The Hardcore Overdogs return, with a brand new anthem for their magazine.
And the last one was quite furious and fast, am i right? the next one is almost the total opposite, a real slowcore banger, with very low bass frequencies. 99 bpm, to be exact. can you still dig it?
it's almost goth / ambient / industrial sounding.... but the rave vitamins are plainly audible, too! a true, dark, heavy ritual for all raving aspirants...
just like you would expect from the overdogs. and 1 faster remix and 2 different tracks are included as well.
Info and Tracklisting:
The Hardcore Overdogs - Anthem VI - Ritual of Rave
1. Ritual of Rave (One 2 Three) 03:51 2. Low Entropy - Festival Riot 02:35 3. Ritual of Rave (Good Dog - Part 1) 08:45 4. Ritual of Rave (Good Dog - Part 2) 07:51 5. Meta-Morph - Musical Stairs (Ambient) 03:45 6. Ritual of Rave (Bad Dog - Part 1) 04:07 7. Ritual of Rave (Bad Dog - Part 2) 03:51 8. Ritual of Rave (Bad Dog - Part 3) 07:15
Omnicore Records 79 Doomcore Records 234 Slowcore Records 68
The sun is turning round and round each yeah, just like a record, baby, just like a record. And when, finally, the sun is at its highest of the year, you know it's time for a new edition of The Gabber Elder's mixmarathon! and this is what we are gonna do. we're gonna have a party. we're gonna have another mixmarathon. for last year's summer mixmarathon, the theme was: all styles of the 90s, or 90s styled hardcore. beginning with slowcore and doomcore, then acidcore and gabber, and ending with the most frantic terror and speedcore. now this year the apple did not fall that far off the tree. there is still a mix of styles, and a build up in energy... yet there is also a special twist: the gabber elders only play rare and obscure records. the stuff you never heard about! (hopefully)
so that the rare / underdog tracks of the 90s see the light of day for once, too.
like last time, where will be a special video / visual show that accompanies the music. the whole thing is hosted on youtube, will be broadcasted live, and will run for several hours. so be there, or be square (wave).
more info coming soon.. watch this spot!
The Gabber Elders are:
Low Entropy (Hamburg, Germany. Age: 147 Years old) GabberGirl (Minnesota, USA. Age: 83 Years old) N.i.k.a.j. (The Netherlands) Age 158 Years DJ Asylum (Bathgate, Scotland, Age 126)
everyone knows the commodore 64, or c64, or "bread box", of course.
the single most sold unit in computer history, to this day. the "sequel" computer by the commodore company might be lesser known, sadly. the commodore amiga is a bit of a glitch in the timeline of computers. when it was engineered in the 80s, it was way ahead of its competition. 4096 colors at once, build-in parallax scrolling, a GUI that looked (and worked) better than microsoft windows, multimedia abilities...
Hardsequencer - Magic Flight
A techno-trance tune created on an amiga by German producer Hardsequencer
it seemed to be off for a good start, and even managed to wow a few bona fide stars, like andy warhol, debbie harry (blondie), timothy leary... but in its homeland, usa, the computer remained obscure. a lot of people blame the (mis) management at commodore, a company that seemingly was in perpetual decay even back then. rumor is that one of the engineers even left a message of "we build it - they f**ed it up" somewhere in the circuits of the first amiga models.
Christoph De Babalon - Babylon 90210
Scary jungle by Christiph de Babalon
while it did not get much traction in america, it became a big, big hit in europe, particularly in countries like uk, germany, france... most people now remember the amiga for the games that were made for it, or were ported and re-designed for it. because a lot of now-classic games either saw their debut on their amiga, or did shine the brightest on that system. lemmings, the early lucas art adventures, populous, rick dangerous, the turricans...
Taciturne - Mourning
Taciturne's "ambient gabber" track
and that was it. slam the kid on the coffin now, kid!
but hey! not so fast. did we not mention multimedia capabilities? and indeed, the amiga had a huge and lasting influence that went way beyond playing video games at home with your friends. it was a major player in creating and shaping the various rave, techno, hardcore scenes that swept over europe in the early-too-late 90s...
Cybermouse - My Dorectives
Dark techno On hamburg cult label fischkopf
the c64 was legendary because unlike other system of its time, the company did not pack a generic "beeper" type sound chip into its system. they designed the SID chip, which a lot of people consider to be a real synthesizer. the commodore company kind of repeated this trick with the amiga. they did not give it another soundchip that generated simple sine, saw, square waves... instead they designed a real, miniature "sampler" chip for the amiga. this sound chip was called Paula, after one of the girlfriends of the engineers. just like a real sampler, it could trigger and play pre-recorded sound snippets and samples at various speeds and pitches, and do a few basic effects on that. it was limited to 4 channels, but clever composers could bypass that restriction easily (for example, if you sampled one drum loop, with 7 different types of percussion, it would still take up only one channel). bitrate was often not so good either, even though a friend of mine insists that the "lofi" sound quality of most amiga tunes were not the result of tech restrictions, but the lazyness of the composers.
Static Tremor - Resistance
The Heutling brothers were known to produce high quality amiga hardcore.
despite these visible (or audible) flaws, the amiga had many pros and advantages as a sound machine: it was very cheap, at least compared to high standard, "industry" equipment you had more memory and therefore you could use much longer samples and sounds, compared to "real" samplers in the same price range. this means you could have long string sounds, vocal passages, etc. it was inside a computer! coders could create programs for it, that used the chip / sampler in any way they wanted. no need to hassle with getting a sequencer for your hardware sampler, setting up midi, wires, fx, gear (which would have been super expensive as well). it was all inside one box, back in the mid 80s already.
