House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120-130 beat. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground club culture and evolved slowly in the early/mid 1980s as DJs began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat. By early 1988, House became mainstream and supplanted the typical 80s music beat.
Breakbeat hardcore is a music genre that spawned from the UK rave scene during the early 1990s. It combines four-on-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats usually sampled from hip hop. In addition to the inclusion of breakbeats, the genre also features shuffled drum machine patterns, hoover, and other noises originating from new beat and Belgian techno, sounds from acid house and bleep techno, and often upbeat house piano riffs and vocals.
A rave is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s dance music scene when DJs played at illegal events in musical styles dominated by electronic dance music from a wide range of sub-genres, including drum and bass, dubstep, trap, break, happy hardcore, trance, techno, hardcore, house, and alternative dance. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.
Happy hardcore, also known as 4-beat or happycore, is a subgenre of hardcore dance music or "hard dance". It emerged both from the UK breakbeat hardcore rave scene, and Belgian, German and Dutch hardcore techno scenes in the early 1990s. The thing that makes happy hardcore stand apart from Gabber, is that happy hardcore tends to have breakbeats running alongside the 4/4 kick drum.
Hardcore is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany in the early 1990s. It is distinguished by faster tempos and a distorted sawtooth kick, the intensity of the kicks and the synthesized bass, the rhythm and the atmosphere of the themes, the usage of saturation and experimentation close to that of industrial dance music. It would spawn subgenres such as gabber.
Bizarre Inc were an English techno group. Formed in 1989 as a duo between English DJs Dean Meredith and Mark "Aaron" Archer, they later re-formed as a trio consisting of Meredith, Andrew Meecham, and Carl Turner in 1990.
DJ Dougal, is a British UK Hardcore and Happy Hardcore artist and DJ.
Euphoria is a series of dance music compilations that debuted on the Telstar Records label in early 1999. During the first year, Euphoria focused primarily on trance music until mid-2000 when Euphoria released the first chill-out album in the series and the first hard house album in late 2000. Euphoria was later spun off into a number of associated club nights around the UK, Ibiza and Cyprus. Over the course of three years, in excess of 500 tour dates were chalked up with tour DJs such as Adam White, Robert Van Ryn, Simon Webdale and Darren James. The compilations included box sets usually priced at around £20.00. The Euphoria albums were of high quality and still are highly collectible and the earlier versions are somewhat rare.
Full On... Mask Hysteria is the second studio album by British duo Altern 8. It was released on 13 July 1992 and featured six of the act's first seven singles released in 1991 and 1992. The vinyl release included "Free Limited Edition 12" Exclusive Megamix" of the album which featured "Shame '92" with Evelyn 'Champagne' King and remix of "Move My Body" by Joey Beltram. The 2008 CD reissue included remix of "Infiltrate 202" by Joey Beltram. In 2016 the "Remastered Edition" of the album was released as a set of three 12" vinyl records and for digital downloading and streaming on their official website. The Remastered Edition featured remixes by KiNK, Shadow Dancer, 2 Bad Mice and Luke Vibert.
Nukleuz is a dance record label based in the Clapham area of London, UK. Nukleuz is the home to many artists and compilation series in various genres including trance, UK hardcore, tech house and hard house.
Network Records was an independent record label founded in Birmingham, England, in 1988 by Neil Rushton and Dave Barker.
Shelley's Laserdome was a night club in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. It was at the heart of the house and rave scene in the early 1990s, helping to launch the career of DJ Sasha and featuring regular appearances from Carl Cox. It was eventually shut down by Staffordshire Police.
René Pawlowitz is a German Berlin-based DJ and producer, better known under his techno moniker Shed. Pawlowitz also performs under various under aliases including WAX (techno), Hoover1, Evil Fred, and Head High (house).
