do you agree with Cox here?

[Traffic Cone]

To answer your question, the dark side of rave in northern parts was taken up by gabba. The drug for which is speed by the way. I think taking acid at hardcore raves was kinda a thing in Scotland at least. In that I heard about people doing it but wasn't there to know if they are outliers. I found it most fun at speedcore raves in that it made the music really intense and less hilariously over the top.

I hear you on interesting techno although I would say little of that stuff is rave music really, which is kinda my point. Though I wish more uk djs had played Epiteth, especially the Ingler EPs. Praxis is a bit overrated for that stuff though imo, much prefer Ambush.

And regarding trance, there was always a huge part of trance which was all about big obvious melodies and good unpretentious rave music with no credibility: hard trance. Though slowing it down from 160 to 140 and adding 3 minute breakdown with huge snare rolls definitely killed the fun for me.

[dial1]

To answer your question, the dark side of rave in northern parts was taken up by gabba. The drug for which is speed by the way. I think taking acid at hardcore raves was kinda a thing in Scotland at least. In that I heard about people doing it but wasn't there to know if they are outliers. I found it most fun at speedcore raves in that it made the music really intense and less hilariously over the top.

I hear you on interesting techno although I would say little of that stuff is rave music really, which is kinda my point. Though I wish more uk djs had played Epiteth, especially the Ingler EPs. Praxis is a bit overrated for that stuff though imo, much prefer Ambush.

And regarding trance, there was always a huge part of trance which was all about big obvious melodies and good unpretentious rave music with no credibility: hard trance. Though slowing it down from 160 to 140 and adding 3 minute breakdown with huge snare rolls definitely killed the fun for me.

See I find it hard to say where early hardcore techno ends and gabber begins.

was mescalinum united gabber? Or hardcore techno? I'd say the latter, others wouldn't.

true that gabber was the dark side of northern rave, but I always thought that HH was the sound that predominated the North, in comparison to London/Birmingham/Bristol and the darker stuff.

HHC was a minority scene in London when compared to jungle/dnb and techno...

It's true that there has always been that strain of trance, but the very early bonzai stuff was still pretty techno, imho...

On speedcore, the napalm series is still fucking tops, esp. Napalm 11 - Steelworks...

[dial1]

I just don't understand how the HHC crowds never had the jangly E experiences that felt like being wired on amphetamines and where only the hardest and darkest machine music only really made sense.

As a scene there must have been a collective comedown of sorts?

I was reading a Simon Reynolds article where Vibes said that he doesn't consider jungle to be rave music, which is ironic as he played more jungly than some others at the start...

To which one feels obliged to respond: if jungle wasn't really rave music, then how can you keep it up?

[Restless]

I just don't understand how the HHC crowds never had the jangly E experiences that felt like being wired on amphetamines and where only the hardest and darkest machine music only really made sense.

As a scene there must have been a collective comedown of sorts?

I was reading a Simon Reynolds article where Vibes said that he doesn't consider jungle to be rave music, which is ironic as he played more jungly than some others at the start...

To which one feels obliged to respond: if jungle wasn't really rave music, then how can you keep it up?

Lol @ Vibes.

Why isn't Jungle rave music? Because nobody is wearing a hi-vis and white gloves? Besides, what is "Rave" music?

Jungle has so much depth to it. Love that sound so much.

[dial1]

I just don't understand how the HHC crowds never had the jangly E experiences that felt like being wired on amphetamines and where only the hardest and darkest machine music only really made sense.

As a scene there must have been a collective comedown of sorts?

I was reading a Simon Reynolds article where Vibes said that he doesn't consider jungle to be rave music, which is ironic as he played more jungly than some others at the start...

To which one feels obliged to respond: if jungle wasn't really rave music, then how can you keep it up?

Lol @ Vibes.

Why isn't Jungle rave music? Because nobody is wearing a hi-vis and white gloves? Besides, what is "Rave" music?

Jungle has so much depth to it. Love that sound so much.

