Countdown to 2027 - The Gabber Elders pay respect to Planet Core Production Planet Core Productions Tribute by The Gabber Elders
We are The Gabber Elders and we want to pay respect and tribute to a group of even bigger elders, that came before us. We are talking about PCP aka Planet Core Productions of course. The label that invented Hardcore Techno, Doomcore... helped to set the foundation for Gabber, Breakcore, Speedcore... Intrigued people like Aphex Twin or Moby. Plus it gave rise to the biggest international Techno hit ever - "Maria (I like it loud)" by Scooter and the PCP crew (yes, the track is "cheesy" - but cool!) So yeah, respect is duly deserved here.
And to pay respect, we are gonna do a series of mix sets. PCP only. And these will not only focus on the "well known" tracks! So be ready for some surprises. We might do some other surprise features, too.
All this will be our hardcore and techno... Countdown to 2027! Thus, not everything will be released at once, but we will be dropping mixes and stuff occasionally, to 2027 and beyond!
Maybe you are also interested in this book: https://pcplegendsintheirlife.blogspot.com/ (all releases on all PCP sub-labels listed, rated, and short-reviewed) https://archive.org/details/pcp-legends-in-their-life-the-unofficial-planet-core-productions-book/ (The Unofficial PCP Book)
The Gabber Elders are:
GabberGirl https://thegabberelders.com/ Low Entropy https://lowentropyproducer.blogspot.com/ DJ Asylum https://www.youtube.com/@hcbx666 Nikaj https://nikajs.bandcamp.com/
And here is the first mix in this series.
Scotland's DJ Asylum pays tribute to one of the hardest, best, and also one of the best known sublabels of PCP: Kotzaak Unltd. (Read more about the label here https://pcplegendsintheirlife.blogspot.com/2024/07/kotzaak-unltd.html)
DJ Asylum - Kotzaak Mix
1. Stickhead & Don Demon - Conquer The World 2. Stickhead - Don't Play With Fire 3. Stickhead - Check This Mutha Down 4. Stickhead - Frankfurt Hools No.1 5. Stickhead & Don Demon - Demonhead 6. Bold Bob - Dive Into Steel 7. Stickhead - Meat Grind 8. Leathernecks - At War (Remix) 9. The Kotzaak Klan - Bang Your Fuckin Head 10. Stickhead - Getting Crazy 11. Stickhead - Piss On Your Grave 12. Dogge Team - Pitbull Power (Song For My Dog) 13. Jack Lucifer - Endless Horrors 14. The Kotzaak Klan - Powerstation Kotzaak 15. Dogge Team - We Came To Hool 16. Stickhead - Get In Gear (Remix) 17. Jack Lucifer - 96 Knights (To The Death Mix)
Did I mention it before...? Aneurysm Recordings is one of the best new labels for "old" style 90s hardcore in the moment... or, more exactly, it's timeless And these tracks on here have a timeless quality, too. The promo text tells us about "archives", and at least one of the tracks seems to have been released already... but the sound is still fresh af, and they could just have been produced in our very modern times.
Vdd Energise is an interesting figure to himself; he appears more on the fringe of the 90s techno and hardcore scene. His releases are quite classic, though (including an ep on the drop bass sub label 666). And, most noteworthy, he has a truly unique style, that noone else really does. Very hard, analogue, industrial techno and hardcore... maybe slightly comparable to some of the harder unit moebius or the hague stuff, or even the few hardcore detroit techno tracks...
But, in the tracks, classical strings, "opera" samples, and other avantgarde sound manipulation peaks through, too!
In the 90s, at least in Europe, there were essentially two camps: You were for rock, metal, alternative rock, punk... guitar driven music like that... or into techno, rave, trance, house, gabber... the synthetics stuff! (oh yeah there were also a few other camps, like those that listened to boy/girl-bands. but let's not talk about that here).
The "cool" rock crowd detested the silly ravers. Rock was seen as organic, raw, wild... the rave crowd, on the other hand, put down rock as being outdated, for dads, a genre that had run out of ideas... and so on.
