A History of Hardcore (the Other Hardcore)

 

This looks like a good read - a history of gabber and all its 21st Century extensions and mutations by Resident Advisor's Holly Dicker. 

https://velocitypress.uk/product/dance-or-die-book/

Refreshingly for a music history, the focus is not the far past but recent history that has barely ceased to be the present - dispatches from the frontline of a living subculture. 

Here Dicker blogs about the genesis of her book:

2017 was my flashpoint. From second wave British industrial techno acts like AnD and Bleaching Agent pushing “Reaktor’s most hard-lined techno concept” Unpolished into the red (in the same venue where Amsterdam gabberhouse hardened into hardcore); to hearing my first OG Rotterdam gabber set in the plush Koninklijke Schouwburg theatre in the Hague, of all places, during TodaysArt; to finally witnessing Dutch hardcore history unfold in a human-hive of Australians (tracksuits) and undercuts at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht for the resurrection of Thunderdome: 2017 felt like a seismic year for hardcore, and I was at the epicentre, living in the Netherlands.... 

I had moved to the Dutch harbour city in May 2015...  after escaping Berlin, where I consumed – and was consumed by – techno (and breakcore) for four strobing years. I experienced diehard club culture beneath the streets of Köpenickerstrasse in Kreuzberg and Gerichtstrasse in Wedding, spending every Friday to Monday – but usually starting on Wednesdays during Boiler Room Berlin stream days (where I interned) – shuffling between repurposed reinforced concrete wombs, feeling truly liberated in the crush of human bodies synched up to sound.... 

Talking about rave culture is much much easier than writing about it. And I really miss my radio shows with Red Light Radio and PRSPCT, which inspired the chatty informal style of the book. I hope when you read this, it feels like you are backstage at a rave with us, eavesdropping on the stories – or around the kitchen table at the inevitable after. This history of hardcore has taken years to complete, and it’s still not finished. It will never be finished because hardcore cannot be tamed to a page or forced into a single narrative. It’s too rich and rebellious for that...

Hardcore isn’t for everybody, but everybody is welcome in this enduring phuture rave movement. And once you’re in, you’re in all the way, diehard and dancing to the death. Dance or Die!

Funny that she says 2017 is the flashpoint, given its significance in the Acardipane cosmology...

Straight Outta Future

 

I wonder if Frankfurt Music Hall is the inspiration for this PCP-related immensity? 

phrozen phuture

 gloomcore-ish tune that gives me those Horrorist / SuperPower shivers

ah well it's on Planet Phuture - which is  Marc Acardipane's label, largely set up for reissues of vintage Mover et al material 

Cuften appears to be the only youngblood on the roster (along with the ton of Acardipane there's also a greatest werks from Miro - two of them actually, Unforgotten Season S1 and S2). 

gloomkore with modern sound design = good, actually!

Bunch of similar voibed Cuften toonz with titles like "Solar Ashes" and "Rise of the Neo-Humans"

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nNecqswYdQnqcPGAoCaNm3uBua61kmFi8

remembered phuture

bonus phuturism:

Mover comrade Miro with a very creditable stab at techstep





there was a moment where i fantasised about a merger or coming back into alignment of No U Turn style drum + bass and the doomcore strain of gabba:


The "tech" refers not to Detroit... but to the Belgium/Beltram sound
of 1991 hardcore. Ed Rush and Trace have been namechecking early R&S,
Frank De Wulf, Human Resource's "Dominator", etc. The death-ray malignancy
of the Mentasm stab was in turn a huge influence on the first wave of '92/93
breakbeat darkcore --Doc Scott, 4 Hero, Rufige Cru, Bizzy B. That drum &
bass people are again genuflecting towards "Mentasm" as opposed to "Bug In
The Bassbin", is the most hopeful sign in a long while.
R&S/Dominator/Mentasm is of course the roots of gabba. So my prediction
(mad pipe-dream, more like) for 1997 is a link-up between the terrorcore
end of gabba nd the techstep sound, resulting in the re-integration
of the original, pan-European hardcore of 1991

.... there's a similar doomy, gloomy vibe, dystopian cyberpunk imagery, dirge-beats, entropic
drones, the obsession with low-end frequencies ('Slaves To the Rave' starts
with this groaned "need a bass!!"--although gabba-kidz mean the kick-drum
not the B-line when they refer to bass), and above all, PCP and techstep
share this searing coldness of sound. Some of the techstep I taped off the
Grooverider on KISS show when last in England has this almost Numanoid grandeur
about it. Then you've got tracks like the Boymerang dubplate forthcoming
on Grooverider's Prototype label, with its dirge-bass riff packing the doomquake
heft of Black Sabbath. The gap between this stuff and gabba is only that
thin, and as the Doc Scott/Drumz 95/Machines style "butcher's block" beats
get more simplistic and punishin' and funkless, it's gonna verge on the gabba
4/4 kick-drum.... 














what wouldn't i give for an official instrumental of "Motorsport"?

it doesn't exist, so I must sate the craving with ersatz - the "type beats"

none of these re-productions quite capture the ethereality, the mistiness  of the original by Murda Beats & Cubeatz  -  like systems music screwed, a few bars of Michael Nyman in a deep tranquilizer trance

but fun to listen to all in a row - or even simultaneously














likewise what wouldn't i give for a vocal-free "Goosebumps" beatscape?

