Neophyte - Execute (Live at Thunderdome)
Oldschool amiga hardcore
the amiga did not make it in pop, or any genre like that. but the techno and rave producers started to flock to that computer. maybe because the early techno scene attracted a lot of "outsider" artists with zero budget and industry connection, so an affordable computer-sampler system with "overpowered" abilities had quite the appeal. the first wave of producers that used the amiga in a massive way were the acid house crazed ravers in the UK scene. a lot of classic breakbeat, and later, jungle tunes were made on the amiga. amigas were used in "mainland europe" too, though, and there are some classic techno and trance tracks made on an amiga. to this day, not all producers gave full disclosure of their amiga use. the amiga still had the ring of being "lofi" to it, so artists that wanted to be seen as more credible might not have admitted of using one. that means there are probably still a lot of records out there that there were made on amiga, but without anyone knowing that this was actually the case.
Amiga Shock Force - Shoot em Breax
Metal-jungle by the shock force
amiga music did shine it's brightest light in the "dangerous" hardcore techno and gabber-house underground. there were countless of hardcore classics that were produced on an amiga. there were whole hardcore groups that exclusively used an amiga for their music, like nasenbluten or the amiga shock force (nomen est omen, eh?). there were labels, like bloody fist records from australia, that to 90% released amiga produced hardcore music.
Nasenbluten - Machete
One of the amiga-gabber classics
other labels, especially in the netherlands and germany, used some more or less clever tricks to mask (and hide) the lofi sound of the amiga: by wholesale slamming reverb and EQ boosts on the entire track!
and this was not a niche thing! DJs played amiga music next to "regular" tracks in their sets, and sometimes amiga produced music even made it to the national charts.
Hardsequencer - Broadcast (live at mayday)
More rave madness by hardsequencer (the first 5 minutes)
i find it funny that some remember the amiga as the machine where they played cutesy pixel platformers in their cozy bedrooms, while on that same night, 20,000 crazed ravers went wild to amiga-produced hardcore tracks on a gabber festival 100s of kilometres away.
it's hard to speculate, but I could imagine that, at least in the beginning, 5-10% of hardcore records were actually produced on an amiga. these amiga tracks and bands then influenced other producers, and they then influenced even more producers... so the amiga had a huge impact in that scene.
Ec8or - I Dont wanna be a part of this (live in japan)
Maybe, or likely, you will know the producer Taciturne from the track "Der Toten" which is one of the few true hardcore classics, amongst the ranks of other tracks like poltergeist, six million ways to die, rotterdam subway...
He is a mysterious figure in music, and there a kind of mystery surrounding him that ran for over a decade. There were rumors about his death, in the early years of the millennium... but noone really knew what happened, there was a lot of speculation, research, strange things happened...
Now we are looking back at a piece of information that was released 11 years ago already. As you can see, it's a disclosure of more things that happened...
But we can't say that it made the whole issue less opaque and confusing...
Yet, eventually it led to the release of the Taciturne archives.
Which includes a lot of excellent hardcore material, that likely would have become classics had they been released in the 90s already.
on the scene of Leontin Voigt Abilgaard's - to some knowns as Taciturne - way too-early-su*cide, one question remained: where were the olekrapp archives?
investigators could not find them even though they thoroughly checked everything on the event's scene.
rumors about 2 or 3 men entering his place shortly before this tragic happening spread fast. but, no matter how much energy was used for this investigation, the olekrapp archives remained not to be found. rumor was that even private and government agencies used some spare time to set some light into this; for whatever reason. but again, no result.
this all changed in late 2014. a corpse in a junkyard in tokyo was found. this person looked like a mix between a rocker, a punk and a high tech engineer. some claimed it was Flavio Flavione, the professional agency killer. other's said it was Ivor Wadrolavski, a promising scientist, that was shunned by a post-soviet goverment, and indulged in private studies from then on, whose objective remained unknown.
but what made this case even more special, was that a plastic bag of chrome cassettes was found in his possession. when an ancient tape recorder was finally found in tokyo, the content of the cassettes was transferred to modern computer systems. the officials, the scientists could not believe what they saw! it was the ole krapp archives.
for over a year, it was carefully avoided to leak any bit of these news and events to the outside press, and was just passed on by government and shadow-government officials alike. yet, for whatever cause, the repercussions soon set in. a fire bombing was attempted on the secret laboratory where the olekrapp cassettes were stored. scientists involved in this case were found hanging dead from monuments in tokyo. poisoned flowers were sent to the policeman that discovered the body first.
who was behind this? why were the olekrapp archives considered so special? what mystery did they hide, in their encrypted ways; a scientific breakthrough? a transdimensional message? a dark secret at the bottom of western civilization? who was involved in this; secret police, special agents, crime organisations, elite computertech groups?
another lead that was followed was the case of Yiyamoto Moto, the infamous japanese prodigy, who is supposed to have been a key factor in exchanging the mona lisa with a fake one inside the louvre; by being the painter, who painted the imitation, when being eight years old! could he also be responsible for forging the ole krapp archives on an emulated amiga? this, too, is not sure.
so, indeed not much is known - yet. but what is known, is that after these attempts at the destructions of the original tapes, the special agency saw only one solution; to make all the content available on the internet for a while.
