Loads of Hardcore!

I’ve never got a mixtape in the post before. I wasn’t even aware that people used the internet for this sort of thing, although it should really have been obvious from the outset. I mean, as soon as those scientists had finished transmitting large parcels of data all over the north-eastern United States way back in the early days, the next thing they did must have been swapping mixtapes, right? Or something. Anyway, I had no idea what might be contained within the brown paper envelope that arrived in my letterbox. Could be anything, really, which is kind of the point. Turns out it was CD. A CD with ‘Illegal Rave’ written on it in magic marker. The cover was a basic plastic sleeve with a tantalisingly incomplete flyer inside. One side of the flyer informed me that from 9pm to 6am every Friday night, something went on at a place called ‘Milwaukees’. The other side of the flyer had a picture of a large crowd gathered behind a steel fence, as well as one of two guys clearly having quite a nice time, thanks very much. So I put the disc in my CD player and pushed the button. A voice springs out of the speakers…

Bloke A: “You got any hardcore?”
Bloke B: “ Whazzat mate, sorry?
Bloke A: “I said, you got any hardcore?”
Bloke B: “Hardcore?! Yeah sure, we got loads of hardcore! We got Reinforced Records, Moving Shadow Records, Strictly Underground Records….what you want, mate, c’mon, what you want?
Bloke A: “Have you got Trip to Trumpton?”

A-ha! So it’s hardcore! I’d been having what you might call tantalising brushes with this thing that people called hardcore for some time now, but I’d never actually managed to get around to listening to any, apart from lots of half-remembered pitched-up Kylie vocals and huge kick-drums in the closing stages of raves. I wasn’t sure I was going to like a whole CD full of that kind of thing. Thankfully, this wasn’t anything of the sort. This was completely mental. The music poured into the room, covered in a thick layer of static. Piano rolls, huge wobbly bass. Ropey mixing, weird pitch-shifts. Rhythms all piling in on top of each other. Bloody brilliant. I hadn’t heard anything this exciting in ages. I mean, it didn’t sound that great. This wasn’t yer hi-fi, buddy. It wasn’t melodically complex or even particularly ordered. It wasn’t conforming to a set of boundaries outside those imposed by the technology used to make the music, or if it was it made a very good job of hiding the fact. No, this was pure, unbridled, noisy energy and it sounded like dancing! It sounded like good times on the dancefloor with all your best friends and those guys standing in the queue at Milwaukees. The disc went on for about an hour, and the lack of track markers meant that there was no going back if I wanted to hear the end. The end came halfway through a really neat build-up, but I suppose that’s kind of appropriate, if a little bit disappointing.

So thanks, mysterious Londoner. It’s not every day you get to hear just over an hour of fresh, oddly resonant music that gets you dancing around your living room like a man possessed. I’ll be seeking out some more of this kind of thing, for sure.