From 1995 through to 2000, Fergie's DJ sets were composed mainly of hard house music and he became closely associated with it. Sundissential promoter, Madders, attributed the popularity of the sound in 2001 to "Tony (De Vit)'s work in the mid 90s, and people like Andy Farley, Lisa Lashes, and Fergie in the late 90s." However. Fergie had grown uncomfortable with the direction hard house had taken. From 2000, for a period of around two years, he regularly changed his music style and played a wider variety of dance music. In an interview in 2009, Fergie explained, "As I had been pigeonholed as a hard house DJ, I didn't want to (...) jump into another sound. So over the next few years, I dipped my finger in a few different styles from trance to house to a bit of tech house and some techno." In the booklet notes of his 2001 "Hard Energy" CD, he thought the music he played was better described as hard music rather than hard house. The change in musical direction, away from hard house, initially had a negative impact on the number of DJ bookings he received and the DJ fees he could command.