What would Adorno say about this?

Or about the phenomenon of loop-makers  -  hustling cottage-industries churning out not even beats but sub-beat components, in hopes of a way into the biz 

Theodor's concepts of pseudo-individuation and part-interchangeabilty fit the way contemporary pop is made: a hit built  from elements developed in different studios round the world, people never actually meeting, extreme specialization (so you have a guy whose only job is working on the vocals, another on beats, yet another on the mix of the final assemblage).  the loop-maker sweatshop-of-one is   the ultimate extension of Adorno-ite analysis, somewhere between vagabondage, longshoremen crowding the dock in hopes of getting some work that day, and unpaid internships

The sample packs with kick drums etc on peddled by labels or producers with a rep are related, but from the other way around: a name selling off their trademark sounds, fx, etc to hopeful aspirants 

I think also, on the subject of type beats, of the ceramics sculptor Ken Price and his remark: "A craftsman knows what he's going to make and an artist doesn't know what he's going to make, or what the finished product is going to look like"

doomravers

Forbidden Planet rerelease rationale:

After our first reissue of The Mover in 2014, Forbidden Planet is back with two-part reissue of seminal material from the late 90s to early 00s by Doomcore pioneer, Fifth Era. Fifth Era consisted of a group of musicians from the UK and Czech Republic who pushed a slower, darker version of Hardcore. Their transgressive style had an irrefutable impact on the underground and we hope that this release goes a way to reintroduce Fifth Era's unique sound to a new generation. Vinyl only.

To be released in early November.

"MDMA sucks!"

 from the Techno Sucks, Vol 1 EP by Lunatic Asylum, aka Guillaume Leroux


aka Dr Macabre





aka Renegade Legion



"Torsion" is my equal first all-time gloomcore tune, alongside "Apocalypse Never" and "We Have Arrived" (although whether the latter is gloomcore or just gabba is a moot point)


i have already hero-ized this fine fellow at great length earlier of course


but here are a couple of his baby steps towards later, late-90s greatness



good title, not quite there yet sonically



the appearance of the "marching" thematic, in '93 already

from the same pre-PCP EP, and from the side of the record titled "Assault Side" - but nowhere near assaultive enough. Or even at all



this is much better  -



love that sort of whinnying, braying, demonic-jeer sound these guys all used

An early one for PCP / DE2001 i missed the last go round



love the mispelled EP title

but he was to get so much better in a year or two

that said, this flipside to "Torsion" - actually the A-side - is rather subdued - not as dark or as forceful as the title promises. Atmospheric though -  good sounds and textures.

metal man

well i never even knew this existed

dream team up

nor these actually- another suitable pairing, the Aphysia EP (Landstrumm deejaying in NYC was where I first heard Horrorist's "Dark Invader")

GABBERS GATHER - Crossbones + Drop The Bomb = Ravers Graveyard (New Cross, London, May 26)

On Saturday 26th May, veteran free party crew Crossbones join forces with rave promoter Drop The Bomb to bring you a night of the darkest hardcore techno music - Ravers Graveyard - running the full spectrum from primordial Dutch / Belgian darkrave through to gabber and gloomcore.  

Location is The Stretch, Dixon Road, New Cross.

DJs and performers include: 

Fifth Era -  London's original doomcore pioneer 

Mental Fear Productions (Frankfurt) - 100% live hardware set 

Easygroove - UK's pioneering gabber DJ

more information about tickets, full line-up, times etc here

"nothing but hardcore (no mellow beats)" 

GABBING ABOUT GABBER: a brutalitarian resurgence a/k.a the return of apocalypso-disco?

Resident Advisor says that 2017 was the year that hardcore came back strong. 

Certainly it was the year of the Mover fulfilling his chiliastic promise "see you in 2017" with a return to high-profile deejaying at techno festivals and the release of a remastered anthology of his greatest ravefloor smashers, although the heralded new full-length album by Marc Acardipane under his most famous moniker has been bumped back to 2018, marring slightly the neat circularity of his comeback coming in 2017 as promised earlier thisyear.



