MAXimalizm - Hyper On Experience versus Acen

Addressing the maximalist tendencies of peak-period hardcore, as exemplified by Acen, in both the Wire review and the accompanying online interview, I mentioned Hyper On Experience as the closest counterparts in terms of hyperactive grandeur. 

But I hadn't noticed that just like Acen has come back with new material, so too have Hyper On, with releases on Kniteforce in 2018 (The Family Man EP) and 2020 (a double 12-inch maxi-EP with 8 tracks, so really more like a short album, titled Runs in the Family)

MAXimalizm intact, in full effect. 

As is the jokey tradition of  family-idioms for titles: see the earlier Fun for all the Family, Keep It in the Family, The Family We Never Had and finally, taking the self-piss, Deaf In the Family (A Sad Title for an Otherwise Splendid EP)

There's also been a slew of remixes of classic Hyper On tunes by retro-junglist youngbloods (or relative youngbloods in some cases), once again through Kniteforce, which seems to be the hub for this kind of thing now. These packages are listed,  - questionably?  - as albums on Discogs, because they contain the original 4 track EPs and then the same number again of remixes.

Because Kniteforce is doing this thing of keeping it strictly vinyl (a sound business decision no doubt) and listing the obligatory Bandcamp digital option at a deliberately astronomical price (1000 quid) to discourage anyone from taking it, it's quite hard to hear either the most recent of the new EPs or the remix packages online.

You can get soundclip tastes:

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/runs-in-the-family-ep-2x12-vinyl

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/fun-for-all-the-family-ep-12-vinyl

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/keep-it-in-the-family-extended-ep-digital

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/the-family-we-never-had-extended-ep-digital

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/deaf-in-the-family-extended-ep-digital

Some individual tracks also got the multiple remix treatment

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/disturbance-remixes-2x10-vinyl

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/lord-of-the-null-lines-remixes-ep-2x10-vinyl

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/the-complete-bootlegged-foul-play-remixes-ep-12-vinyl

Here and there some have seeped out on YouTube. 

MAXimalists meet! Acen remixes "Lords of the Null Lines"

Another collision of old skool legends - Sub Love versus Hyper On 

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/legends-vs-legends-vol-3-10-vinyl

Sub Love themselves have had extensive Kniteforce archivalism

https://kniteforcerevolution.com/store/product/sublove-legacy-ep-vol-1-2x12-vinyl

https://kniteforce.bandcamp.com/album/kf105-sublove-legacy-vol-2

https://kniteforce.bandcamp.com/album/kf120-sublove-legacy-vol-3

The reissuing and the remixing is a kind of maximalist endeavour in itself - a lot to digest. Kniteforce getting a bit carried away with excitement! 

Thinking back to the golden olden daze... there's so many great Hyper On Experience tunes.... "Imajicka" and "Assention' the twin towers over everything....  the equivalents of "Trip II The Moon" and "Windows" maybe...   actually it's more like triplets towers, because of "Lords of the Null Lines," awe-inspiring in both original and Foul Play incarnations

But this is one that I particularly loved for its skidding, turn-on-a-dime breaksmanship

Great title too (a Hyper On forte generally)

Fun video on the making of the Peter Cannon remix of "Thunder Grip"

And the finished re-work

Taking the how-it-was-made thing to the MAX - Alex Banks "deconstructs" the new-old choon "Cannon Rush"

A remix from the original time that de-maximalizes it, makes it less eventful, more repetitious

Another tune I really liked -  so inventive beat-wise

After Deaf in the Family and the 2 On 1 series one-off "Ouiji Awakening", Alex Banks and Danny Demierre went their separate ways - with Alex joining with JMJ to form EZ Rollers and DD becoming Flytronix. Both had their moments.... 

... but at the time I felt they had succumbed to the general Moving Shadow drift into the too too smoov.  (Everyone seemed to upgrade their gear at the same time and also decide that bongos were really cool sound-textures). I found Dimensions of Sound mostly anodyne and over-clean, and didn't bother with them after that.  Flytronix similarly quickly lost my interest (the name and the record artwork certainly didn't help). 

However, listening again recently, I found much to like in both post-Hyper outfits's output - perhaps because I'm listening at home at my computer, rather than out in a club. It's funny how music (ardkore) that was originally considered too hectic and pell-mell to even be music (according to some idiot ears) quite quickly matured into this very pleasant sound that was compatible with work, driving, having people round for dinner. The musicality that was always there, if you had the non-idiot ears to detect through the frenz-E, came out fully as this deluxe-relax sound. (The name E-Z Rollers captures it perfectly - and the contrast with Hyper On Experience as a name conveys the shift that took place with 2 or 3 years) 

It is a shame though that Hyper On in its original manic-epic incarnation never did an album (I suppose the 4 EPs added up to an album of sorts).  

They were high on the list of rave acts who could have should have never did discussed a while back here. 

Very high up

Second only to Acen... 

Acen afterwards

[from blissblog 2006]

instalment one of an irregular series

THE TOP 300 HARDCORE RAVE TUNES OF ALL TIME

300/ Acen, "Window In the Sky" (Production House, 1993)

"Window In the Sky" was Acen's "River Deep Mountain High." After such a colossus was spurned by both general public and hardcore rave scene, what else was there to do but retreat from view. (Well there was a cool trip-hoppy thing as Spacepimp on Clear several years later, and I heard that more recently he's returned to making drum'n'bass in a low-key way). But "Window in the Sky," wow: a spectacular exit. The drum programming alone contains more creativity than most bands cram into their entire career. You want the mix ("Kingdom of Light") that's on Hard Leaders III: Enter the Darkside and also starts the 75 minutes CD that Profile put on in 1994, a weird little posthumous monument/semi-anthology that's highly listenable (six other mixes of "Window" by other Production House bods like DMS and Nino in state-of-art-94-junglist style, plus various other Acen tracks) but ultimately inadequate (doesn't have the definitive mixes of "Trip to the Moon" or "Close Your Eyes"). Someone really should do a proper Acen anthology, with the original mixes/remixes of "Trip" and Close". But yeah, with "Window", the moment at which hardcore could be pop has passed (it had passed with "Trip" which narrowly failed to be a hit in the late summer of '92) but it's like Acen is trying to hold onto that moment by force of will. And also hold the rave scene together (the sound at times is almost jungle-trance--epic and cheesy and dark and pop and hardcore all at once) under the roof of a single anthem-of-anthems.

 

  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Well, obviously, I never got any further with this series....

I did however have some of the top 300 mapped out in my head.

#299 was going to be A Guy Called Gerald's "28 Gun Bad Boy"  

#298 was going to be this tune on White House, a Bizzy B alias

#1 was going to be Acen, "Trip II To the Moon, Pt 1", for a perfect-circle ourobouros symmetry effect

Maybe have #150 as "Close Your Eyes" even

I don't know how people who set out on these long-term blog projects or series have the stamina.

That daunting sense of commitment and long haul was partly what discouraged me from going any further

Mostly though it was realising that 300 wasn't enough.

That really it would need to be the Top 500

Or even the Top 1000.


^^^^^^^^^^^^^

the remixes of "Windows", none as good as "Kingdom of Light" though

until the bass drop, this track off the forthcoming album by Bassnectar (#2 brosteppa after skrillex) sounds like vintage hardcore in the maximalist vein of Hyper-On Experience and circa-"Window in the Sky" Acen



that break is one used by Urban Shakedown on "Some Justice", and countless others, right?

strange days we're living through