Mental Overdrive is the primary solo moniker of Per Martinsen, one of Norway's most prolific and influential techno musicians. His tracks have ranged from hardcore rave techno to vibrant space-disco, and he's always maintained a healthy balance of humor and braininess. Active since 1990, he began his career releasing several 12" EPs of aggressive, rave-ready hardcore techno on revered Belgian label R&S, including 12000 AD (1990), The Second Coming (1991), Move!, and The Love EP (1992). In 1994, Martinsen began releasing atmospheric techno singles as part of Illumination, his duo with Nicholas Sillitoe. The next year, Mental Overdrive released the single "Disto Disco," which featured a B-side ("Faith") co-written by R&S artist Outlander, best known for the 1991 classic "Vamp." The A-side appeared on Mental Overdrive's full-length debut Plugged, released on Martinsen's own Love OD Communications. The album showed a notable progression in his music, maintaining its rough, distorted hardcore techno sound while adding more cerebral elements, placing it closer to Warp's Artificial Intelligence series. Martinsen displayed his sense of humor with 1996's Unplugged, a limited conceptual release containing silent "versions" of the tracks on Plugged. 083 In 1997, Mental Overdrive signed to Virgin and released About Jazz, a significantly more house/disco-influenced EP than his previous work. This was followed by full-length Ad Absurdum, which continued in a more light-hearted and funky direction than his previous releases. He took a few years off from releasing Mental Overdrive recordings, instead devoting time to Frost and Illumination, which released two albums on RCA. Following the 2003 release of Mental Overdrive's Me EP on Love OD, he signed to Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound and released full-length 083, which featured the single "Diskodans." In 2005, the label compiled his early R&S material on CD as The Phuture That Never Happened. Two years later, Mental Overdrive's single "Spooks" appeared on Prins Thomas' Full Pupp label. The song appeared on his next Smalltown full-length, You Are Being Manipulated, which was released in 2008. The album was perfectly at home with the label's other left-field dance artists like Bjørn Torske and Kim Hiorthøy, while maintaining the unique Mental Overdrive sound. Martinsen continued releasing Mental Overdrive singles on Full Pupp and Love OD, and contributed to Rune Lindbæk's Meanderthals project. In 2012, he released Man with a Movie Camera, an EP featuring music he'd composed for a 1996 screening of the Russian silent film of the same name, which also featured pieces by Biosphere which would later appear on the 2001 remaster of his classic album Substrata. Mental Overdrive returned to his Love OD label for 2013 full-length Cycls, as well as 2014's Everything Is Connected, which compiled a few previously released EPs. In 2016, Full Pupp sublabel Rett I Fletta released a new version of Plugged consisting of alternate takes sourced from the original DAT tapes.
Acid house is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesizer-sequencer, an innovation attributed to Chicago artists Phuture and Sleezy D circa 1986.
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range of 120 to 150 beats per minute (BPM). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often characterized by a repetitive four on the floor beat. Artists may use electronic instruments such as drum machines, sequencers, and synthesizers, as well as digital audio workstations. Drum machines from the 1980s such as Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 are highly prized, and software emulations of such retro instruments are popular.
Shades of Rhythm are an English electronic dance music group most active from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, still performing live today and hailing from Peterborough in 1988. They are best known for being a part of the early '90s rave scene.
Together were an English electronic/rave group, best known for their hit single "Hardcore Uproar", which made number 12 in the UK Singles Chart in August 1990.
Belgian hardcore techno is an early style of hardcore techno that emerged from new beat as EBM and techno influences became more prevalent in this genre. This particular style has been described as an "apocalyptic, almost Wagnerian, bombastic techno", due to its use of dramatic orchestral stabs and menacing synth tones that set it apart from earlier forms of electronic dance music. It flourished in Belgium and influenced the sound of early hardcore from Netherlands, Germany, Italy, UK and North America during the early-1990s, as a part of the rave movement during that period.
The Reactivate series was a compilation album series known for pioneering electronic techno and trance music. With 18 releases, and a number of best-of compilations, the series has achieved both chart success and over a million record sales. The albums were published by UK-based React Music over a 24-year period starting from 1991. The Reactivate sound has been reported as significant in the international rave music scene.