This might seem weird if you look at it from this day. But the 90s were a time when even regular synths in "rock bands" were a rare, rare thing (at least i did not hear one in the famous songs by nirvana, soundgarden, smashing pumpkins). "no more ***ing rock and roll" on the other hand, was a slogan in the german techno scene of the very early 90s.
okay, we did the intro, now let's get down to the beans. rock and purely electronic or dance based music seems to have a bit of a troubled relationship, but that's not true. the fusion of rock and computer generated drums probably reaches back as far as the 60s and 70s, if you dive into the whole krautrock thing.
after that, in the post punk movement, we find some fragments of it already. i mean, at the core, "blue monday" or temptation by new order already had rock guitars on electronic dance beats... right?
but the jingle jangle guitars of post punk is not really what we are looking for.
the industrial / goth scene is already closer to the good stuff in the 80s. and we should give a (very big) nod to cybotron and the early detroit scene,
but now, let's get to the 90s, and take a look at the... real thing.
from very early in, techno producers seems to have been interested in using metal guitars for their tracks.
Rarely by employing real guitar players (but that happened, too!). The guitar sounds usually came out of the sampler. There were shock / mock tracks in the house / techno scene. But after that, genres like house and trance almost never used guitars anymore. Metal went into the darker and harder forms of... "dance". First, into the breakbeat stuff in UK... or rather, the projects that grew out of that. The Prodigy was one of the first "dance-y" electronic projects that was loved by the rock crowd, too.
Then we had weird glitches... like when "purely electronic" DJ Moby suddenly released a purely punk rock album...
Let's leave Europe for a while and cross over the pond. The Americans had Industrial Metal. While this was more or less a fusion of metal and electronics... tracks with electronic drums in dance rhythms were kind of rare... or i just don't know them. Yet, there was some wicked stuff, too.
Apart from the breakbeat, rave stuff... especially in Hardcore and Techno, Gabber and Speedcore, did metal guitars become very popular. Fast metal riffs were one of the defining things of early hardcore techno. The very first "real gabber" track, alles naar de kl*te by euromasters, is build around a riff nicked straight from sepultura.
Gabber DJs seemed to be very fond of sampling thrash metal riffs, Death Metal, too, of course, and grindcore. Black Metal was rare, and 70s stuff or glam / power metal were a no-go... more or less!
Eventually, Earache caught notion of that devolpment, and started to collaborate with hardcore techno labels on their releases... which led to album releases by industrial strength and ultraviolence... or entire projects like "hellspawn"!
Rumor is that Rick Rubin himself tried to get the european Gabber DJs to join his labels and start some projects... But seems he was stopped by the big dutch labels... maybe they were afraid to lose market share...?
On the most extreme end of things there was "digital hardcore" or bands like the berzerker. Digital Hardcore was... well just insane. And Berzerker a death metal / grindcore band... with real vocalists, guitars and all... running on (purely electronic) speedcore techno beats!
This is a quite infernal end, to something that started so harmless, in the days of dazed krautrock... But so, dear reader, it was written.
Do you know bands or artists that use both metal guitars and rave sounds? Let me know!
Force Inc was a label by Achim Szepanski. It gave a very unique and intellectual spin on Techno music. In the 90s, Mille Plateaux was kinda seen as a sublabel to Force Inc, even though it was more like a collaboration between two labels. If I remember this correctly! And if Force Inc was already weird... well, what was Mille Plateaux then?
If we go to discogs, the description reads:
"Mille Plateaux is a Germany label for experimental electronic music and electronic arts. Genres like Clickhop, Glitch, Clicks & Cuts, Minimal etc. were largely influenced (and named) if not formed by the label."
everything understood and clear? So, next time you are rocking out to some clicks (or cuts) in the clubs, remember that this "Germany Label" actually started it all! But in all sincerity, this label really had some weird & wonderful music on it. Some of it maybe might be put under the ambient, intelligent electronica, "armchair techno" umbrella of the 1990s scene in Germany... but at the outermost fringe of it, because it was even more "out there"!
as we read on on discogs, we learn that:
"The name "Mille Plateaux" (A Thousand Plateaus) initially stemmed from a concept and same-titled principal work co-authored by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, French psychoanalyst and philosopher respectively. The former gave his approval of the use of "Mille Plateaux" to the original label founder."
