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HARDCORE

Specialty Definition: HARDCORE

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Specialty Definition: Breakbeat hardcore

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Breakbeat hardcore (or rave) is a style of electronic music. It was an early 1990s offshoot of the Acid House scene of late [1980s]] Britain. It added a hip-hop influence with the addition of breakbeats, and increased the tempo.

The scene revolved around the M25 motorway (London's orbital motorway), and its audience was mainly lower middle-class suburban teenagers with cars and urban teenagers. The audience was very much multi-cultural, with black and white influences resulting in a unique sound.

The music itself very much reflected the scenes drugs of choice, Ecstasy, LSD and amphetamines, with its bombastic beats, manic synths, ear-piercing vocal shots and rumbling bass-lines. The music, although in retrospect poorly produced and amateur (part of its charm), was generally extrovert, uplifting, gritty and hypnotic.

The scene also spawned the idea of holding huge parties rather then small clubs, where organisers such as Dreamscape would hold events in aircraft hangers and stadiums.

Around 1994 the scene fragmented, and forked off into the more sophisticated sounds of Jungle (with its heavy Black influences) and Drum and Bass (which, it could be argued, takes its cues from 1970s synth-based progressive rock - though it would be unlikely that practioners of this style would admit this!).

During mid-late 1994, breakbeat hardcore re-emerged as happy hardcore or 4-beat which combined the manic synths with a faster, techno based beat, and happier, commercial tunes. By around 1996, most 4-beat had dropped the breakbeats, and most Drum and Bass had dropped the techno style synth stabs, leaving the two sounds almost entirely different.

Important artists include Acen, Micky Finn, Nicky Blackmarket, Two Bad Mice, Nookie

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Breakbeat hardcore."

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Hardcore

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

There are several things known as hardcore:

• Hardcore pornography features explicit sexual acts

In music, there are three musical genres called hardcore

• A 1980s form of punk rock - hardcore punk
• A totally instrumental form of techno - hardcore techno
• An aggressive form of 1980s hip hop - hardcore hip hop

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hardcore."

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Hardcore hip hop

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Hardcore hip hop is a form of hip hop music that has confrontational, often violent lyrics, and generally sparse, gritty urban beats. The genre began in the mid- to late 1980s with artists like Boogie Down Productions on the East Coast and Ice-T on the West. Soon after, hardcore hip hop evolved into gangsta rap with the emergence of N.W.A and similar West Coast groups, who dominated the genre for several years. The Wu-Tang Clan's debut in 1993 (see 1993 in music), Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), re-energized East Coast hardcore, and their style soon dominated the charts with stars like Jay-Z and DMX.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hardcore hip hop."

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Hardcore punk

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Hardcore is a subgenre of punk rock characterized by bands who play short, loud, and angry songs with exceptionally fast chord changes on highly overdriven guitars. The lyrics typically are political in nature, and often violently expressive.

History

Hardcore originated in the United States, primarily in and around major cities like Los Angeles, Washington D.C, New York City, and Boston, as a vehicle for expressing urban and suburban teen angst. Commentator Steven Blush claimed (in American Hardcore: A Tribal History) that hardcore was punk rock adapted for suburban teens. Most hardcore bands had lyrical themes that ranged from righteous indignation at societal hypocrisy--both within and without the punk scene itself--to promotion of some form of anarchism.

American hardcore

Like the British punk wave of 1976 to 1978, American hardcore was an initially tight-knit movement that evolved into an enduring genre. The sound arose in suburban beach communities in Southern California, taking influences from The Ramones, Wire and Sham 69. Bands like The Germs, Middle Class and Fear were among the pioneers of the musical genre. Outside of California, D.O.A (Vancouver) and Bad Brains (Washington, DC) were especially important. A radio show called Rodney on the ROQ played on Los Angeles' KROQ, an influential radio station, helped popularize the sound in California, and a wave of zines led by Flipside brought it around the country. The hardcore scene became associated with violence almost as soon as it was born, especially after the release of the film The Decline of Western Civilization. Skateboarding, slamdancing and stagediving also associated with the scene.

During the first stage, which lasted from about 1980 to 1984, the two definitive hardcore bands were Washington D.C's Minor Threat and Los Angeles' Black Flag.

Minor Threat, particularly in their emphasis on speed, were heavily influenced by Washington D.C's Bad Brains. In 1980 to 1981, Minor Threat combined a blunt and tightly organized sound with the more loose experimentalism of the "first generation" punks of the 1970s. Black Flag, meanwhile, released in 1981 their album Damaged, which pretty much defined the musical aggression of hardcore.

British Hardcore

From England, Discharge emerged as one of the most copied bands, and were among the first to pare down their songs into ultra-fast three-chord blasts, without melodies and without excess ornamentation.

Diversification of influences

Later in the 1980s hardcore music found a kindred spirit with heavy metal and vice versa with bands such as Agnostic Front, DRI, and Sick of It All. Metallica claimed both the Misfits and Discharge as early influences on their own brand of metal. Discharge themselves took a 180 degree turn from hardcore to play slower metal songs, and switched from spiked hair to long hair in the process. Hardcore has since been a genre in which the stylistic line between "punk" and "metal" has often blurred.

There have been numerous trends and movements within hardcore, mostly self-classified according to a particular philosophy or political outlook. Perhaps most notable is the straight-edge "scene" (because many involved would not necessarily want to be called a "movement"), which got its name from a Minor Threat song that espoused complete avoidance of drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity. Other hardcore scenes include pacifist bands, Hindu bands, and even Eastern Orthodox Christian bands.

