The body-slam electric

>> Brooklyn's Lenny Dee and Montreal's Iznogood on the new aggro: hardcore techno

by CHRIS YURKIW

"I got into this stuff after I made the mistake of playing 'Rhythm is a Dancer' on 45," says leading Montreal hardcore techno DJ Iznogood. "And I was like, 'Oooh, you could do some headbanging to that.'"

Indeed, the beginnings of dance music's aggro-amphetamined equivalent of hardcore punk or thrash metal go back to those same early '90s that Snap! evoke for surface dwellers. But follow the roots of the underground subgenre of hardcore techno and they'll lead to Lenny Dee, a pudgy Italian-American who broke out with his own Industrial Strength label and definitive track, "Fucking Hostile."

Four thousand miles and 250 bpm away, in Rotterdam, techno was also being pushed to bass-bin-busting and ultramalevolent heights, leading to a cousin called gabber and an instant Euro market for Lenny--its fascistic overtones in the Netherlands and Germany an unfortunate feature that still haunt hardcore.

"Hardcore has a very bad stigma," says Lenny, "especially in Europe with all the skinheads and Nazis and football hooligans who are into it. That's the way the Rotterdam guys portray it. But that's not what 90 per cent of it is about: the French, the Belgians, the American guys here, the British guys who play hardcore. I mean, in New York we got kids slam-dancing to it. It's like punk rock. It's a very different statement than saying 'I'm a Nazi.'"

DJ Iznogood--he of the underdog name, Lebanese upbringing and positioning on "the funny, not the violent side" of hardcore--also makes the punk parallel: "It's almost the same thing as when punk started. You know, lots of people were against it, but the kids at shows were united in their marginality."



Metal machinations

Teenagers are the main demographic of hardcore techno, and you could probably put it down to the usual, suspect reasons that attract ostensibly powerless youth to powerful music. But more so than punk, it's metal that seems to be the old-school flipside of hardcore--how else to explain its Satanic subcult and pockets of popularity in teenage wastelands like Wisconsin? "Where do you think all those Metallica and Slayer records get sold?" asks Lenny rhetorically, when pushed for a theory on the midwest massive.

Lenny Dee has tried in the past to take hardcore in America beyond Brooklyn and Orange County and Madison, by hooking up with thrash bands like Corrosion of Conformity for a remix that didn't make it to the metal-machine hybrid soundtrack for Spawn in 1997. But he's trying again, as hardcore techno turns 10 and he relaunches both his recording career and Industrial Strength Records after a year-and-a-half sabbatical. He recently signed an Australian hardcore band called Deadman to ISR, for remixology experiments.

"If this can make a fusion, then maybe we [DJs] can all start working with other bands and musicians, which is part of my main goal of going further. Not even so much for the money. It's more like, 'Fuck, if we could get Metallica to do this kind of stuff, maybe we could be heard and not just seen.'"

On another front, Lenny's been spending a lot of his downtime in Italy at beach resorts like Rimini, getting into spinning a mellower "Italian-style techno" which he's now begun integrating into his sets.

"[Hardcore techno DJs] are not acceptable to mainstream, commercial rave parties. But at this point I'm playing techno stuff with the hardcore stuff, so now there's not gonna be any reason for it. Now I've got the records going both ways: I've slowed the tempo down but still play with a hard edge, and now I'm gonna come into your face and I'm gonna meet you in your place, and we'll see what music rules."



Meat of the matter

Back in Montreal, Iznogood has also been taking advantage of the slower pace of many hardcore tracks that have followed the Horrorist's watershed "Flesh is the Fever." He's just started spinning at a new Friday night gig at Foufounes, Lobotomie, which mixes hardcore techno, hardcore punk and metal. "Hardcore has become the way for so many people to discover electronic music," says Iz, "especially industrial fans, 'cause that music is so close to it. This is the new breed of people going to hardcore parties."

For all the hopes of crossover and Iznogood's feeling that hardcore techno is on the verge of "going ballistic," the scene in Montreal is small if dedicated, hovering around the 1,000-people mark for most events. And even fewer for the hardcore of the hardcore:

"There's a darkcore party coming up on the next Friday the 13th. They'll have a shower with blood pouring in it and pieces of meat all over the room--really evil. And they'll put up a sign saying 'Don't go in if you get scared or have heart problems.' But that's for people who are prepared for the experience."

With Manu le Malin, G. O'Brien, Urbanauts and more at the Kleer Hize party on Friday, Aug. 25, $35, 10pm. For info call 740-8935