Finally got round to listening to this. His tracks on the Otaku CD were some of my favorites from that compilation, and he always was kind of a mystery to me.
This album / collection is really good stuff. Not so keen on the "Big Beat" tracks yet, but the Hardcore and Breakcore is excellent. Thanks for posting.
I might say i'm enjoying this, cheap slower and faster amiga hardcore, with occasional breakbeats on top.
This isn't even 'new hardcore' but who cares. Released digital in 2020.
i can't tell you how much I love the fact that having dabbled in nearly every genre of dance music, that what he's doing now after all these years is this turbo-silliness.
Given how most veterans either go deeper into muso territory or go mainstream, it's refreshing. Makes a change from how serious hardcore is these days, both at the mainstream and underground sides. And the Gabberdisco stuff (mostly) manages to avoid pushing it so far that it feels like a deliberate joke (a la Wrong Music) - more like J-Core except with less of the weeaboo anime nerd feel.
Now if someone could just bribe him to make some new breakbeat stuff I'd be delighted :D
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Given how most veterans either go deeper into muso territory or go mainstream, it's refreshing. Makes a change from how serious hardcore is these days, both at the mainstream and underground sides.
If that's what you're looking for, with the Early Hardcore / Early Rave revival there is essentially a hurricane of more light-hearted Hardcore again, with either kinda self-ironic 90s hoover and cheese scifi / horror movie samples overdose, or just plain out silly tracks with odd samples and Happy HC influences... just like in the old days :-)
Not for everyone on here I suppose, but cool Oldschool Happy Hardcore, like Party Animals or Pengo a bit :-)
I quite liked the vocal but when it kicks in and the rap etc is just awful. Really bad effort.
I also hate the way now when there's a collaboration instead of putting "&" or "vs" in between the 2 artists it's a little x - how did that become a thing? looks stupid
There have been plenty of "90s Rave / Happy Hardcore" inspired songs lately, but what I like about this one is that it is very close to the orginal sound of that era (i.e. not a modern "Pop" / "Dance" song that just has some references to the Oldschool - like many other songs). Really very similar to the Party Animals / Flamman & Abraxas style - if someone told me this is an updated version of a forgotten track by them, I might have believed it.
But I agree, the rap could be a bit better ;-) I guess that comes with the Finch influence.
Also cute music video btw, with some Gabber love, and in the outro Paul Elstak doing what could be called "Pensioner's Hakken" which definitely doesn't tire the body too much :-)
A bit of self-promotion, but I know some of you on here liked these tracks.
Urban Uprising and Emerald Planet have been re-released in a re-recorded and re-mastered edition, as well as two bonus tracks: https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/reminiscence-urban-uprising-emerald-planet
So your chance to get these tracks fresh and digitally :-)
i like the fact that it's in dutch. i like hearing MCs rap in another language, probably because it's easier to focus on the sound of it when I don't understand the lyrics. and it just sounds better than that weird sort-of-american "MC voice".
Plus I'll take cheesy Paul Elstak over the Offensive era, shouty hooligan hardcore stuff any day.
LowEntropy
Paul Elstak doing what could be called "Pensioner's Hakken" which definitely doesn't tire the body too much :-)
it is sad to think how old some of these guys are. and I don't mean that in the sense of "why are they still doing it", i'm fine wit that. more because it then just reminds me of how old *I* am :D
To put it another way - the time between the first Rotterdam release and now, is longer than the time between the first Beatles single and the first Rotterdam release.
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it is sad to think how old some of these guys are. and I don't mean that in the sense of "why are they still doing it", i'm fine wit that. more because it then just reminds me of how old *I* am :D
Let's hope hardcore artists that were once cutting edge (even Elstak was cutting edge for a bit in the early 90s :P )are not or will not become the middle-aged Teddy Boys with the big hair and leather jackets I'd see as a kid in the 80s. I mean there's already a sort of divide between the artists people of our age refer to and those in the social media age talk about. People who's production bleeds over into things like glitch or vapourwave and don't release anything on physical formats.
Maybe the divide is because we spent god knows how many years taking flack for liking the uncool sort of dance music and now it's semi-ironically trendy.
I had a mini-epiphany watching the live stream of the recent Live Evil - some of that crowd weren't even born when I want to my first Live Evil event (LE5). Basically Abe was right after all: https://youtu.be/5DlTexEXxLQ?t=6
But yeah, if you have the drive and the energy then by all means keep going. I wonder if we're going to get a parent-and-child hardcore DJ/artists down the line.