Hardcore Bands

General

• 1/4" Micro Bomb
• AFI
• The Antibodies
• Articles of Faith
• Bad Brains
• Black Flag
• Blood for Blood
• Circle Jerks
• Dag Nasty
• Dead Kennedys
• The Descendants
• Dillinger Escape Plan
• The Distillers
• Evil Eye
• Fear
• Free Beer
• Hatebreed
• Hüsker Dü
• The Locust
• Martyr AD
• The Misfits
• Negative Approach
• No Innocent Victim
• Poison the Well
• Snapcase
• Stretch Armstrong
• Teen Idles
• Today Is the Day
• The Unseen
• Where Fear and Weapons Meet
• Zao

Straight Edge

• Earth Crisis
• Gorilla Biscuits
• Ignite
• Minor Threat
• Society System Decontrol (SSD)
• Uniform Choice
• Vegan Reich
• Youth of Today

Pacifist/anarchist

• Crucifix
• Death Valley Meth Lab
• Final Conflict
• Millions Of Dead Cops

Hindu/Hare Krishna

• 108
• Antidote
• Cause for Alarm
• Cro-Mags
• Shelter

Hardcore-Metal

• Agnostic Front
• Biohazard
• Candiria
• Canaan
• Indecision
• Madball
• Necros
• Shai Hulud
• Sick of It All
• 25 ta Life

Irrealist

• Suine Anget

Acapella

• Jud Jud

Emotional Hardcore (Emo)

• By a Thread
• Cave In
• Embrace
• Faith
• Grade
• Rites of Spring

Reference

• American Hardcore (Feral House, 2002)
• American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Steven Blush, Feral House publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-922915-717-7)

Hardcore splintered off into many subgenres. The most popular so far has been "emo", which originally stood for "emotional hardcore" but has come to represent a style and music of its own.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hardcore punk."

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Hardcore techno

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Hardcore techno is a form of contemporary popular music with an aggressive edge, created using personal computers.

Hardcore techno is a kind of techno music closely related to the Gabba style. It originated in the early- to mid-1990s in largely industrial or post-industrial cities (Rotterdam, New York City, Newcastle, Australia) and simultaneously in commercial dance techno music looking for a harder sound; Mescalinum United's "We Have Arrived" (PCP 006, 1993) is considered by many to be the first hardcore track. It is typified by fast (160-300BPM) repetitive beats, often with a compressed kick-drum. It is considered a descendant of Industrial music and the more atonal, beat oriented early electronic music.

Hardcore techno is often obsessed with the obscene, morose, morbid, scatalogical, explicitly sexual or profane. Partly, this is because hardcore enthusiasts enjoy negative sensations, partly because they enjoy ironic provocation of other people's fears and aversions. Generally, hardcore techno seeks the social relationship which early punk rock or ska had: ironic, working class, demi-political, and seeking to transcend the oppressions of everyday life.

Like all electronic dance music, hardcore techno rapidly produced sub-variants:

• Happy hardcore is probably the best known variant, which aims at invigorating and uplifting rapid dancing as opposed to the normally morbid focus.
• Speedcore and Terrorcore come closer to the original vision of rapid beats and dark sounds.
• Additionally a large amount of hardcore involves the use of breakbeats and tends towards Drum and Bass and Jungle. One example of this style of hardcore is breakcore.
• Often hardcore is classified by the city in which it was produced, the Newcastle sound, the Frankfurt sound, the French sound. It is uncertain why geography and culture play a large role in defining hardcore variants.

Innovative hardcore often goes beyond the simplistic limits of commercialised hardcore techno. One factor in this has been the way in which hardcore techno is usually composed, on home computers with module tracker software. This means that many ordinary people can engage in writing music. The criticism that the early Amiga and PC sound was "8-bit shit" became an article of pride amongst composers of hardcore music. The wide availability of the necessary instruments -- home computers -- combined with the absence of financial remuneration means that most good hardcore techno musicians write for their own enjoyment and the pleasure of innovation.

Alternate styles of Hardcore techno

As with any other dance music genre the meaning of the phrase 'Hardcore Techno' is not hard and fast but rather varies from place to place and time to time.

In relation to the flowering of British electronic dance music different styles developed. Some focused on beat and tone oriented music, as opposed to vocal, diva or sample-oriented music. A similar tendency occurred in America. This style could be broadly described as Hard house or Hardcore techno. It developed seperately to the Hardcore techno mentioned above and is distinguished from it by its slower pace (120-160BPM), its lack of aggressive sounds and its lack of morbid themes. It also lacks the distorted, compressed kick drum typical of the other hardcore techno. A more extensive discussion of this type of hardcore techno can be found at the entry Breakbeat hardcore.

External link

• Bloody Fist records

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hardcore techno."

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Synonyms within Context: HARDCORE

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Modern Usage: HARDCORE

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Commercial Usage: HARDCORE

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Digital Photo Gallery: HARDCORE
 

"Friends of the Apocalypse 12" by Kenneth Love Commentary: "Local hardcore punk band's final show."

Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

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Non-Fiction Usage: HARDCORE

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Usage Frequency: HARDCORE

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: HARDCORE

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: HARDCORE

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Modern Translation: HARDCORE

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Derivations & Misspellings: HARDCORE

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Rhyming with "HARDCORE"

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Anagrams: HARDCORE

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