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Once you've fallen for 170 beats per minute, there's no going back by MIREILLE SILCOTT
But before I'm ousted for heinous crimes, let me explain. I spent 1992 in London, England. I arrived convinced that a rave song I then cherished, called "On a Ragga Tip" by SL2, was the best ever made, maybe only after the Prodigy's dinky "Charly Says" or Acen's "Trip to the Moon." This was point zero for British rave anthems, for fast energy "choons" made of breakbeats with cartoon themes, toy pianos and happy ecstasy smashed all over them. There was plenty where SL2 came from--stuff the English called hardcore. Hardcore, the first rave-only music, was lambasted by the media from day one. Who, after all, could respect Sesame Street samples and rampant kiddieness? Soon many producers and DJs in the scene caved and, like LTJ Bukem, removed the pianos and the helium-style vocals and started calling their new, darker hardcore "jungle" (soon to become drum & bass). Only half-wits like Top Buzz and Swan E were left holding the happy banner. So these spinners accepted their desperate fate and sought new heights for their crappiness. Their music became piled with more vocals, speed and dodgy samples. It became so ridiculous that only teenage idiots with ribboned whistles and attention deficits ("It's fast! It's good!") could like it.
Big techno label React remembered teenage disposable incomes and signed it. They then asked the duo to mix a compilation. It was called Bonkers and sold 35,000 copies. Trance core is a more "serious," gentrified style, having done some cross-fertilization with Dutch gabber techno. And since happy hardcore artists will probably leap into the UK mainstream this year (magazines are already running "they're just doing their thing" articles), it can be assumed that trancecore will be the springboard style. Because it's less embarrassing. Unfortunately, it won't be what I'm listening to. No happy hardcore events will be happening in Montreal any time soon. Bonkers and Happy 2b Hardcore are available in stores now |
Happy to be hardcore
My favourite kind of music is called happy hardcore. When I'm done frothing over the state of house today, all I really want are 170 beats-per-minute tracks called "Thumper" or "Funfair" made by tacky geezers from Essex. And it's not escapism or petty rebellion. It's just bad taste. I'm forever bonkers for music considered plague-ish by drum & bass fans and horrid by housers.
Last year, newish DJs Hixxy and Sharkey unleashed a track characteristically titled "Toytown" on the happy scene, then based mainly in the massive, but marginalized teenage raves of Scotland and Northern England. The song seemed fresh, with natural vocals sung half-time over the 170 BPM breakbeats and a retardo-melody that was very Sound of Music.