What Happened To: W&W x Dirtcaps – Amsterdam

W&W is no stranger to tons of unreleased tracks or canceled ones. For today, I’m going to discuss one track that will never be released due to the reasons I’m going to explain more in a second. When Ward & Willem played this track for the first and the last time at Ultra Miami 2016, everyone lost their minds. I present to you, ‘Amsterdam’.

This might be the one and only track that is the genre ‘TRAP’ in W&W’s discography, if we do not include the ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ remix ofThe Chainsmokers. We all know Dirtcaps from their legendary tracks like ‘Till It Hurts’ remix for Yellow Claw, their tracks on their ex-resident label Barong Family like ‘Burn It Bro’, ‘Smoke it’, ‘Ride or Die’, ‘Fools Paradise’, and so on. They mostly specialize in trap, hardstyle, and carnival stuff, which is worlds away from the stuff that W&W makes. It felt like 2016 was a year for W&W to experiment with new sounds with different artists. 

For the structure of the track, the intro starts with a slightly pitched vocal chord with some melody resembling the sound of a flute. The first breakdown arrives shortly after that. Most likely Dirtcaps composed the breakdown and W&W modified it to be big room friendly, creating a hybrid genre of big room/trap. The buildup is the usual structure with the acapella “Drop Your Hands in the air” before the drop with trap kicks & breaks arrive with the same melody from the breakdown. The second part of drop 1 is slightly modified with a tweaked melody, with increased energy to keep the crowd going.

The second half of the track welcomes a new breakdown presumably made by both artists with a higher note and a new melody. The buildup is also different with a new acapella “Drop Drop Drop”. The second drop starts with an old-school hard big room kick, with the same first drop melody on the top. Part 2 of the last drop comes with purely trap kicks & melodies presumably made by Dirtcaps only.    

W&W have proven themselves that their huge versatility to work with different artists can lead to creating truly amazing tracks, even with unexpected artists from different genres. Since day 1, there was never a word to release this track, probably because this was an experimental track. Imagine if W&W wanted to follow this path, they might already master the genre. But, we all know which path they took.

Dirtcaps founded their label KLASH not long after. Sometime later, one of the members, Tim, who produced their tracks for the first half of their career, left the group. Since then, Dirtcaps hasn’t been in their brightest spot. In 2018, They released a few singles and closed down Dirtcaps and their label with their final EP ‘10 Years of Dirtcaps’.

Written by Gary San / Delacour Agency