Looking for something to do the night before Defqon? Looking to hang out with other Americans?
Join us for International Hard Dance Meeting (The Official QSA Meet up)
27 June 2019
Facebook info: https://www.facebook.com/events/300685847499305/
*A five minute walk from Amsterdam Central Station
*A portion of the proceeds from the party will go to Musicians Without Borders
The Argentinian band Mutant Core Resistance and their label Mutant Core Records are breathing some fresh air both into their local as well as the wider global *core underground. They are fusing subgenres like psycore, breakcore, speedcore and extratone into new experimental soundscapes and something called “atmo tone”. In this interview we talked about their music and the scene in Argentina.
Who are the crew behind the Mutant Core Records and how did it start?
We have different types of members in the crew. Some of them are more freelance like our brother from Poland, Si.rAk-Sa, or brothers from our country like Morphoaega, Chamal, Fuel & Fire and Charlie. They all contribute in their own way and support this music we promote on our label. Then there are the core members of MCR: Solarkae, Unfriendly bit and Beatcrusher. MCR started in 2015 as a group of 3 DJs: Trip Cris, Low Noise and Beatcrusher. They met at free parties that were organized in different parts of Buenos Aires in the years of 2010-2012. After some years of playing on their own they decided to unite and form a crew dedicated to genres like breakcore, terrorcore, speedcore and extratone.
Tell us more about the Mutant Core Resistance band..
The main concept of the band is to experiment and deconstruct. We try to merge our 3 energies into the tracks we do. The main intention is to create soundscapes that take the listeners to different places, sensations and feelings, sometimes in a good musical “trip” and sometimes we try to take them out of the comfort zone. All the songs are created with computer and synths. We like the analog sound, but we also like to do the sound designs, the mix and mastering in the DAW.
What are your musical influences?
There are a wide variety of musical influences: Pierre Schaeffer and the concrete music, John Cage and the aleatory music, Fluxus, John Coltrane and his album Om, Alice Coltrane, rock of the 60’s and 70’s like 5th dimention, Guru Guru, Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, Focus and Pink Floyd. Also electronic music like Kraftwerk, hardcore jungle from the 90s, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, The Flashbulb and Richard Devine. We also like more traditional music like Chinese music, Indian Classical music, Tuvan singing and different mantras from Buddhism and Hinduism.
What is atmo tone?
We feel that atmo tone is somewhere in between soundscapes and extratone. Atmospheric extratone is a physical phenomena (the sum of the harmonics of deep kicks) it is also music that promotes introspection combined with altered states of consciousness induced by the music.
There seems to be lots of experimental psycore coming from South-America and you guys are also involved in events, such as La CAJA DEL ODIO, that combine experimental *core music and psytrance as well as other styles. Is there a lot of collaboration between experimental electronic music subcultures in your local scene?
There are just a few people dedicated to this particular spectrum of experimental music, so we are always in touch, we need to combine our forces in order to do events and gather some public. There are a few sporadic events like the one you mentioned, also we used to do one called Speedfest and raves with different names.
How are your local hardcore techno, breakcore and psycore party scenes in general?
The scene is very small and underground, the music you mentioned arrived in our country in the early 2000 and became more listened arround 2012. Nowadays the younger generations are paying more attention to this music and new dj’s and producers are starting to appear and we are glad for that.
What are the possibilities and challenges in organizing parties in Argentina?
Argentina is a big country, so it depends on where you are. Here in our province (Buenos Aires) there are a bunch of small places for this kind of events, but you have to take your soundsystem if you want to sound decent. The other option is to move away from the city and do the events outdoors if you know a place to occupy for the night or maybe if you know somebody who owns a place. The problem is the public transport, sometimes it’s not easy to reach certain places. The police is also a big problem, they are always trying to shut our raves, because we are “against the law”.
What are your plans for the future?
In terms of music, we are working on a couple of collaborations with different brothers from other countries and we are working on our second LP. There are a few EP’s from some artists from our country and from other countries that will be released soon. We are thinking about doing some gigs in a couple of places in Europe. Some crews are inviting us to play lately, but we have to raise the money for the plane tickets and they are pretty expensive!
Which core artists from Argentina would you recommend for the readers to check out?
Our scene is small, but it has a very colorful variety of artists. Here are some:
Trip’s Cris
https://soundcloud.com/dj-trips-cris
Fuel & Fire
https://soundcloud.com/naftafuel
Dj Dmøncøre
https://www.facebook.com/DjDmoncore
https://diegoseta.wixsite.com/dmoncore
Charlie
https://www.facebook.com/CharlieDMB
M0710n
https://www.facebook.com/k33p1nm0710n
Nymh4l
https://www.facebook.com/Nymh4ldj
Killer drumz
https://www.facebook.com/killerdrumz
KRAKTAX
https://soundcloud.com/kraktaxxxcore
SpeedB
https://soundcloud.com/augustin-kutralrecords
Rrayen
https://soundcloud.com/rrayen
Round Wave Crusher
https://www.facebook.com/roundwavecrusher
Thanks for the interview!