In the Hardcore Techno Overdogs magazine we usually focus on the underdogs... well, maybe that term is not entirely correct. Let's say we focus on the under-appreciated labels, that still duly deserve their spotlight. Because of this, we neglected the "motherland of gabber" a bit so far - The Netherlands. After all, every boy and his dog was raving to the wicked hardcore beats of gabber madness in the 90s - right? So gabber from holland is hardly hardcore of "underdog" quality... and everyone already knows it, right?
well, while that was true for the 90s, it might not be so true anymore. We maybe could define a kind of "temporal overdog". Stuff that indeed everyone knew in the 90s, but in today's media culture, is shadowed and under-appreciated because everyone else focuses on the "big" labels mostly.
So let us look at the various interesting dutch gabber label from the 90s.
And this time, we want to tell you about 7 very interesting releases on the label Brrr Records.
Scarface - Blow Your Head Off (BR-260)
I remember late 90s terror-speedcore heads looked a bit down on the older gabber scene, because it felt too cheesy and mellow in comparison. well, not this record, for sure. this is very very extreme. like some deranged mental killer got behind the 909.
also watch out for the cool trance-ambient strings in one of the tracks!
D & F - Buzz Click (B-170)
A novelty gabber record with strange / mental samples and voices. A bit like the trashmen cover records, that sample the "the bird is the word" tune. The Hard Buzz mix is my favorite, because, yeah, the bass on there is really ultra hardcore.
DJ Alex - Say What ? (BR - 480)
I guess some people might know "In Control" from DJ Dano's Cyberdrome mix. I think this release has a kind of "belgian" sound to it, think Bonzai and all that stuff... very good, deep bass, reverb, hoover-heavy, like music made for rave arenas. One of the upper releases on Brrr records.
Speedloader - Guilty As Hell (BR - 440)
"Kick Some Ass" is one of my favorite Ravecore / Trancecore tracks. Sweet "german style" hardtrance with angelic choirs and a cutie melody (i guess taken from an annie lennox song?) and then - woo! - the gabba noise commando kicks down the door.
Scarface - Let The Dope Get In Your Soul (BR-370)
Very interesting EP for Brrr Records. This is definitely more Hard Trance / Techno than Gabba mania. The eponymous is almost like eurodance, actually. If it were more polished, and with a nice flickering music video, I could imagine it being music television in the 90s. And I always have a sweet tooth for releases that "cross the line", and the line is trance to gabba in this case. and there is one total gabber track included too: the "shock intro".
D & F - Hard Attack (BR-300)
I always loved hard attack because of the rap sample, and its use. It's not some overly hectic or aggressive sample this time. It's very monotonous, robotic, fitting very well to a techno track.
Scarface - E.P. - Death Is The Future (BR-310)
"Death is the future" might be the hardest "classic" gabber track ever. Hands down. What I like about Brrr is that some of their releases incorporate rave / trance or "german hardtrance" sounds, without sounding too cheesy. The intro "F**king A**hole" fits the bill imho. There is another (good) chucky sample track, apparently this movie was super popular amongst gabba producers. And the "funny" You Stink track, which is a bit slower.
Stefan Senf aka Noize Creator made some of the most bone-crushing hardcore and gabber tracks in the 90s.
Then he more or less silently disappeared from the scene (despite his name). So it's nice to see some of his early vinyls and tracks get a much needed re-press. and / or they get put on bandcamp. There is also an item on bandcamp that was not available in the 90s, or at least not easily available. a kind of demo cassette with tracks that found their way onto vinyl... and, this is what is most interesting to me: some unreleased tracks, too! with track titles like "riot" or "disciples of hell", i guess you know what to expect here already, and let me tell you, this is exactly what you are gonna get!
there is no other. no other release like this. it's almost schizophrenic in sound. half of these tracks have minute-long ambient intros. that could be released as stand-alone dark ambient or drone tracks. and the other half is industrial hardcore and speedcore slaughter. but mouse blends these two polarities so seamlessly... it's really something different. a 13 out of 10 points release.
I'm a 90s kid, and yeah, we had some fun. Especially related to music. Grindcore, Death Metal, Gabber, Hard Acid, Rave... music that really knocked you out and went from 0 to 60 in 3.5. The decades that followed were a bit more boring. Or maybe, not boring. There was cool stuff, indie rock, pop, dance pop. But everything felt less extreme and... hardcore. Of course the above mentioned scenes still existed, too, in the underground. But they kept repeating themselves, loop after loop after loop...
So I am very happy to see (or hear) that there are now lots and lots and lots of new artists and bands, that are really tough, extreme, wild, anarchist again...
Things obviously happen on many fronts. First, a lot look back at the 90s, take some stuff from there, and try to continue the thread. New talented hardcore bands, new punk rockers, and so on... Then there are new "genres" that get really tough now... And, most importantly, a lot of people combine the old with the new, old rage with new anger... and throw many genres into one pot. So there musicians with metal guitars and rave beats and hardcore screaming... or rap artists that break down into gabber and death metal... or jungle punks. And the common dominator (sic) seem to be the very loud and harsh screams by the vocalist.
Oh and these bands often do not shy away from political and cultural statements, too. Which is another breath of fresh air after a decade of "unpolitical" music.
So, I wanna recommend 17 artists or bands that are worth checking out. (Yeah, I know not all of them are brand new. But all of them recently released hot new stuff.)
(and one more time: these are songs from lots and lots of different genres).
