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.
Hardstyle is an electronic dance genre that emerged in the late 1990s, with origins in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Hardstyle mixes influences from techno, new beat and hardcore.
Speedcore is a form of electronic music that is characterized by a high tempo and aggressive themes. It was created in the early to mid-1990s and the name originates from the hardcore genre as well as the high tempo used. Songs are usually classified as speedcore at around 300+ beats per minute (BPM), but this can vary.
Daniel Robert Kausman, better known by his stage name DJ Die, is an English DJ and music producer. He was a founder of drum and bass label Full Cycle Recordings and a member of Roni Size & Reprazent and Breakbeat Era.
Danny Masseling, better known by his stage name Angerfist, is a Dutch hardcore producer and DJ.
Luna-C is a British DJ and record producer, known for his work in breakbeat hardcore music. He was a member of the group Smart E's in 1992, who scored a No. 2 hit on the UK Singles Chart with "Sesame's Treet" which samples the Sesame Street theme song. He founded Kniteforce Records in 1992, for which he produced tracks and remixes under various aliases. The label was sold in 1997 but resurrected as Kniteforce Again (KFA) in 2001.
Marc Trauner better known by his numerous aliases including Marc Acardipane, Mescalinum United, The Mover, Pilldriver, Marshall Masters and Resident E, is a DJ and producer based in Frankfurt, Germany.
Dov Joseph Elkabas, known professionally as DJ The Prophet, is a Dutch hardcore techno and hardstyle DJ and producer. The Prophet is also the owner of one of the largest hardstyle record labels, Scantraxx.
Tom Wright, also known as Cube::Hard, Stargazer and Stereo Wildlife, among other aliases, is an English music engineer and record producer. Originally from Kent, England, he is currently taking a break from making music. He worked for RFUGrey as a producer in the late 2000s.
Darren James Mew, better known as Darren Styles, is an English music producer, DJ, singer and songwriter from Colchester, Essex. Originally a member of the breakbeat hardcore group DJ Force & the Evolution, Styles found success during the 1990s as one half of Force & Styles. The duo were pioneers of happy hardcore and wrote several well-known songs such as "Heart of Gold", "Pretty Green Eyes" and "Paradise & Dreams".
Lento violento, sometimes shortened to simply lento, is a style of electronic dance music that developed in Italy. Its name means slow (and) violent, as this style typically has a tempo between 85 and 115 beats per minute (BPM). It consists of a hard kick, like the ones present in hardcore or hardstyle, but played at a very slow tempo, with vocal samples and dark and acid sounds or loops.
Willem Rebergen, better known by his stage name Headhunterz, is a Dutch DJ and music producer. Rebergen is also a voice actor. He has done dubbing for several movies and TV series. He started his career in 2005 working on Hardstyle music.
John Bennett, known as DJ Freak, is an English hardcore music DJ and producer. He is credited as one of the first pioneers of the industrial hardcore/speedcore sound.
Joram Metekohy, better known by his stage name Wildstylez, is a Dutch hardstyle DJ and record producer. Having previously released hardstyle records under the alias 'Seizure', Joram Metekohy had his first solo release as Wildstylez in 2007 on the Scantraxx sub-label Scantraxx Reloaded. In 2010, he started the record label Digital:Age in collaboration with Noisecontrollers. After he stopped releasing on Digital:Age, and its subsequent collapse, Wildstylez had a string of releases on Q-Dance Records and also released many tracks for free via social media. In 2013, Wildstylez founded his own hardstyle label, Lose Control Music, under the parent label Be Yourself Music. As of 2014, he and Max Enforcer now release their own music through Lose Control Music. Later, in 2018, Wildstylez founded the label Art of Creation with Headhunterz.
Frenchcore is a subgenre of hardcore techno. The style differs from other forms of hardcore in terms of a faster tempo, usually above 160 –185 BPM, and a loud and distorted offbeat bassline.
Fabian Bohn, known professionally as Brennan Heart, is a Dutch DJ and hardstyle producer.
Fracus & Darwin are a British DJ and production duo, known for producing a variety of electronic music styles. They have been guests on BBC Radio 1 and have performed at clubs and festivals across the world.
Hardvapour is an Internet-based microgenre of music that emerged in late 2015 as a tongue-in-cheek response to vaporwave, departing from the calm, muzak-sampling capitalist utopia concept of the latter in favor of a gabber- and punk-influenced sound. Canadian music producer Wolfenstein OS X album End of World Rave (2015) and the Antifur record label are credited with having first defined the hardvapour sound.
Virtual Self is the debut extended play (EP) by the American electronic music producer Porter Robinson under the alias Virtual Self. It was released on November 29, 2017, through an eponymous record label. After releasing his debut studio album Worlds (2014), a deviation from his earlier sound, Robinson suffered from depression and struggled to create a follow-up. He then started planning the Virtual Self alias, using electronic music and Internet webpages from the early 2000s as main sources of inspiration.
J-core is the style of hardcore techno associated with Japanese groups and DJs from the 1990s onward. It is marked by its usage of samples derived from video games and anime, colorful kawaii imagery and album graphics, and the general borrowing of elements from denpa and otaku culture. J-core music is often found in rhythm games, and forms a substantial part of the doujin music scene.