I won't pretend that I read or understood deleuze and his thousand plateaus. I was violently "anti-PoMo" in the 90s...
and now, let's cut the intro short, and explain the label by looking at some of its best releases directly...
So here are 5 or more reviews of some very interesting records on mille plateaux.
Alec Empire - Low On Ice (The Iceland Sessions) (Mille Plateaux - MP CD 18)
The story to the production of this album is as insane as its sound itself. It goes like this: Alec Empire or Atari Teenage Riot were booked at a music festival in iceland. That literally took place in a landscape of snow and ice. I think the artists needed to be helicopter-lifted to get to that place. (check the music video to it) The crew and everyone else had some tents, to protect them a bit from the snow and the cold. So, while chilling in his tent, probably after or before his gig, alec popped out some of the very sparse and minimal gear he brought for the performance... started to jam away, and the result of that is the very album we are listening right now! i mean, he essentially produced an entire album under minimal conditions during some breaks in between... as if producing was as easy as taking a walk in the morning! quite impressive, eh? and it's even more extreme, because the entire material would have fit on *three albums*! which have been released almost 25 years later.
i think this story gives a better description of the music than "genre terms"... but let us just say that dark ambient tones, slow breakbeats, a general, doomed dub mood, is present.
Hanayo In Panacea - Hanayo In Panacea (Mille Plateaux - MP 56 CD)
Who doesn't like Panacea? Well, to be honest, *I* often wasn't too plussed about some of the hard step drum and bass he did... (sorry!) as I was more a fan of harder edge artist like patric c or bomb 20. hanayo has always been cool. and, wonder oh wonder, this album and collab is not a mix of both artist's respective style, and does not meet "in the middle". instead it's an almost gabba-breakcore styled album, with distorted bass drums, all kinds of noise. while hanayo's haunting voice floats above the beats, and dark strings and pads make an appearance... other tracks are more ambient / idm like. well done!
R.I.C. - Distance (Mille Plateaux CD 5)
Who is the artist with the most extreme span of genres, or the most distance (pun intended!) between them? Martin Damm is a contender for this. He is apt at producing speedcore and terrorcore techno, and fans love him for that. Sometimes high above 200 bpm, or even 1000 bpm. And then he also did this! Sweet neat fluffy little cloud like ambient electronica, dub, a bit of idm... Like the unknown, cutesy third twin of the aphex. Even Tangerine Dream like "Berlin School" synth melo sequences run across some tracks!
Back in the 90s, I asked a friend for a recommendation of good mille plateaux releases (or was it a recommendation of alec empire releases?) and he suggested this. i found this "odd", because he was more the experimental type and i was looking into the future, so a release of "older" material, related to the "techno" label "force inc", seemed curious. but he was right. this is one of the best AE and MP releases. it's hard to pinpoint *exactly* what makes it so great. i think it's because it's very cerebral, avantgarde, experimental electronic, and very groovy, funky dance (and yes, partly techno) music at the same time. as if stockhausen was a b boy, or the 808 state had a doctor degree in outer space-ology.
there is also a "civilization virus" on it, an epic piece. it was the soundtrack to a short movie. and that short movie was actually the master thesis for video director phillip virus. who later directed a feature on grunge band "dinosaur jr"!
Terre Thaemlitz - Die Roboter Rubato (MP 034 CD)
Can you believe this? Friends highly recommended this album to me, back in the 90s. But I did not listen to it! - till yesterday. Because these "Piano interpretations of Kraftwerk titles. Recorded at Meow, New York, April-July 1996."... seemed like old socks to me. It was the 90s (like they say in the movies), and kraftwerk felt 70s, and moody piano music even older fashioned. plus the whole thing smelled of "hipster" stuff.