Rémi Andrade aka Free Spirit, netlabel Chase Records founder, teams up with Tony Katana (Tommy Bonnevialle) under his Tony Kashmere alias to bring us the fifth chapter in his 'Counterflux' series: mixes spanning different electronic music genres, being it hard(core) techno, acid, gabber, ambient, drum 'n bass, and more, spanning 3 decennia. Every episode gets distributed online, fully tracklisted on GabbaTracklistWorld.com (link 1) and send to friends and fanboys/girls. The man chooses to not put the releases on Discogs, unfortunately. For the fifth episode we've got 2 dj's who practice deeper crate digging, so we're in for a journey.
Artwork
According to Rémi, the artwork is a scene from Cronenberg's movie 'Scanners', since he associates this movie with acid music. The Scan X track in this mix would fit perfectly with the movie's atmosphere. The title comes from 'Biocarbon Amalgamate' company in the movie and its logo, visible as a watermark on the artwork
Format
80 minutes CD-R. Distributed online as mp3 and wave file.
Review
In contrast to Tony's mix, Rémi's set opens with breakbeat rave madness from a Martin Damm's alias. I've heard Phase IV tracks used effectively in a mix by Zyper C... and i also appreciate it here. I always love it when breakbeat or broken stuff gets mixed with straight 4/4. I can assure you that the moment Taciturne's track kicks in, your hardcore head will get necked! Dashcraft's track is a kick + percussion filler techno track (you need them too), after which banging industrial acidcore from Lasse Steen underlined by La Peste's sped up IDM fuckery creeps in like the deadly fog over the bay in John Carpenter's classic horror story.
Thrilling atmospheres are reminiscent of his very very awesome third mix in the series (check link 2), namely: – broken beats morphing into straight 4/4, see the previous paragraphe. – ambient intermission: the beatless synth part halfway Scan X's track from 1993 predicts a dark future, from which a new act starts from the ground up: Katharsis' 'Urolith' lets a simple kick progressesing into a nifty techno track.
Quite surprising is how a hardhouse/hardtrance/goa crossover track from Ninu & Wasi 'The Executioner' [Distorsion Times 003] "2021" ends up in this mix. Rave alert! Koenig Cylinders track '99.9', albeit well knowjn, almost feels like a filler track, compared to the beast that follows... . Kicking relentless industrial techno from the Healy brothers and Caustic Vision. Metallic sounds getting used as hammers forming stabbed patterns. Banger!
The ending i am somehow less fond of. The Enticer's broken fierce melody and distorted beats halt the last bars of the previous punishing techno, after which a noisy Burning Lazy Persons track on the Trash Massacre vinyl compilation that supported the eponymous 2025 event, closes off.
Free Spirit offers us a showcase of the variety of hard(core) techno. Building up, keeping interest, solid overall. Tracks spanning decennia move us back and forth in the spectrum. One small remark would be that the recording could have been mastered a bit to make it a bit louder.L Pay attention to how tight this mix is, how it flows... tracks spanning decennia. Listen closer... now this is how you do it, you vinyl junkies!
The Hardcore Overdogs presents a special guest feature by Doomcore Records
Hello Sinners, As you (might) know I run a DIY label (Doomcore Records and its subs). I wrote a lot about it in the past, also about some releases, the artists... I often get questions by fans or people who want to start a project or label themselves. "How do I set up a label?" "How do I promote my music?" "Should I put butter or jelly on my toast?"
So, in response to this, I decided to give a few rare sneaks peaks... into the inner workings and mojo of a DIY underground label. I plan to write a few tutorials and doing some visual visualizer vids, too. Here is the first one in this series. A (very) short video. It shows the path of a gloomy industrial doomcore techno release, from start to finish.
Tutorial: How to run a DIY Techno Label
Chapter 1: From demo 2 release
Step 1: an artist sends me a demo by mail Step 2: i check the tracks Step 3: i acknowledge the artwork Step 4: i mail them back Step 5: i write a promo blurb Step 6: i upload the tracks Step 7: i release them Step 8: release is out Step 9: success
In the Hardcore Techno Overdogs magazine we usually focus on the underdogs... well, maybe that term is not entirely correct. Let's say we focus on the under-appreciated labels, that still duly deserve their spotlight. Because of this, we neglected the "motherland of gabber" a bit so far - The Netherlands. After all, every boy and his dog was raving to the wicked hardcore beats of gabber madness in the 90s - right? So gabber from holland is hardly hardcore of "underdog" quality... and everyone already knows it, right?
well, while that was true for the 90s, it might not be so true anymore. We maybe could define a kind of "temporal overdog". Stuff that indeed everyone knew in the 90s, but in today's media culture, is shadowed and under-appreciated because everyone else focuses on the "big" labels mostly.
So let us look at the various interesting dutch gabber label from the 90s.
And this time, we want to tell you about 7 very interesting releases on the label Rave Records from ’s-Gravenhage (aka The Hague).
T.O.P.D.R.O.P. - Achtung! (RAVE 13th)
"hey meine gabber freunde". who doesn't know "achtung!"? and in case you really do not know it... this track takes the early hardcore classic "b.o.t.t.r.o.p" by dj hooligan (see the similarity in name? a clever trick!), well at least it's acid sample, speeds it up and boom boom adds more gabba basses to it. a track that either smashes or clears the dancefloor, depending on whether the crowd is hard enuff.
Noisegate - Goddamn' Mind (RAVE 028)
"goddamn mind" is one of these releases that goes from 0 to 60 in 3.5. the track starts, boom! the bass hits and there is slaughter. take no prisoners! other tracks are cool as well. generally, this is one of the "gabber" releases that do not focus so much on melodies or nice harmonies, but are just lovely NOIZE.
