A bedroom in Amstelveen, Netherlands, late at night in 2013. A seventeen-year-old kid sits in the blue glow of a laptop screen, surrounded by school books he has ignored for weeks. His name is Martijn Garritsen, but the world does not know that yet. Outside his window, the global electronic music industry is a multi-million-dollar machine of gold-plated excess. The festival mainstages of Ultra and Tomorrowland are dominated by towering walls of synthetic noise, hyper-compressed chords, and expensive vocalists. Everything is bigger, louder, and increasingly predictable. Inside his bedroom, the teenager is not trying to build a global empire. He is just trying to make something that feels real to him, something that cuts through the noise of his own quiet life.
He is hunting for a sound that does not exist in the expensive sample packs of the era. He wants something raw, something that feels almost primitive in its simplicity. He does not know that the track he is about to create will accidentally destroy the overproduced dance music establishment and change the trajectory of the culture forever. He is just a kid with a cheap software program and an urgent need to create.
The silence in the bedroom
The journey of the track began with a sense of isolation. When you are seventeen, the world feels incredibly vast and impossibly closed off at the same time. Garritsen was navigating the pressure of school while spending every free hour producing music under the name Martin Garrix. He was looking for a breakthrough, but not through the traditional channels of corporate approval. He wanted to make a track that felt like a physical jolt to the system.
To build this weapon, he looked backward. He dug up an old melody from an unreleased track he had composed two years prior, a simple hook that had been sitting on his hard drive gathering digital dust. He also found inspiration in the work of others, drawing from a song by Aura Qualic called D.A.T.A. to shape the atmospheric introduction of the track. But the real magic happened when he decided to throw away the rulebook of modern dance music production. He did not want a massive, multi-layered synthesizer lead for his drop. He wanted something that felt like a physical punch.
He turned to hip-hop for inspiration, specifically drawing from the rhythmic, stripped-back energy of Busta Rhymes and his track “What It Is”. He wanted a sound that was ruthlessly minimalist. He found a simple, dry woodblock sample in his library. In the hands of an older, more conservative producer, it would have been discarded as a placeholder. It sounded cheap, almost comedic on its own. But to a teenager looking for a rebellion, it was perfect. He paired the hollow click of the woodblock with a low-pitched recording of a friend saying a single, defiant phrase: “We’re the fucking animals.” The contrast was jarring, a primitive shout followed by a hollow, rhythmic clicking that defied all contemporary production standards.
A minimalist rebellion against the wall of sound
When the track was finished, it did not sound like anything else on the radio. It was dry, skeletal, and incredibly intense. On June 17, 2013, the track was released as a digital download on iTunes via Spinnin’ Records. But before the world knew his name, the label decided to play a game with the global dance community. They released a short preview online simply titled “Animals (Teaser)” without naming the artist behind it.
In an era where branding and celebrity culture were beginning to dominate electronic music, this anonymity was a brilliant, accidental provocation. The internet went into a frenzy of speculation. Who was the genius behind this raw, addictive new sound? Fans and tastemakers across the globe spent weeks trying to decode the mystery. The track was attributed to some of the biggest names in the industry, including Hardwell, GTA, Sidney Samson, and Bassjackers. The mystery grew even larger when a viral Vine video featuring Agnes from Despicable Me captured the imagination of the internet, spreading the snippet far beyond the traditional dance community. It was proof of a fundamental truth: the music itself, stripped of corporate machinery and celebrity faces, was what actually moved people. You can find more boundary-pushing tracks in our Selection as we continue to champion music that speaks for itself.
When the identity of the producer was finally revealed, the industry was in shock. The mastermind behind the most anticipated club record of the year was a seventeen-year-old kid who was still living with his parents. Garrix had bypassed the traditional gatekeepers of dance music using nothing but a cheap woodblock and an ear for pure, unadulterated rhythm. He became the youngest producer to ever have a song reach number one on the electronic music store Beatport, proving that the digital grid could be conquered by raw talent alone.
The anonymous ghost that haunted the internet
The commercial success of the track was unprecedented for an instrumental release in the modern era. It was not just a festival anthem; it was a cultural phenomenon that crossed over into the mainstream with terrifying speed. The track climbed to number one on the official singles charts in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and French-speaking Switzerland. In the United States, it did the impossible for a club record, reaching number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Dance chart. It was the first instrumental track to reach the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 since Kenny G’s release in 1999.
The track was a visceral rejection of the over-engineered walls of sound that had come to define the festival mainstage.
The industry quickly realized that this bedroom experiment was a goldmine. The track was licensed for massive global campaigns, finding its way into video games, television, and high fashion. If you were alive in 2013 or 2014, the track was inescapable:
- It soundtracked the virtual gridiron in the commercial for Madden NFL 25.
- It brought high-octane energy to the racing game Asphalt 8: Airborne and the mobile hit FIFA Online 3.
- It challenged players with an extreme routine in Just Dance 2016.
- It even brought a raw, minimalist edge to a high-fashion Dior advertisement for their luxury lipstick range.
As of March 2026, the official music video has accumulated over 1.8 billion views on YouTube. It inspired countless parodies, including the famous “Funnymals” edit by McMaNGOS on SoundCloud, which replaced the drop with comedic sounds. Yet, through all the commercialization and the memes, the core of the track remained untouched. It was a song born from the isolation of a teenage bedroom that went on to conquer the world.
Why a woodblock makes us scream
Why does “Animals” still make people cry and jump at the same time? Why does a track with almost no lyrics and a cheap woodblock drop possess such immense emotional urgency? The answer lies in its sheer, unadulterated minimalism. Martin Garrix did not build a wall of sound; he built a space for us to lose ourselves. In a world where we are constantly bombarded by information and overproduced noise, the hollow click of that drop feels like a sudden clearing in the forest. It is a visceral reminder that dance music does not need to be complicated to be profound.
The track taps into something ancient and tribal. It is the sound of a generation stripping away the excess of the digital age to find something raw, physical, and real. When the crowd screams that single, low-pitched line, they are not just singing along to a lyric; they are releasing a collective sigh of relief. They are escaping the algorithm. If you are a producer sitting in your bedroom today, looking at your screen and feeling the weight of the industry, remember that you do not need a million-dollar studio to change the world. You just need a sound that rattles your bones. If you are ready to make your voice heard, we invite you to submit your music to our collective and join the movement.
Music is not a set of metrics to be optimized by a corporate board. It is an emotional urgency that cannot be contained by an algorithm. Martin Garrix proved that in 2013, and the echo of that cheap wooden block still rings out today, reminding us of who we are when the lights go down.