But now I listened to it, and it's really good! great stuff! my favorite is "computerwelt", a super sad and moody (yes) re-interpretation of kraftwerk's computer world.
Steel - Steel (Mille Plateaux - MP CD 16)
Most people probably know Martin Damm as The Speed Freak, an aka he used to produce a lot (and really a lot!) of gabber and early hardcore, and later "frenchcore". And yeah... he is one of the best in that genre (or rather, those genres). But when it comes to *my* very personal favorite releases by him, i would put this one in the top 3. This is unlike everything he ever did. or any other artist ever did. a solitary release. it's like... industrial, dark ambient... also noise. but in a very unusual way, quite digital, with lots of samples... and all tracks blend into each other, it's one seamless, 1-hour track. (a bit of jungle, idm, rave can be found on here too, btw) kinda like these euro-disco or pop long play megamix CDs of the 80s / 90s. but not disco, a dark, vile, nasty industrial mega mix!
track titles like "Feverish Dream" or "Obituary" or "Soundtrack For S*x With Aliens" show some of the vibes of these tracks. And yeah, the entire album really feels like a fever dream, or an OST to an unknown horror flick.
Hi everyone! This month, like every month... no wait, not like any month! Because there is a Bandcamp Friday, and we cover it again! So here are some good releases to check out.
Crepuscular - Vertebrated Involution
Crepuscular is an industrial / noise artist from Argentina. What's cool with his music is that it does not just "drone on" (like a lot of industrial type artists), there is a feeling of real structure, vision, progression... in the tracks. the info text says:
"Original tracks from 2016 - 2020 [...] The architecture of deception built upon constant regression."
and that fits the glove, i'd say. as there is a constant feel of oppression and gloom in these soundscapes. darkness... but nice!
As a teen, I wasn't really into goth, but I grew on me, and today, some of the most interesting (and some of the darkest) music projects are connected to goth.
Or is this even goth? Sorry, but I can see Detroit ca. 1985 or even Kraftwerk mutate into these sounds... pristine electric beats, and almost "vintage" synth sounds linger on.
From what I know, TC83 is one of the more widely known (and earliest) synthwave producers.
And that's what you get here! Music that makes you feel like a Crockett or Tubbs, driving down ocean drive, while some shady deal goes wrong and the shadows are on your tail already... and the camera eye pans on the atlantic ocean at night while the credits roll, and so do the tracks on this album roll!
Nox Arcana apparently means "secrets of the night" or "nightly secrets" (or "mysteries" ? ) I never quite understood what they are (another mystery!), but it seems they do soundtracks for all kinds of movies, books, comics. Just that these do not exist!
There is an album for a pirate themed story, for example, or an edgar allen poe-alike. Or about witches and sorcerers. But literally just the tracks, there is no real pirate movie or horror novel attached to it. It's an interesting concept for sure, to make these "fictional soundtrack" albums! And their sound feels *very* cinematic, indeed.
So, you see, there is a dark theme to their releases, and this goes for this new "darkfall" volume, too.
I am a huge synthwave fan since day one (well, actually, since the 80s, when the original new wave sound was around). But, at least in my opinion, over the years, synthwave became more mediocre and a lot of releases were put out that were mediocre, and all sounded the same.
The Dead Astronauts always stood out for me, and their past single "b-side" is one of my favorite songs of all time (not just in synthwave!). so i was more than happy when this new album was announced. and, my verdict is: it's rocking!
Despite the band name, S*x Dream is not too NSFW. They're a lofi punk band, and I do not know much about them. But, by the look of their videos, and the sound of their... well, sounds, they seem to be a group of three friends who just formed a band to have fun, and not having a care in the world. And being a bit silly and snotty at it, at the same time. That there is both a "punky" and "dreamy" mix of the same song on the eponymous release might prove that point.
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