Sidewalks and Skeletons: Biography, Discography and More | EDM Encyclopedia

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Introduction

Sidewalks and Skeletons is a British electronic music producer who has been crafting euphoric hardstyle since 2012. Based in Great Britain, the project emerged during a period where harder styles of dance music were finding new audiences outside their traditional European strongholds. Over a decade of activity, the artist has maintained a consistent presence in the hardstyle community.

The project’s output spans from 2012 to 2022, with the first release arriving in 2012 and the most recent confirmed release dating to 2022. This decade-long run has produced a focused catalog of five full-length albums, each contributing to the artist’s established sound. The discography reflects a producer who favors album-length statements over scattered single releases.

Operating within the harder styles spectrum, Sidewalks and Skeletons occupies a specific niche: euphoric hardstyle. This subset of hard dance music emphasizes melody and emotional resonance alongside the genre’s characteristic tempo and percussive weight. The artist’s British origin places the project somewhat outside the genre’s continental European mainstream, offering a distinct perspective within the scene.

Genre and Style

Sidewalks and Skeletons operates within euphoric hardstyle, a subgenre that prioritizes melodic development and atmospheric textures alongside the driving rhythms central to harder dance music. The artist’s approach leans into layered synthesizer work and extended melodic phrases, building tracks that emphasize mood and harmonic progression.

The euphoric hardstyle Sound

The production style favoring sustained pads, arpeggiated lead lines, and structured builds creates a sound that sits comfortably within the euphoric tradition. Rather than relying on aggressive distortion or dissonance, the music channels energy through melodic tension and release. Kick drums maintain the hardstyle template with tuned, distorted low-end punches, but the surrounding elements skew toward the atmospheric.

This emphasis on melody over brute force aligns the project with a specific thread of hardstyle that values emotional impact. The arrangements tend to privilege extended breakdowns and lead sections where melodic content takes priority. The result is a body of work that uses hardstyle’s rhythmic framework as a vehicle for compositional ideas rooted in harmony and sonic texture rather than purely percussive intensity.

Key Releases

The discography of Sidewalks and Skeletons consists of five album releases, all appearing within a four-year creative burst:

  • ▲ Volume 1 ▲
  • Volume 2: Planes Of Existence
  • This Is Your Escape
  • Future Ghosts
  • White Light

Discography Highlights

▲ Volume 1 ▲ (2012) marked the project’s first release, establishing the melodic hardstyle framework that would define subsequent work. That same year saw the arrival of Volume 2: Planes Of Existence, a rapid follow-up that expanded on the debut’s foundation.

In 2013, the project released This Is Your Escape, continuing the album-oriented approach. The year brought Future Ghosts (2014), further refining the euphoric sound with layered synth work and melodic structures.

The most recent confirmed album, White Light, arrived in 2015. This release rounded out a prolific early period for the project one.

Albums:

▲ Volume 1 ▲ (2012)

Volume 2: Planes Of Existence (2012)

This Is Your Escape (2013)

Future Ghosts (2014)

White Light (2015)

Famous Tracks

Sidewalks and Skeletons built a substantial discography between 2012 and 2015, releasing five full-length albums that defined their place in UK electronic music. The project emerged in 2012 with two releases: ▲ Volume 1 ▲ and Volume 2: Planes Of Existence, both arriving within the same year and establishing the artist’s template of euphoric hardstyle paired with dark, atmospheric textures.

The year saw the release of This Is Your Escape (2013), which continued to develop the sound introduced in those first two albums. The title alone suggests the transportive quality that attracted listeners to the project: music designed to pull the audience out of everyday life and into something more intense and emotionally charged.

future beats Ghosts arrived in 2014, adding another chapter to the growing catalog. By this point, Sidewalks and Skeletons had settled into a distinct approach within euphoric hardstyle, blending the genre’s characteristic high-energy beats with a moody, gothic-leaning aesthetic that the project’s name implies. The music balances aggression with melody, creating tracks that feel both physically driving and emotionally resonant.

The confirmed album run concluded with White Light in 2015, marking the fifth full-length release in a prolific four-year span. Across these records, Sidewalks and Skeletons explored the intersection of hard dance music and darker electronic atmospheres, carving out a specific niche within the British underground scene.

Live Performances

Sidewalks and Skeletons operates as a GB-based electronic music project that brings euphoric hardstyle into live settings. The artist’s output between 2012 and 2015 provided ample material for setlists, with five albums worth of tracks to draw from during performances.

Notable Shows

The nature of euphoric hardstyle lends itself to high-energy live shows. The genre’s driving tempos and emotional melodic breakdowns create an environment suited to warehouse events, underground clubs, and festival stages catering to harder electronic music. Sidewalks and Skeletons fits within this context, delivering sets that translate the studio productions into a physical, communal experience.

Within the UK electronic music landscape, the project contributes to a broader network of artists working in harder dance styles. The live context matters for this type of music: euphoric hardstyle relies on massive sound systems and dark rooms to achieve its full effect. The weight of the kicks, the tension of the builds, and the release of the drops all depend on volume and physical space to land with maximum impact.

The visual and aesthetic dimension of Sidewalks and Skeletons also plays a role in how the project presents itself live. The name itself evokes imagery of urban decay and mortality, themes that carry through the music’s tone and likely influence the atmosphere of performances. This consistency between recorded output and artistic identity helps create a cohesive experience for audiences encountering the music in a live context.

Why They Matter

Sidewalks and Skeletons represents a specific strand of British electronic music that merges hardstyle’s intensity with an aesthetic sensibility rooted in darker visual and emotional territory. The project’s five-album run from 2012 to 2015 demonstrates a level of productivity that kept the artist relevant within underground circles during a period when harder dance styles were evolving rapidly.

Impact on euphoric hardstyle

The artist’s approach to euphoric hardstyle matters because it offers a distinctly British perspective on a genre with strong roots in continental Europe. While hardstyle originated in the Netherlands and remains deeply tied to Dutch and Belgian scenes, Sidewalks and Skeletons demonstrates that the genre found fertile ground in the UK as well. This geographic expansion matters for the genre’s development and reach.

The consistency of the project’s output across four years also deserves attention. Releasing ▲ Volume 1 ▲, Volume 2: Planes Of Existence, This Is Your Escape, Future Ghosts, and White Light in rapid succession gave listeners a substantial body of work to engage with. Each release added depth to the project’s catalog without long gaps that might have diminished momentum.

Sidewalks and Skeletons occupies a space where hard dance music meets gothic and industrial aesthetics. This crossover appeal matters because it broadens the potential audience beyond strict hardstyle fans, attracting listeners from adjacent scenes who respond to the darker visual and sonic elements. The project proves that euphoric hardstyle can carry emotional and atmospheric weight beyond simple dancefloor functionality.

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