The RA report also points to  Paul Elstak penetrating the Netherlands pop chart for the first time in a long while...




... to the Parisian squad Casual Gabberz's parties and its Inutile De Fuir compilation of this year





.... to the activities of Poland's WIXAPOL and Sweden's Drömfakulteten collectives...






 ... to the Gabber Eleganza blog and its roving The Hakke Show performances....





.... to the punitively intense Unpolished parties thrown by Amsterdam's Reaktor Events (which they trumpet as their "most hard-lined techno concept" and a "yearly ordeal"!) ...





... and to various other manifestations of a renewed appetite for brutalitarian aesthetics.


It makes perfect sense that the ravenous maw that is retroculture would sooner or later turn  for nourishment to possibly the last remaining un-ransacked resource of renegade commitment, outsider ferocity - an un-exceeded extreme. 

Incidentally, four of the nine trends that defined 2017 according to RA's overview involve the prefix "re" - the return of Electro (what, again?);  the resurgence of Eurohardcore;  the fact that it's a boom time for "new old" music, i.e. the rediscovery of forgotten music or recovery of never-known-about or never-even-really-released music from the archival electronic dance past;  and yet another rediscovery / rehabilitation / revisionism syndrome, i.e. the rewiring of techno with EBM and Industrial influences (M.E.S.H. , Perc, Tzusing, Phase Fatale,  et al). That last one possibly feeds into, or makes logical, the rehabilitation of gabba, given that it's part of the prehistory of Eurohardcore (although the nu-EBM is a lot slower). 





Also talking up the vintage gabba is this post + mix at Marc Dauncey's Mutant Technology blog -  titled"Gabber House" and described as "an hour and forty minutes exploring the murky world of hardcore techno, gabber and a sprinkling of jungle and breakcore, ranging from 150 to well over 240 bpm, from 1992 right up to the present day." Excellent stuff with a disconcerting large number of names and titles unfamiliar to me, but then  fully tracking the raging and ranging enormity of the Eurohardkore Kontinuum through the Nineties would've required total commitment to the genre / area, and I've always had ears for too many other things  





And finally a reminder about ArteTetra's recent gabber-influenced cassette release Svelto: the Hakken Tuner  (discussed in this earlier blog post) by  DJ Balli - who I had the pleasure of meeting in Bologna last week - and Giacoma Balla. 








A fan of the Italian Futurists as well as Phuture Tekno, Balli also authored - under his full name Riccardo Balli - the aptly titled 2012 book Apocalypso Disco: La Rave-O-Luzione Della Post Techno.  Blurbed thusly at Amazon (excuse the crude Google translation job here):

"At the end of the eighties, the element of techno music was imposed as a viral macrocode on which thousands and thousands of young people recognized themselves. In the following two decades a nuclear fission took place which split it into small atoms: the breakcore, the 8 bit, the gabber, the mashup, the goa-trance, the mutant dancefloor ... An international galaxy almost impossible to tell . In this text Riccardo Balli analyzes the different musical and attitudinal ramifications of the post rave through oral tales, literary remixes, visionary interventions and interviews with producers and protagonists. The goal is focused on the dynamics of a political nature that have generated assault groups, extreme situations and new lifestyles: speedcore, psy community, c8.com, Elevate Festival and the world of chiptunes. A multitude of noises, ideas and movements whose spurious and transversal sound is called Apocalypso disco." 

(I mentioned to Balli my dim recollection of having once operated - in partnership with Margin / Monitor comrade Paul Oldfield - a deejay duo team that traded under the name Apocalypso. We were not hugely successful in our appeal to the Oxford student market)

Balli also is involved in the label / organisation Sonic Belligeranza ("hard-electronics blaxploitation since the year 2000") and a contributor to Datacide, the original  intellectual hardcore / hardcore intellectual zine.

Datacide is still active on the web and intermittently in print too (there's a new issue just out in fact - #17, details of the contents and how to purchase here).

Recently Datacide held a panel discussion about retro both in and outside dance culture, titled next:now - strategies to resample the future - and what do you know, there's a quote from the intro to Retromania right at the front...

"Once upon a time, pop‘s metabolism buzzed with dynamic energy, creating the surging-in-to-the-future feel of periods like the psychedelic sixties, the post-punk seventies, the hip-hop eighties and the rave nineties. The 2000s felt different.…  Instead of being the threshold to the future, the first then years of the twenty-first century turned out to be the ‚Re‘ Decade … revivals, reissues, remakes,
re-enactments. Endless retrospection...."

Hyperstasis  - the apocalypse as atemporality, entropy, the whimper

versus

Phuturism - apocalypse as teleology, conflagration=consummation, the BANG.