Youngsie

Youngsie sounds like a back-in-the-day jungle deejay or MC. A proper nuum name.

But it's actually Wire-beloved avant musician Richard Youngs, who's become infatuated with manic breakbeat edits and is combining that with what he usually does 

https://nofansrecords.bandcamp.com/album/iii/

https://nofansrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-youngsie-e-p

https://nofansrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ha-hey

(via Jon Dale)

Release rationale for the first in this direction,"Ha Hey": 

Two months away from instruments and microphones. Two months with just a laptop. I had a jungle epiphany. The world of sound was wild again. So many possibilities. Discovering the joys of sample packs and raiding my own multi-tracks. How had I never known about tracker software?

This came together over a weekend. On the Monday I sent it to Sappo for that little extra. Red-hot master, everything through the rack, pushing decibels. Tuesday, act fast. Here it is.

Quite exciting, if too frenetic and chopped to get anyone to wind-their-waist (definitely more Third Eye Foundation or Shitmat than, say, Levicitus "The Burial").

Bonus points for putting "V.I.P." in a couple of titles. 

Rather different from what he's known for

The Introduction to Technology

 

A rare, goes-for-a-lot hardcore EP from '92 that I never heard of or even seen before, until I spied it on the wall at Reckless in Berwick Street last week. 

Toiling Goblins mix - love the title

Appears to be a one-off  - the label's solitary release - with most of its perpetrators having no discernible prior history in music nor indeed any active afterlife.  Apart from this fellow. 

Perhaps all the artist names are just alter-egos for this one person.

I'm sure the bods at Reckless know the going rate for this kind of thing, but on a sonic level I would value this at more like 15 quid than 150 quid. (Discogs has it at a penny cheaper!) 

And I'd much rather have scooped it up for a fiver in '95, back when second-hand 'core was still going cheap and I was scavenging the stuff in bulk. 

(Still have lots of 12's in a box I never got around to listening to, third-div tunes in ugly color-graphic sleeves or generic blank ones, foraged in a frenzy from Music & Video Exchange bargain basements or similar grotshops)

Five quid seems like the right price for a VG quality copy with six fairly generic grist-to-the-deejay-mill-at-that-time type tunes. Five quid - or let's say six, making it an even pound per tune. 

  That said, first rack "Meow-ophone" is amusing with its Charly-says style feline sounds. 

Nice joke with the artist name too - RSPCA. 

And the track comes with a "Whiskas Mix" too.

"Confusion!"

 

'Confusing Times" - the title of a slice of brand nu-darkcore by a veteran demi-legend of the original era, Jack Smooth, caught my attention - in part because the concept of confusion - druggy disoriented delirium, but also the con-fusion of disparate elements into manic collages (fissile rather than fusional) is at the heart of the dark moment - the sense that no one knew exactly what they were doing or where they were going, a collective plunge into the unknown, a kind of chaotic multi-tentacled organism birthing itself blindly, a Lovecraftian entity

And isn't the word "CONFUSION" shouted in archetypal darkcore classic "Here Come the Drumz", sampled from Public Enemy?

Why yes it is... at 30 seconds in, for the first iteration

But here in the present  day, there is no confusion about what darkcore is... it's a settled genre. The ingredients and constituents are very much known, this is terra cognita, mapped and plotted...  a formula even, as can be seen in the preciseness with which Mr Smooth descibes his modus operandi. 

Back-in-the-day darkness from Smooth and Wax Doctor, it grinding riff nastiness could be PCP cru 

Talking of titles, I like the one for this back-in-the-day Jack trak - "Happy Nonsense"!

An earlier track with another cool title - "Sweat Attack" (not as it says on the label, "Take Some E's"! which is also excellent in its blunt 'this is what this music is for' instruction)

from the Crowd Control EP  (yet another clever title).

What other hardcore / darkcore songs reference the concept of "Confusion"?

Adding these suggestions from Spiro in comments.... 

The latter as Spiro notes doesn't have "confusion" in the sample but is there in a vocal sample 

Ed in comments mentions New Order's "Confusion", which is a bit outside the era. Never liked this tune much (too Freez "I.O.U.") but I love this video with its snapshot of Manhattan clubland in the early '80s, the Funhouse etc etc

Here's a fairly orrible mid-90s techno-trance refix of "Confusion"

"there's always been a dance element to our music"

Struck me that there is a distinction between people who are into dance music meaning music that is designed primarily for dancing to, and people who dance to the music they like

So for instance, take the historical (possibly ongoing, I wouldn't know) phenomenon of the student indie-disco - this is a case of people who, while professing no interest or indeed rather often absolute antagonism to "dance music", can be found dancing exuberantly to the music they like

In fact most forms of popular music have a dance aspect

Possibly all forms of popular music, in potential (given that the ballad once upon a time would be considered a slowie, for that point in the night when the couples do up-close body to body dancing)

Even metal and hard aggro rock has a dance element, if you count headbanging and moshing as dancing, which I think you should. (Air guitar and air drums etc are also forms of dancing, in a way).

A "heavy metal disco" (Sounds, August 19 1978)

It's a way of looking at popular music that unsettles both categories - on the one hand, people who think functional, nightclub oriented music is something they are not interested in, you can point at them and go "but look, you are jigging about to Wedding Present / Strokes / something more recent I can't think of" ergo you are into dance music.

But equally your dance music fanatics who think only the functionalist, purpose-built stuff is proper dance music, you can say, "yes, but look at all these people moving their bodies in patterned ways to music with a beat. You don't own this concept or this practice".

At one point, the concept of 'dance music' as a separate domain from the rest of pop/rock didn't exist, all bands were dance bands - the Beatles, the Stones etc.

Then things got more 'head'-y with pyschedelia, prog etc.

But even then, if you look at the crowd footage of e.g. a Grateful Dead show, the audience is dancing. Indeed there's a distinctive Deadhead dance which no doubt would have appalled contemporaneous fans of Northern Soul or jazz-funk (as would the Deadhead clothing). But it's dancing.

Conversely, I'm sure for some fans of "dance music proper", their enjoyment is bodily inert - largely a cerebral and immobile practice.