Square Dimensione - A Brand New Dance (RAVE 35th)
You might know this one from a mayday rave recording, or other sets... Almost trancy intro, beats come in, then some cool rapping, everything get's harder... word! A track on the b-side, "brand new bassdrums", in an early pill-driver style bass-drum only track. One of the more complex simple gabber tracks (hah!)
DJ Isaac - Bad Dreams (RAVE 45TH)
"Bad Dreams" later became a Thunderdome classic. But this early draft on here is even bigger, bolder, rougher and tougher!
Various - The Erotic Kingdom E.P. (Rave 8th)
One of the more sleazy hardcore / techno releases. The main track is some house / funk affair, that also feels like early rave-hardcore, if you catch my drift. Most interesting to me is the "happy hardcore" edit, because this is neither the breakbeat happy hardcore that was typical for 92, nor the "happy gabber" of 1996. It's legit oldschool gabber, with some mellow / happy sounds, and that combination is very rare, my friends!
Ech Heftag! - Uit Je Dakkie (RAVE 18TH)
Has this ep been pre-mastered to a cassette tape? There is definitely something odd (i.e. lo-fi) about the levels and sound... Either way, it kicks more hard this way, I suppose. Brutalist Hardcore for 1993.
The Falcon - Tear You Apart (RAVE 23)
Do you remember when gabber (or "rave") labels released acidcore EPs too? Like this one. Very cool. There is some weird rhythm stuff going on, as it feels like some elements run at different or "broken" speed (somehow). and that bass is extra large.
Going by the title, this is a collection of past tracks by Hellcreator.
In case you don't know Hellcreator, he was one of the earliest producers in the Early Hardcore revival. New producers, that is - as opposed to those who do it since the 90s. But it was never just "early", but also close to terror / speedcore. And one thing that always stood was his prominent use of rave-y / trance melodies, almost like krautrock or shoegaze even. So there is the opposition of calm, soothing, "cheerful" melodies - and all the terror beats. And I really like that!
I guess everyone who is into Gabber heard the name Euromasters being mentioned, one time or another. After all, a lot of people consider them to be the creators of the first true Gabber track ever - Alles naar de klote. That's the origin of Gabber right there. That track really rocked the scene, was also widely known beyond the Hardcore moshpits. I remember a few german music mags crowning the track as one of the best releases of that year.
And it even lent its name to a wicked dutch movie ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117142/ ) - about rave, crime, and gabber house, of course.
What might be lesser known is that they also were involved in lots of other cool tracks and releases. They also did side projects or solo stuff.
"Amsterdam waar leech dat dan" is probably the other well-known tracks by Euromasters. This b-side to the record release sounds actually quite similar... but i prefer this one even one notch more!
a dutch guy once told me this one is about soccer, and rivalry between teams (of other nations?) regardless of the message, this is one of the most bad ass rough gabba tracks ever!
as far as i know, euromasters established the "loud scream, bass drum, go!" formula long before other labels did... this track is a good example of that!
teun hoihouse used an aka to create the intro to the terrordrome iv compilation. it's much more than an intro, it's a complete tracks, yet a very unusual track, because at the same time...it's still an intro!
In the Hardcore Techno Overdogs magazine we usually focus on the underdogs... well, maybe that term is not entirely correct. Let's say we focus on the under-appreciated labels, that still duly deserve their spotlight. Because of this, we neglected the "motherland of gabber" a bit so far - The Netherlands. After all, every boy and his dog was raving to the wicked hardcore beats of gabber madness in the 90s - right? So gabber from holland is hardly hardcore of "underdog" quality... and everyone already knows it, right?
well, while that was true for the 90s, it might not be so true anymore. We maybe could define a kind of "temporal overdog". Stuff that indeed everyone knew in the 90s, but in today's media culture, is shadowed and under-appreciated because everyone else focuses on the "big" labels mostly.
So let us look at the various interesting dutch gabber label from the 90s.
And this time, we want to tell you about 7 very interesting releases on the label Hard Stuff Records.
Mental Hardcore Associates - Let's Get Wappie (Hard Stuff 021)
Gizmo played this at the mayday rave, hey hey! 50,000+ ravers getting wild to this track. There are also two other mixes that do not feel too different to the original. It's an interesting mix of very, very hard "dutch oldschool" with hoovers and all, and "guitar terrorcore" like the americans did.
Thomas E - Datastorm EP (Hard Stuff 14)
Thomas Elers is a bit like the forgotten man of acidcore. also from denmark, like zekt or choose. He did some wicked acid/techno on german labels like labworks. But also did some gabba-acidcore, like on this release. And this one is very, very crazy. Just as over the top as the best stuff by e-de cologne or bse dj team.
Wasteland - Ibiza (Hard Stuff 12)
Ibiza is an interesting tune, as it sounds one half hardcore, one half hardtrance, and one half arcade video game music (yes, three halves). There is also a "boom boom remix" that make me feel as if the venga boys went gabba (even though the melody is completely different). Yet the killer tune on here is "First Time On This Planet". Gabba with one of the fastest use of a T99 like sound I ever heard. I guess the sampler had a meltdown towards the end.
Brainblower - Mental Hangover (Hard Stuff 10)
a good release to show how varied gabber house and hardcore techno were in the "beginning". a1 is a very fast oldschool tune with the typical "rave" stabs. the next track on the other hand is almost slow, with an industrial sounding drum and an interesting groove. plus there is lots of acid to be found here, and other madness.