Yay let me find the article for you. I totally agree that 93-96 jungle was just so creative in an absolute manic manner. so much depth.

http://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogs ... -none.html

As well as the racial factor, another crucial difference between jungle and happy hardcore is pharmacological. Happy-core is geared towards the rush, the arrested orgasm sensation of Ecstasy--that's why it sounds like a perpetual crescendo. Drum & Bass is designed for smokers--that's why its full of long, sustained synth-tones and floaty textures, why every element in the music bar the breakbeats is at half-speed or slower. Where drum & Bass encourages you to chill out, happy hardcore says 'get busy, break a sweat!'.
"70 percent of a happy hardcore crowd are on Ecstasy," says Vibes. "Without E, the atmosphere wouldn't be so strong.  On the garage scene, it's cocaine; on the jungle scene it's ganja and a bit of coke. So there's a more snotty atmosphere. I don't call jungle 'rave music', cos you can't rave to it.  If you're a happy
raver, you're not into posing and looking at girls, you're just into going wild".

i find this deeply offensive given that i never considered jungle/darkcore to be music to pose to.

What's wrong with ganja at raves? You can still smoke and go wild...

So ok, what happens when the E's stop working?

[RonWellsJS]

I thought that thread was locked unfairly, it was a difference of opinion but I didn't see your post as rude or disrespectful.

I thought it was a bit harsh too.

[RonWellsJS]

I personally think a lack of musical prowess was significantly to blame also. Remember everyone (myself included) suddenly had the ability to make tunes, without any education or training... For me, not enough people endeavoured to learn how to broaden their music skills, which naturally left a much narrower path for them to follow and a much smaller palette to paint from.

Because I/we were always looking to improve compositionally it eventually left us isolated and effectivley killed myself and Paul Clarke off. We were never going to regress into a few samples over Amen, or make loads of happy stuff in C Major.

You can easily create a whole album on just 1 sampler (often by gluing the work of others together), or you can build a studio of wonderful synths and drum machines enabling you to create endless sonic textures. Option 2 please (with a bit of sampling thrown in).

to be honest i think what killed the inventiveness of rave music is just time. it's much easier to be interesting when there's lots of new ideas not yet done. it wouldn't be possible for the pace of change in the early 90s to be sustained. even producers who don't just want to copy others will inevitably make stuff that's more similar to other music, the more music that there is!

and i think techno is included in that. i don't know that a lot of the music from the mid 90s onward that was uncomfortable and strange, and experimental, was necessarily techno. there's definitely a mythology of techno which holds that it's always forward thinking. but after a certain point it's still just little variations on a theme really. which isn't a criticism of techno, it's just inevitable.

[ian saunders remix]

I thought of this a bit after the interview....what do you make of the golden age of hip-hop? Frequent use of huge samples over beats, compared to a lot of today's hip-hop, sans samples, which is dull.

[The_Ruffneck]

This idea that electronic music has to be deep, complex and have a "racial mix" that listen to it is laughable.You aren't going to change people's opinion one way or the other, they will/have made up their own minds.Bumping another ancient thread to continue your rant on the same subject seems very petty.

[dial1]

lol ok m8, never said I hated the stuff or had a problem with it, I just find it extremely hard to relate to and was wondering why. and i think it is important to discuss race in electronic music, given that there are prevalent attitudes where say for instance house is seen as white whereas garage is seen as black. That erases the contribution of musicians and stereotypes. You get a similar thing with some techno fans...

But anyway, the original reason why I resurrected the thread was because of the post about Cox not really knowing his history, but certainly from a london perspective jungle came before hardcore. tunes had jungle/jungle techno references in 91, hardcore was more a 92 thing.

It's all good man, just roll a medium spliff before work and chill... :)

[Traffic Cone]

and at the same time there's a lot of stupid stereotypes attributing more value to any music with more of a (perceived) blackness. benevolent racism's still racism after all. but really i don't think hardcore's any whiter than the UK at large. it doesn't really say that much about the sort of scene it is i don't think, as i believe you were saying.

I just don't understand how the HHC crowds never had the jangly E experiences that felt like being wired on amphetamines and where only the hardest and darkest machine music only really made sense.

yeah it's weird it's almost as if other people have different personalities and experience the world differently. it's hard for some people to imagine for some reason but we really don't all experience drugs the same way, i think; even ecstasy. that might be your general disdain for happy feelings not challenging your intellect enough, perhaps?

also being wired on amphetamines also suits happy hardcore in my experience, certainly the ravier side of it anyway.