Thank you, thanks to The Hard Data and the readers!
Check out MCR here:
Bandcamp – https://mutantcorerecords.bandcamp.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/mutantcoreargentina
On Saturday 9 February 2019, 30,000 hard dance fans from all over the world gathered together in the Gelredome for Hard Bass: The Last Formation. For those who don’t know, Hard Bass was an annual party for the last ten years at the Gelredome organized by B2S (one of the major hard dance event organizers in the Netherlands). Last Saturday was the final edition of Hard Bass and the end of one of the largest most popular indoor hard dance events in the world.
What made Hard Bass unique is that, unlike other parties where DJs typically perform one-hour sets back to back (or in some instances longer sets versus other DJs), Hard Bass was notorious for its use of “teams”. The ten-hour long party (as always, not long enough in my opinion) this year was divided into five teams: Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, and Heroes (Ten Years of History). Each team consisted of multiple DJs who perform in a similar style. This edition was coined the “hardest” Hard Bass, which was evidenced by the predominance of rawstyle DJs on the line up – B-Front, Ran-D, Radical Redemption, and E-Force, to name a few.
Although my heart beats at 300 beats per minute, I was blown away by the production and music on Saturday night. This truly was a show rather than just a typical rave, so much that at times sitting out in the stands (the Gelredome is large stadium with tiered seating) I felt as though I was watching Hard Bass: The Musical. Each team was provided with a proper introduction and ending similar to the curtain call in play. Once they finished performing their epic last track, the lights would go off, everyone would applaud, and an introduction would start for the next team.
Being from the New York area and having attended multiple Broadway performances, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to attend this as a play where you sit down and watch the performance as if you were watching Phantom of the Opera or Fiddler on the Roof, for instance. All of the elements were there. The stage was a giant space ship, which fit perfectly with the theme, the lasers were out of this world, and of course there was fire, fireworks, and even some theatrics.
The evening truly was a tribute to ten years of hard dance, and to the artists and fans who made it all possible. The music was a quintessential mix of the classics we all know the words to, such as “Imaginary”, “Castles in the Sky”, “You’ve Got the Love”, and “Eternalize”, as well as some new tracks including my one of my personal favorites of the evening, “The Last Resort”.
This night was particularly memorable for me because I learned what “kick rolling” was for the first time. As previously mentioned, although I do enjoy rawstyle, I have not had much exposure to it, as it is a stage I don’t typically frequent at festivals. Usually passing by the rawstyle stage at Defqon, Dominator, or Masters of Hardcore, I would always see a large crowd of very tall, buff Dutch guys all moving their hands in a chopping motion to the beat. I figured this was just a dance that everyone did both collectively and individually, for example as gabbers hakken.
However, now I know that it is in fact a style of dancing (which is often pre-rehearsed) so that the chopping motion hits right on the beat. The more you know! I found this particularly fascinating because with speedcore/terror we have something similar (albeit less rehearsed and fluid) where when the beat drops you see everyone with one hand to the sky basically having a seizure (don’t judge it until you try it!)
My favorite team of the evening was definitely Red, and those last few minutes were the perfect ending to the night. I particularly enjoy when rawstyle tracks are sped up, although I guess this would make kick rolling more difficult for some. Rawstyle is known for its brutal kicks, complex layers, and screeches, therefore just kicking it up a bit to 200 beats per minute makes it even better (in my humble opinion).
The evening concluded flawlessly with the GPF remix of Killshot-Beastmode, which of course kept me wanting more. The finale of the show consisted of the space ship taking off, closing off a chapter in history of ten years of Hard Bass. What will B2S have for us next?
*Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are strictly my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the companies and organizations I am affiliated with. Furthermore the pictures water marked “Hard Bass” are not my own pictures but rather B2S.
On Sunday August 5th I finally had the opportunity to take advantage of this incredibly warm weather this summer and go to the beach! Instead of just being a normal person and spending the day laying out, tanning, and swimming of course as always there was a pre-game meet up and a festival, Hardcore at Sea!
I met up with my friends after rushing from work (nothing like changing into rave clothes and dashing out the door) on the beach in Bloemendaal in the afternoon for a QSA picnic. If you don’t know by now or are just reading my blog for the first time, QSA is a group of American hard dance ravers who go to festivals and parties together. The best part about having a picnic outside the venue was being able to hear the music during the sound check not only from Hardcore at Sea but from Hard Classics next door.