I don't think anyone can be cutting edge forever. For one thing dance music has been around so long most new innovation is new takes on existing ideas. New takes that mostly come from a fresh perspective. Even within styles that are still very retro - for example, as someone who's long been a fan of the new oldskool / jungle sound - the last few years have been something of a golden age for it, largely because it's no longer mostly made by people who were there the first time. And certainly there I don't notice a divide particularly. I know some of the old fucks are sceptics, but many of the new producers like Tim Reaper have enough of a clear love and knowledge of the old stuff for them to get on board.
(I do think it's a shame that the "early hardcore" revival hasn't quite developed in the same way, as I've said many times!)
To be honest I think the internet age has killed some of the snobbery and tribalism of old dance music. I think a lot of that was driven by the fact that you had to go to a record shop and find your way into this self-contained scene - and the music you could find was limited to what was available in your area. Whereas people who grew up with broadband found music through Soulseek and Youtube, and so not only are they able to have much more diverse tastes, they can get into obscure tunes from many years ago or from different countries.
Case in point - i saw a Boiler Room video of some trendy young Russian techno DJ, who finished her set with an obscure old Scottish piano tune (De-Viation Crew - Here it is). The fact she's even aware of that tune is quite amazing in itself, given that it's about the same age as her AND one of those tunes that was a bit of a local anthem but I don't think it even made it to much of England. But also - can you imagine a DJ at a purist techno night in the mid 90s finishing a set with a big cheesy piano tune? You'd be bottled off the decks! And in a more minor way, it's notable how many of the new releases or labels I follow these days think nothing of having garage and house next to techno or jungle.
I mean obviously trendiness still exists and all the rest of it, but I do think the culture now is in some ways closer to the open-mindedness of the early 90s, than the closed off subgenres of the late 90s / 2000s.
Jayfive
I wonder if we're going to get a parent-and-child hardcore DJ/artists down the line.
oh that's definitely already happened. I know that Kenny Ken's stepson is a DJ called Crissy Criss (that is real, i know it sounds like a joke)
Not for everyone on here I suppose, but cool Oldschool Happy Hardcore, like Party Animals or Pengo a bit :-)
Oh wow that's a nice song, I wonder if its the nostalgic glasses or I've known a number of Gabber girls in my life. It's not the only Paul Elstak track I've liked recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBAKdwZEAtg
John_Galbraith
I also hate the way now when there's a collaboration instead of putting "&" or "vs" in between the 2 artists it's a little x - how did that become a thing? looks stupid
This has been happening in Hip Hop for some time now, usually as a collab between a rapper and a producer who have never worked with each other before or rappers working together on an album. Not sure why its an X though.
I do wish the kids of big DJs played the total opposite of their parents. I mean if your dad was a speedcore DJ surely playing deep house would be the true teenage rebellion?
I think the most depressing "i'm old now" thing for me was when my now flatmate went to an illegal rave at some point during 2020 (because he's a terrible person) - and he said the crowd was all young kids who were really impressed that he was raving back in the early 2000s :D And my response was "yeah it'd be like me meeting someone who'd was raving in the 87/88 acid house days when i started raving" - except of course it's an even bigger time difference now!
And even this site...there are people who were born after I first ed Discogs, who are now adult human beings.
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And my response was "yeah it'd be like me meeting someone who'd was raving in the 87/88 acid house days when i started raving"
I mean I was in first year of secondary school when the Summer of Love happened so all that stuff ed me by - especially as between 90 and 92 I moved to a different area and was into football instead. But even my peak era for going to dance events (1995 to 2005-6) is an age ago.
For what it's didn't go to anything that could be considered a "rave" until about 1997. In the last days of Helter Skelter in Milton Keynes. Got a free ticket for reasons that escape me but may have been connected to the old hyperreal/gabber.org mailing list.
Fucking hell - mailing lists. Receiving discussion replies as individual emails or a digest. Not to mention all the buying and selling done entirely on trust. That takes me back. Some names on that Hyperreal list back in the day - Clarkee, Smurf, Eye-D, Aaron Enticer, Sunjammer, Simon U.Ground of course, Mark N very occasionally, oh and some german bloke with the name Lou Antroppy or something. I wonder what happened to him...
I think when we got our first family PC with the Internet I accidentally signed up to that mailing list with my parents email - never read any of it but I have a memory of my parents complaining of spam and realising what it was...
I will say more than anything, then one thing I'm grateful to be old enough for is Internet forums, pre Facebook etc al. As a weird nerd kid early, nearly all my friends are in some way connected to people I met through forums, and I don't think it would have happened in the same way at all in today's social media.
This is genuinely the only one of those old forums still going.
As depressing as ageing is, I'd take it over being young with social media any day.