Cellblock X - Secrets Of Nutrition E.P. (Hard Stuff 11)
A project by Thomas Elers that is closer to pure "acid" techno. but very hard acid. and, unlike batteries, a few gabber-speedcore sounds are included as well!
Charley Lownoise & Mental Theo - The Bird
Have you heard about the bird? Yup, the trash men's 60s garage song was already a well known cult classic long before an american cartoon series adopted it in their episodes.
this time, our favorite birdsong get's the gabber treatment, and it get's it good. at a time when charly & theo were still very wild & hardcore, before their european chart success.
there is also a kool acidcore test as the b side.
Illegal Alien - Frankfurt vs. Den Haag (Hard Stuff 016)
’s-Gravenhage (or "The Hague" for english people) is such an idyllic european megalopolis, placed neatly near the ocean at this side of the atlantic... and they got a hot gabber scene too. the track here is actually by gabber legend "3 steps ahead" using one of his akas. hardcore drum... check... repetitive "hoover" melody... check.... hyptnotic acid lines... check! there are also three alternative mixes to the original track on the record.
What other dutch labels are underrated in your opinion? let us know!
Free Spirit (Rémi Andrade) and Tony Katana (Tommy Bonnevialle, here disguised as 'Tony Kashmere', a moniker for 'softer' material) collaborate in the fifth chapter of the 'Counterflux' series, a series of CD mixes born from the mind and spinning hands of Free Spirit, bedroom dj and former Chase Records owner. Each installment highlights multiple aspects of hardcore techno, acid techno, and many other styles in electronic music. The sets are offered online for download (Facebook/mediafire/...); in addition, 13 cd copies with artwork are always sent to fans and friends. The length of the two sets, along the lines of mixtapes, had to fit on a single CD, a long-play CD.
Tony Katana belongs to a group of versatile French dj's who spin the better 90's underground hardcore techno, gabber, and speedcore, blending them with contemporary releases. He regularly shares live mixes via Facebook (under Tony Katana) and YouTube. Other notable French names include DJ Fusion, Mascore, Martyr, DJ Ash, and more.
Some of Katana's mixes are among the best in the contemporary underground hardcore techno and gabber revival. Well-known and lesser-known 90s tracks are mixed with, among others, newer industrial Italian releases in a tight, rhythmically thumping style, making combos of different elements of tracks, sometimes touching on the psychedelic style of SpeedyQ's and Tec-9, with occasional long transitions. John Dark and SpeedyQ's are, for the record, amongst his major influences for Djing for the explorative & adventurous nature of their output. All of this contrasts quite sharply with a good portion of Dutch Dj's. "Early rave" (a marketing gimmick!) is not included here.
A mix clocking in at +200 bpm, 'Décharge cabalistique' (see link below), is, in my opinion, a very good example. Only after listening to a few mixes did I realize the man has an extensive background in classical music (see his piano renditions of metal albums in the link), and that skill and sensitivity are reflected in both the almost harmonically rhythmic mixing, as well as the harmonically logical and equally surprising contrasts in melody and harmony. In this Counterflux Part, Katana tries to emulate Free Spirit's style (digging deep in genres, mixing long transitions, technoid elements, …).
I listened to this Counterflux mix first in part, once in its entirety, and finally with the video. I did the latter to better understand the mixing work. Initially, I was a bit lost in how Katana reinvented himself. After the fragile intro by Ulver, somewhat IDM-like, not completely my thing, the mix picks up with more experimental, technoid tracks by Liza N Eliaz and Lorentz Attractor, bathed in pads, creative 303 lines, and reverbs that create and build atmosphere. These tracks also appear in the excellent mix 'Matt Fraktal – Fraktal + Timeless'; could this have been a source of inspiration, i asked myself? Tony answered affirmative. The first culmination is a long transition from Lorenz Attractor's 'Complexity Crisis' into 'Industrial TR' by Vdd Energise (sample: 'ecstasy!!'), with the hats pattern(s) as common ground. overall The menacing atmosphere that had been building finally explodes accompagnied by a our beloved marching 'hardcore' bassline. Wonderful! Then Katana shifts back a gear, the atmosphere builds again with techno, acid techno by Propionic and Koenig Cylinders flowing nicely with harmonic key into Headshop's 'Universe' from the PCP stable; a track that falls somewhere in between hardcore, acid, hardtrance, unique in itself. I remember discovering tracks like these when digging further into hardcore techno after the popular gabber period... . Luckily we don't feel that old yet, and people spin it in 2025! Katana masters the art of casting tracks, giving them a role in the story; here the for me unknown 'Filmcore' by Simstim. Equally clever is the use of lesser-known, more of 2 strong filler techno tracks by FFM and Marc Acardipane (, followed by the strange melody of Zekt – Fixed, after which follows a more obscure proto goatrance track and one Marc Acardipane track. FFM's track is mixed very well and for a long time. Seeing it mixed live gives me a better understanding and respect for the calm and apparent simplicity with which track after track are seamlessly woven. The techno track by Matrix Project on AREA51 appeals to me less because I simply don't like this kind of monotonous techno too much. The introduction of this track and the fantastic track by Mechanism (with a slightly lower gain?) sounds a bit rushed. I learned it sounds that way because it was brought in the first break.
Whereas a previous mix featured a modernist piece as the intro, the minimalist classical electronics of Matmos now provide the outro. Original! Listen carefully to the complexity of the resulting harmony.
