The double life of “Double Lives”

This will be more of a story than a review, as I had quite the confusion when investigating it. So, let’s start with our main protagonist: Blasterjaxx.

Last week, I received a track from Waves_On_Waves and Blasterjaxx titled “Double Lives“, released on Spotify a few days back. Curious, I listened to it and heard the familiar old-school approach from the Dutch duo, which I missed in recent years when they opted for more melodic segments! There was a fantastic vocal and a gorgeous melodic drop as the finale, one of my favorite hits from them.

Apparently, the industrious Big Room pair is back to their roots with distinctive Big Room drops from the 2010s (premiered by Hardwell in collaboration at UMF 2023)…But that’s not the gist of it.

“Double Lives” was created in 2016, not this year!

The only source I have is a YouTube video of the premiere in 2016, where several comments are praising Ghost Wars (previous alias of Waves_On_Waves) and speculating about the release date. Someone even guessed it as February 2017. Oops!

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So, what’s the song like? Pretty nice, especially the central breakdown where the mentioned singer showcases his voice and interacts delectably with the beautiful climax, all escalating towards a euphoric finale. Excellent performance, with strong similarities to “Black Rose“, which was also released around the same time.

The song was uploaded on Bandcamp back in 2022 (featuring Crimewave) and is now available on Spotify as well.

Unfortunately, “Double Lives” escaped any special mention from Blasterjaxx on their social media, as they were busy promoting “Gabber Style” with NIVIRO (a Happy Hardcore banger, by the way). I don’t know what happened with the collaboration in its entirety as many years have passed since then, but this is a great tune and deserves a mention! It reminded us of a time capsule, capturing the peak sounds of that era.