Oh and one last thing - despite between us going to 100s of events (you have the bigger percentage than me I expect) and 20+ years of good natured arguments between us we've never actually met. We must have been at the same place any number of times though from some of stories I've heard even if we had met you wouldn't have ed XD
This was probably one of the most hated but also most popular tracks of 00's NL hardcore gabber.
I actually always liked it for what it was. Especially the version that didn't got released that simply sampled the Coldplay singing. I only have it in 1-2 live sets...
although i'm not a fan of the original I was expecting to prefer a Sefa remix. I don't follow modern hardcore closely at all, but what I have heard of his I quite like - it's basically energetic happy hardcore, which I'm all for. and the one thing the original is lacking is a bit more energy - if you're gonna do a big cheesy anthem why not go all out.
that was disappointing though - sounded messy when it dropped. like the off-beat and synths are drowning out the kick.
that recent Ophidian is great though. reassuring that he's still doing good stuff (that Meander release a while back on Prspct was great as well)
I think the Sefa remix is a nice updated version for recent mainstream sets. I also think it's kind of a smart marketing move for both EA and Sefa. EA kind of lost their status in recent years. Their last "hits" were made a decade ago. With all the hype around Sefa they put themself in the spot light again. Sefa keeps shining for his fans too by going the easy way not changing much on a guaranteed hit single. Win-Win
I know some of you like my "older" style of producing that I did in the 90s i.e. my early Hardcore and Speedcore stuff on labels like Blut, Widerstand... I recently ed the Early Hardcore Revival and did some releases in that vein again, and thought I should share it.
Honestly, really really disappointed by that "one love, hardcore" tune. And i won't talk about the music video attached to it, really sexist...
I have a huge respect for M. Acardipane but this is plain bad, in my opinion... I still hope the album will provide some good tunes, but that "main" title is a miss for me... :-(
Just found this label https://manareim.bandcamp.com/music, or their Kaamos compilation to be correct. A wide range of Industrial Hardcore, Hardtechno, Crossbreed and some completely different stuff.
Listened to this earlier today, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Still not sure what the point of taking tracks that were big because of their distinctiveness and then removing everything that made them distinctive.
those high pitched kicks near the end of that Restrained remix clip...I've heard similar in other newer tracks and they still baffle me somewhat. I know that today's kicks are carefully tailored for maximum clarity, cutting out any troublesome frequencies...but taken to that extreme it's hard to imagine them having any impact at all.
they remind me of psytrance...and the one time I ended up at a big ilegal psy party, my main memory was how the lack of that proper, feel it in your guts bass made it impossible to get into, even on a ridiculous free party sound system. (by comparison, hearing jungle on a similar rig was like being kicked in the stomach repeatedly, in a good way :D)
at least with psy the focus is supposed to be on the trippy floaty bits. but how does that work with hardcore? I don't get it. at least with the more typical "uptempo" kicks - I don't like the sound but I can at least hear how it might sound heavy on a huge dancefloor.
jesus christ :D that is awful. reminds me of extratone.
I did wonder if it was just because my tastes are stuck in the 90s, so I played a few tracks like that to my flatmate, who produces modern d&b (and spends most of his time making basslines) - for a more technical perspective, and he was equally horrified :D said it sounded like someone doing a mixdown with their subs turned off...
That Dolphin album sounds good though, going to have to give that a proper listen. He was my favourite when I was last into new hardcore (over 10 years ago now!), so I see no reason for that to be different for newer stuff :)
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I did wonder if it was just because my tastes are stuck in the 90s, so I played a few tracks like that to my flatmate, who produces modern d&b (and spends most of his time making basslines) - for a more technical perspective, and he was equally horrified :D said it sounded like someone doing a mixdown with their subs turned off...
I once heard these kicks being played out really loud at a rave. Brutal and painful for my ears but the crowd really went wild. Seems to be some kind of sadistic fetish.
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That Dolphin album sounds good though, going to have to give that a proper listen. He was my favourite when I was last into new hardcore (over 10 years ago now!), so I see no reason for that to be different for newer stuff :)
The Dolphin album is really fun. A lot of 90s influences with a modern twist so you should like it.
Since the last time I stumbled into here I've had a few more releases - a couple on Noisj and one self-released as a bit of fun for the 20th anniversary of my 1st EP release
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at least with psy the focus is supposed to be on the trippy floaty bits. but how does that work with hardcore? I don't get it. at least with the more typical "uptempo" kicks - I don't like the sound but I can at least hear how it might sound heavy on a huge dancefloor.
At least with psy even if the kick is quite pitched up there was usually some kind of bassline as well - though i guess even that really depends on what subgenre.
Funnily enough the more visceral enjoyment of bass is a big part of why I stopped making speedcore and faster hardcore (mostly).