Then after a few hours we wrapped up the picnic and headed inside to the festival. First let me start by saying the stage was SO COOL it was a giant inflatable shark, perfect for the beach vibes theme. This is my second edition of Hardcore at Sea and this year was even bigger and better than last year. The venue, Beachclub Fuel is a small but intimate bar situated right on the beach with three stages: main stage, frenchcore, and rawstyle. I have to say out of all of the festivals I’ve been to since I can remember this was the longest amount of time I have spent at a main stage. Usually I am a side stage girl (terror, uptempo, frenchcore, etc.) but the music was just so on point at the main stage and the weather was so nice, it was really the place to be.
The first set of the day was of course my besties Rob GEE and Da Mouth of Madness. As always they crushed it packing in a wild thirty minute set ranging all the way from early hardcore classics like “Ecstasy You Got What I Need” to Rob’s new hit of the summer “A DJ Saved My Life.” Of course for me with Rob GEE sets always consist of singing, yelling, and shaky Iphone videos.
Next up was probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen at a party. During Destructive Tendencies vs. Dr Peacock, which was an AMAZING first time ever set, the shark ate the stage, there was literal shark week at Hardcore at Sea. The giant inflatable shark mouth ate the stage! So epic!
I spent the rest of the day wandering around and catching up with everyone. One really amazing thing about the party was all the Americans there! Partyraiser even introduced me to his two friends from Illinois, so cool!
Perfect weather, perfect music, and therefore a perfect day! See you next time!
I want to talk about tracker music, including hardcore. Tracker music was and is done on tracker programs like Soundtracker, Protracker, Fasttracker, Impulse Tracker and countless others.
What people will notice first is the abstract, “top down” view of the sequencer screen, very much unlike the layout of modern DAW programs. Trackers were, to most part, a digital form of producing. The basic sequencing was done by writing the sound to be used (the sample) and the pitch into the sequence editor. All channels were on the same screen (so for example you had to sequence hi-hats and bassdrum and bassline together and could not “add them later”).
These “patterns” were then put into a playing order in another screen. You could add “effects” to each note played such as pitchbent or vibrato, and in later trackers even filtering.
The finished result was saved as modules files, or MODs. These contained both the song and the samples that were used.
In the present day, Tracker technology has improved by a lot; programs like Renoise or Jeskola Buzz added hundreds of new functions and changes in the style and way to produce. Buzz allows you to use a variety of soft-synths written for the program, for example, so you no longer have to rely on sampling.
Before the internet, these modules were spread in the BBS scene. BBS was short for Bulletin Board System and to an internet user it’s hard to explain what exactly they were. A BBS was run on a computer and you could dial it up with your own computer and a modem – around the globe basically – and when you accessed the BBS it offered services like messaging boards, chat (where you could talk to other users that had dialed up the BBS at the same time as you), games, and download sections – were amongst other things track modules could be downloaded or uploaded.
Tracker artists often organized themselves in groups, so called crews. These crews usually were not just composed of musicians, but had also graphic artists, writers, and often programmers – “coders”; they turned the individual tracks into a release of multiple tracks with visuals and menus – kinda like a multimedia LP. Often these releases were stand-alone programs done by the coders which played so called demos while the modules played – graphic animations, often in a virtual reality and cyberspace style, sometimes even short movies, that tested the computing power of your system to its limits.
This is where the tracker scene met the demo scene; demos could be written for existing tracks, or demo coders included tracks for the demos; so sometimes the music came first, sometimes the programming.
The crews had so called couriers that dialed up BBS sytems around the country or world to spread the tracker releases. Often a crew had its own BBS or a BBS was connected to several crews.
With the rise of the internet, the world of BBS systems faded quickly; but the tracker and demo scene moved to the net and survives on it to this day.
With the rise of techno and hardcore, this sound quickly spread to the tracker scene too in the early 90s; long before speedcore really took its hold on vinyl, tracks that exceeded 300 or 400 bpm were released as modules.
Most producers and crews were not “hardcore only” though, and did a variety of techno and electronic styles.
The tracker and demo scene were the root for many techno and hardcore artists in the 90s: Nasenbluten, Neophyte, E-De Cologne, Christoph De Babalon, Amiga Shock Force all started on tracker programs and many many more did so. Hardsequencer, Cybermouse, Bomb 20 and others had releases in the BBS or Amiga scene before their sounds was put to vinyl and CD.
But the vast majority of tracker music never saw the light of day outside its scene; just the couriers and crews and users of the BBS world knew about them. But now there are some archives for this very scene on the internet. It’s a sonic treasure that’s still be to dug up.
Here are three mixes that are showcasing the early tracker hardcore scene:
