What Happened To: Hardwell & Armin van Buuren – Two Is One

On October 21st, 2017, the renowned Amsterdam Music Festival celebrated its 5 years anniversary by launching a new concept: Two Is One, a special b2b between two big artists of the scene. And to start this concept with a bang they invited the two dutch legends Hardwell and Armin van Buuren!

As an intro for this historical performance in the Amsterdam Arena, they premiered a brand new collaboration simply named ‘Two Is One’. After ‘Off The Hook’ in 2015, it’s the second collaboration between the king of Trance and the Big Room Lord.

The track starts with an orchestral intro followed up by a huge Big Room lead playing a melody following a similar scheme to Armin’s hit ‘Hystereo’, starting from low frequencies and rising up to the first drop. This gimmick was fun during the buildup but it doesn’t work well in the drop. Fortunately, after an interesting breakdown full of arpeggios, the second drop uses a simpler and catchier pattern.

Overall, ‘Two Is One’ is weaker than ‘Off The Hook’, but it was still a pleasant surprise during the show and we can only praise them for making the effort to collaborate again to make their b2b set even more special and unique. Thus it is probably the reason why they never released it, it was only made as a DJ tool for this performance.

That said, we are eagerly waiting for Hardwell to return after his long hiatus and we are really curious to see how a third collaboration with Armin would sound like!

Written by Devanesh Raj & Louis Delacour / Delacour Agency