In my opinion, the mix could have been longer, which makes it seem like there was a bit of a rush to deliver the last three tracks (which perhaps couldn't have been mixed any other way).
The good reasons to listen to Katana's mixes are also present here: distinctive track selections, transitions, rhythmic layering, atmosphere, harmony and melody, and contrast. Could you guys give the file a bit more gain on your next CD? Fantastic!
Considering that Katana is constantly exploring new areas of the electronic music spectrum, a black metal-tinged speedcore set mixed with Persian classical music could be on the menu next, or am I being too hasty? Stay tuned!
Audio Riots drops a new release, and this time it's by Uncertain Menace. What can we say about it? This one is heavy, through and through!
There is some stuff in Acidcore now (and acid too, really), that to me sounds more like psytrance, a bit softer, mellow... and I would say, this release goes in the entirely different directon, thankfully! Super deep drums and sounds. Like the evil offspring of Industrial Techno, Noizecore, and Hard Acid.
Hardcore Techno and Gabber House bring out the animal in you! Because: You stomp like a bull on the dancefloor, howl like a dog, roar like a lion... and paddle your arms around like a penguin or other walking, earth-bound, non-flight bird thingy.
No wonder there are many animal themed tracks and releases within this style, too.
Here are some of them (also includes tracks of other genres, as usual)
1. Animal Intelligence - The Object of Rave 2. Kotzaak - Like a Raging Bull (compilation) 3. Erase Head - Pussy Cat 4. Cannibal DJ - Dog will Hunt 5. The Prodigy - Run with the Wolves
6. Biochip C - Cranefly Warriors - Massive Toad Activity 7. Whaleekomittee - Save The Whales 8. Hecate - Hate Cats EP 9. The Outside Agency - ...ants 10. Phoenix - Who's In Control ?!
11. The Outside Agency - Metal Slug 12. Rat of Doom - Before The Breakdown 13. Rolando - Knights of the Jaguar 14. Darius G - ... like an Animal 15. Fischkopf compilation - Otaku: Slick but not Streamlined
16. Gangstar Toons Industries - Camel 17. Cobra Killers - Cobra Z 18. Dominion - Unicorn evils 19. Scorpion - Second Bite 20. Thomas Ehlers - Elephant Junk Attack
21. Charly Lownoise and Mental Theo - The Bird 22. The Falcon - Tear you apart 23. Party Animals - Hou Op 24. Mouse - T4 25. Raver's Nature - Monkey
26. DJ Mongoose - Rip Shit Up 27. DJ Waxweazle - Hardcore Power 28. E-de Cologne - No Dolphins Allowed 29. GTO - The Bullfrog 30. Ramirez - El Gallinero
31. Pink Potassium - Radioactive Goldfish
We're running a new feature: "Off-lists"
Paper fanzines were filled with charts; some DJs turned there charts into lists such "10 favorite Dutch Gabber tracks".
Features in zines often also have additional lists such as "9 anime related Hardcore tracks".
We wanna build on both these currents; but, with these "Off-Lists" we will focus on themes and motifs that are more out-there, abstract, off-the-center. Exploring aspects and ideas that are rarely highlighted when people talk, think, or write about Hardcore.
of all participants, we will choose a winner, and the winner get's send a free shirt including shipping costs. and the winner can choose which shirt they want. we have 4 merch shirts available so far, in most colors and all sizes!
Surprise release on Omnicore Records. It's actually 1 track, that runs for over 1 ¼ hours
How is it possible to arrive at a work like this? Did it take months or years to create?
The ancients of pluto tell us a different story:
"We sat down one midweek's evening. The hours of doom, when the sky began to fade to black, and the skyline of the city started to alighten and glow... as we gazed upon the moon, the planets, and the stars, we received a transmission from the heavens above... we quickly got in gear and made sure to transcribe the messages in all details on our synthesizers and drum machines...
and then, 10 days later, on a weekends night, we received the second part of the transmission. this time we made sure to move our gear and equipment to the balcony of our flat on the 1st or 2nd floor near the outermost border of the cityscape... we hope we received the starry transmission even brighter this way...
we worked and worked, under the night sky, while the city seemed to be asleep and dead, and just the moon and a few revelers on the streets seemed to bear witness...
and this way... in maybe 2 2/3 hours of work... this project was finished!"
we thank you for this message, oh ancient of pluto!
now for all the other info on this release....
oh, and the style of this huge track? it's in a whole array of styles, beginning with beatless doombient, to techno, trance, acid, doomcore, finally deathcore, speedcore and noise... to return to ambient. quite the interstellar trip.
on the digital release, we got the entire track as originally conceived (or received) and also for easier listening purposes, the track broken down into separate chapters (or transmission).
Tracklisting:
The Ancients of Pluto - Orion Transfer (Omnicore Records 75)
1. Orion Transfer 01:16:43 2. First Interference 01:25 3. Cosmic Train 05:30 4. Second Transmission (Titan Reflections) 09:43 5. Galactic Runner 04:29 6. Third Transmission (Jazz Aliens) 07:49 7. Pan Acid 04:28 8. Fourth Transmission (Martian Interference) 07:17 9. Cosmic Jet 05:16 10. Fifth and Final Transmission 05:39 11. Pan Reprise 02:55 12. Extra Lap Around Jupiter 03:20 13. From Here To Tau Ceti 06:54 14. Third Interference 01:19 15. Ambient Fade Out (Leaving The System) 02:22 16. First Transmission 08:09
we are doing various features to honor 13 years of doomcore records... and for this one, the label guy sent us a description of the first 11 releases... !