[RonWellsJS]

I thought of this a bit after the interview....what do you make of the golden age of hip-hop? Frequent use of huge samples over beats, compared to a lot of today's hip-hop, sans samples, which is dull.

Well for me the golden age of hip hop was when it was still heavily linked to Electro, (plenty of synths and drum machines and/or drum loops). Take Grandmaster Flash 'New York, New York Big City of Dreams'... that's the real deal (to me) and possibly contains no samples.

[dj jedi]

Haven't been on here for a few days. So your solution to the closing of the HHC bashing thread is to find a 6 year old thread loosely based on happy hardcore and start again

i find this deeply offensive given that i never considered jungle/darkcore to be music to pose to.

Right, so you understand exactly how I and others feel when you say garbage like post 94 hardcore has no emotion or musical competence. I think 'wank' was your exact phrase.

For the record I have no problem with people having opinions, but that thread's sole purpose was to be negative about a genre many on here like. It's called trolling, as several other people pointed out. I don't join techno forums and make posts about how boring it is, if you don't like something why waste your energy on it? Let's try and stop this thread going down the same route.

[dial1]

and at the same time there's a lot of stupid stereotypes attributing more value to any music with more of a (perceived) blackness. benevolent racism's still racism after all. but really i don't think hardcore's any whiter than the UK at large. it doesn't really say that much about the sort of scene it is i don't think, as i believe you were saying.

I just don't understand how the HHC crowds never had the jangly E experiences that felt like being wired on amphetamines and where only the hardest and darkest machine music only really made sense.

yeah it's weird it's almost as if other people have different personalities and experience the world differently. it's hard for some people to imagine for some reason but we really don't all experience drugs the same way, i think; even ecstasy. that might be your general disdain for happy feelings not challenging your intellect enough, perhaps?

also being wired on amphetamines also suits happy hardcore in my experience, certainly the ravier side of it anyway.

Well yes, bonevolent racism is still racism, I agree as someone who isn't white. But those were SR's words re: the racial factor, not mine.

Like I said, I don't much care for E, never have done, never will. I'll take it if it's around, but I won't hunt after it.

That's a minority position in the rave scene.

The cold and machine like comment was a reference to gabber and speed. I'm sure HHC can be enjoyed on speed, it's all subjective isn't it at the end of the day?

But as someone who's a bit of an academic and a geek I can't help but wonder why the anti jungle/darkcore/pro-happy backlash itself never imploaded/turned on itself. That's what I'm referring to with the collective comedown, not individual experiences.

If we take for granted that nearly all rave music (yes, even the intelligent techno/jungle stuff) had an inescapable pharmacological influence it's a question worth asking no?

I mean, there was never much of a straight edge scene in rave music as there was, say, hardcore punk.

Surely it makes sense to speak of collective E-experiences? So why not collective comedowns?

[dial1]

Haven't been on here for a few days. So your solution to the closing of the HHC bashing thread is to find a 6 year old thread loosely based on happy hardcore and start again

i find this deeply offensive given that i never considered jungle/darkcore to be music to pose to.

Right, so you understand exactly how I and others feel when you say garbage like post 94 hardcore has no emotion or musical competence. I think 'wank' was your exact phrase.

For the record I have no problem with people having opinions, but that thread's sole purpose was to be negative about a genre many on here like. It's called trolling, as several other people pointed out. I don't join techno forums and make posts about how boring it is, if you don't like something why waste your energy on it? Let's try and stop this thread going down the same route.

I never said that HHC was musically incompetent. I said it was musically conservative. I said it was tonally limited. But so is pop music, so is a lot of rock music. It's not as if everything can be a John Coltrane or a Henry Cow or Faust. I don't see why you would deny that in comparison to techno and experimental electronic music/IDM HHC is musically conservative. That's not a bad thing, it's just not my vibe. But I don't think there's any shame in admitting that, certainly @ian saunders remix isn't afraid to...

So was a lot of post96 intelligent jungle, for that matter. Supposedly very intelligent but extremely conservative tonally, in terms of timbres, textures etc...