spotless’ from the highly acclaimed Garrix’s EP ‘Seven’ from 2016. Both of them had worked together to produce more tracks than they could ever release. Today, I’m going to discuss one of the duo’s oldest projects ever, ‘Valid’.

Some enthusiasts in the community have mentioned that it might not be a collaboration with Martin, but a solo project. There have been numerous ripped videos on YouTube since he first played it at his guest mix of Spinnin’ Sessions 030 back in December 2013. Some have extended the radio-mixed 1.5 min long track into 3 min. This video above had gained 2M+ views (which was posted way after 2013) and even attracted Jay’s attention to tease the fans to search for the project and rework again to fit current trends, just like how he modified ‘Aliens’ last year [we also covered this track on Delacour Agency, here].

Now, let’s talk about the track. The track shares a canny resemblance with another track from the time ‘Wizard’. The breakdown of the track is quite ghostly and would fit the name ‘Witcher’ rather than ‘Valid’. It sounded like there are some Garrix elements here and there in the break, although we’ll never know if it’s actually a collaboration or a solo work. The climax screams ‘BIGROOM’ with almost everyone using the same structure if it’s a bigroom track. It was effective for that time. The drop; the chords and timing composed is inspired from ‘Wizard’ but a different key and chops on the melody. Some would say they prefer ‘Valid’ over ‘Wizard’, but I say both are great. If this were to be released with Garrix’s moniker on it, it’d also smash festivals again, like ‘Wizard’ did.

It’s not all good news, however. It’s been more than 3 years since Jay teased us of the reworked ambition but so far, we have not heard anything similar to this on shows and festivals. Maybe he couldn’t find this project file and gave up reworking his old projects. If he were to start the project from scratch while keeping the elements constant, maybe it will never be the same track like this.

Written by Gary San / Delacour Agency