Emerald Planet was a "hit" on Black Monolith. This one exchange the more "trance" like drums of the original with industrial-doomcore stuff. there are also more mellow, and more hardcore remixes.
aliocha from france popped out this release, then seemingly disappeared. very emotional, heart-felt sounds... almost like a gothic ep instead of doomcore. i am very happy we put this one out.
this was done by one of the owners of the "planet core productions" website, forum, and discography database. using not one, but multiple akas. obviously inspired by pcp, but he made it his own. there are kotzaak, de 2001, no mercy type tracks... one of the best release on the label, in my opinion.
Gabber is good, gabber is great. Hardcore is an ambiguous term that was also used for Breakbeat Hardcore in UK, for example. Some producers were fond of both genres with the same name, though. So there are Gabber tracks that make heavy use of such sounds as breakbeats, jungle amens, drumnbass rhythms etc... and let's take a listen at 11 of them!
I guess amiga producers were more willing to use breakbeat samples. Maybe because it's a good way to circumvent the 16 bit computers 4 channel limit. Either way, this one's a classic. Also features the "machine gun of god", billy graham, on the vocals!
Ec8or turned more into the digital hardcore / breakcore sound later. this one is still gabbering as hell, though. and has some nice breakbeats. and military type shouting, plus some opera sounds. huh?
Biochip aka Martin Damm was one of the earliest german breakcore producers. also a hardcore producer. and 1000 of other styles. this one combines several of them. and it is more in his later agent orange / napalm path.
Spooki Scary new vinyl by Demonic Wavs - on vinyl!
Doomcore through and through, with Techno vibes. And an almost endless groove, loop. Going on, with slight switches and changes. An ostinacco of gloom?
Braintrance is the go-to (or to-go?) for good neo hardtrance / ravecore stuffz.
And this release does not disappoint either! Not sure if the title is just a gimmick... but these sawtooths and pads partly sound medieval to my ears for real!
I remember tuning into a TV show called "Viva Trance" on a weekends' night, feeling completely wasted (but not being it). It was hosted by German Techno pioneer Mate Galic, who later found a job at Native Instruments. He used the show to play his favorite tunes. And I could swear I saw a music vid that featured a "zhark dagger" logo. I never found this tune or video by the label again, so maybe I just imagined it. When I stayed at the Zhark International headquarters in Berlin a few years later, I was shown a lot of video material (amongst other things), so maybe it was something like that.
But yeah, I guess that shows that Zhark is indeed a weird "glitch" in music history. Hard to pinpoint, hard to define. Dislocated, disregarded. Split into two separated labels early on. Penetrated far wider cultural circles than your usual "electronica indie". Still not as famous as deserved.
Maybe quantum-entangled. And we are still waiting for the wave function collapsing...
Either way, apparently the label found a new, digital home, and has begun to happily re-release some of its earlier releases, and also showing spanking new stuff.
CdB appears on the Zhark label. His sound has always been more of a trip than a genre. This shows him at a time when his lofi trash fischkopf brutality began to fade, and things get more introverted... intellectual. still packs a mighty punch, i tell ya!
Zhark branched off a sub label called the Homewrecker Foundation. The idea was to have a label for females in the breakcore, harshcore, dark electronic genres. This was quite the revolutionary idea back then, and i guess it is quite the revolutionary idea for today, too! and the sounds are just as renegade.
I remember some south london scenester slagged this one off on an email list forum for being "completely conventionalist". which is funny, because most breakcore poster boys these days would disagree. and they are right. this is the good stuff.
that one come out when my interest in "breakcore" already faded to black, so, while i enjoyed it, i was not too plussed by it. listening back to it once more, i notice that it is indeed some wickedly good stuff. but that's the point of re-releases, innit? to get a second glance!
but there is one track i adored back then already: Liberty And Justice For Us, ghastly (ghostly) ambient noise
This ain't a re-release of an old album or ep, but instead its tracks from all over the map (and dimensions, i guess). These are either collabs between hecate and other artists, or remixes. Mmm where do I start, where do I end...? There is breakcore, post-industrial, blackened death, a hint of gabber in the form of overly compressed kicks. and these are amongst the best tracks i ever heard in these genres!
Rachel Kozak turns into Raquel de Grimstone, and this is one of the best things she ever did. Oh, you want to know how it sounds, too? breakcore and black metal... become one and merge into one of the meanest freak creatures ever.
Slamdancing went out of control in a berlin backyard club hipster party, and me and my friends nearly buried ourselves under the falling turntables. and the tune that got dropped that night was... "caught up" from this one. i have loved it ever since!
oh yeah, get this one. if you get one release off this label, get this one. it's like a secret vault hidden inside a secret vault. the best tracks by well-known and not so well-known artists that the world has never heard. like kerosene's cover of the velvet's "heroin" (by a guy who actually did real world collabs with julee cruise - and others).
There are few, few releases, in all of the world of music, that can be considered solitary, unique, and i mean *really* unique. Because, let's face it, there is usually always some other gal or dude at the (other) end of the world, doing the same sh*t that you do. but this is one of the few releases that fit to the term. there is no other release that really sounds like this, or is even close. it is brilliant, an anthem, and sheer genius.
so how to describe it then? let's say it occupies a liminal place at the crossroads of the emerging breakcore scene, the then-fading industrial / ambient scene, spoken word poetry, and... millions of other places and connections.
I admit, this "best" list is highly subjective. so I would be interested to hear your own, personal best of list from this label's release.
