Hangars Liquides

Last updated April 06, 2019

Hangars Liquides, also known as HL, is a French electronic label. It was created by La Peste (aka fr:Laurent Mialon) in 1998. Initially Hangars Liquides was Speedcore-oriented but was quickly categorized as experimental music within the hardcore techno scene. HL quickly gained a very good reputation and has been played around the world in many different music scenes: industrial, noise, techno, acousmatic, hardcore, electronica, ambient and post rock.^[1]

France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.

A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing, promotion, and enforcement of copyright for sound recordings and music videos, while also conducting talent scouting and development of new artists, and maintaining contracts with recording artists and their managers. The term "record label" derives from the circular label in the center of a vinyl record which prominently displays the manufacturer's name, along with other information. Within the mainstream music industry, recording artists have traditionally been reliant upon record labels to broaden their consumer base, market their albums, and be both promoted and heard on music streaming services, radio, and television. Record labels also provide publicists, who assist performers in gaining positive media coverage, and arrange for their merchandise to be available via stores and other media outlets.

Speedcore is a form of hardcore that is characterized by a high tempo and aggressive themes. The genre was created in the early to mid 1990s and the name originates from the genre hardcore as well as the high speed tempo used. This music rarely drops below 300 beats per minute (bpm). Earlier speedcore tracks often averaged at about 250 bpm, which could be defined as terror(core), whereas some tracks sometimes exceed 1000 bpm where it then becomes known as extratone, the world's fastest music genre.

Releasing artists such as I:gor and Neurocore from Poland, Senical (aka DJ choose) from Denmark, Bombardier from the US, Noize Creator from Germany, Venetian Snares from Canada, Jan Robbe from Belgium, and French artists such as Al Zheimer, XKV8, Helius Zhamiq, Fist of Fury, Attila, EPC, La Peste and more, the label became a reference in itself: a lot of electronic music tracks from other labels have been described as having a "Hangars Liquides sound" or "Hangars Liquides style". s Since 2000, the label has released many different genres from acousmatic music to power electronics and flashcore.^[2]
Flashcore identifies a style that some of those experimental artists share and a manifesto explains the aim of HL's vision of experimental music.^[3]

Aaron Funk, known as Venetian Snares, is a Canadian electronic musician based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is widely known for innovating and popularising the breakcore genre, and is one of the most recognisable artists to be signed into Planet Mu, an experimental electronic music label. His signature style involves meticulously complex drums, eclectic use of samples, and odd time signatures, particularly ⁷
₄.

Jan Robbe, otherwise known by his music project aliases Atomhead, Erratic, UndaCova and Diagnostic, is an electronic music artist. He founded the experimental netlabel Entity in 2003 with friend Nico de Gols. Jan Robbe is known for expressing various musical styles under different pseudonyms. Atomhead and UndaCova, his two most prominent projects, focus on fractured industrial beats and densely textured DSP sound design techniques, whereas Erratic is a vehicle for pursuing more minimal long-form ambiental directions. The most recent (2018) Diagnostic project explores experimental sound design, glitch and noise structures, combining digital and modular synthesis. Robbe has released music on distinguished labels such as Dyslexic Response and Hangars Liquides, and collaborated with artists who operate in similar aesthetic domains, including La Peste, Neurocore, Subskan and Xanopticon.

Acousmatic music is a form of electroacoustic music that is specifically composed for presentation using speakers, as opposed to a live performance. It stems from a compositional tradition that dates back to the introduction of musique concrète in the late 1940s. Unlike musical works that are realised using sheet music exclusively, compositions that are purely acousmatic often exist solely as fixed media audio recordings.

Hangars Liquides also started to produce multimedia since 2001 when computer graphic artist Djehan Kidd joined the label to produce new media designed especially for the music.

The label has a streaming radio as a way to diffuse its new creations, the creations are also used in virtual reality worlds to produce an immersive gestalt listening experience for the visitors.

Artistic Directions taken by the label overtime

After the year 2000, the label's artistic direction became very electroacoustic and acousmatic oriented, with a big influence from the likes of musicians like Bernard Parmegiani and Francois Bayle.

New media used by the label

Since 2007 Hangars Liquides has become a non profit organization, its corporate status is to help "create, produce and diffuse any kind of art" through cutting edge mediums that can be found within the range of software used for mediated realities (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality), it has become an important content creator for providing immersive audiovisual experiences through Virtual Reality's leading platforms. In 2014 the virtual city of Hangars Liquides that was created by Djehan Kidd on Second Life was featured by the Guardian as "the world's largest cyberpunk city" ^[4]

Second Life is an online virtual world, developed and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003. By 2013, Second Life had approximately one million regular users; at the end of 2017 active user count totals "between 800,000 and 900,000". In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games; however, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: "There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective".

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders.

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech" featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

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A rave is an organized dance party at a nightclub, outdoor festival, warehouse, or other private property typically featuring performances by DJs, playing a seamless flow of electronic dance music. DJs at rave events play electronic dance music on vinyl, CDs and digital audio from a wide range of genres, including techno, hardcore, house, drum & bass, dubstep, and post-industrial. Occasionally live performers have been known to perform, 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.

Intelligent dance music is a form of electronic music originating in the early 1990s which was regarded as "cerebral" and better suited to "home listening" than dancing. Emerging from electronic and rave music styles such as techno, acid house, ambient music, and breakbeat, IDM tended to rely upon individualistic experimentation rather than adhering to characteristics associated with specific genres. Prominent artists associated with the genre include Aphex Twin, μ-Ziq, the Black Dog, the Orb, the Future Sound of London, Autechre, Luke Vibert, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares and Boards of Canada.

Electronica encompasses a broad group of electronic-based styles such as techno, house, ambient, jungle and other electronic music styles intended not just for dancing.

Jungle is a genre of electronic music derived from breakbeat hardcore that developed in England in the early 1990s as part of UK rave scenes. The style is characterized by fast tempos, breakbeats, dub reggae basslines, heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples, and synthesized effects. Long pitch-shifted snare rolls are common in old-school jungle. Jungle was a predecessor to drum and bass, a well-known genre of electronic music.

Ambient techno is a 1990s offshoot of techno and ambient house that united the atmospheric textures of ambient music with the melodic and rhythmic elements of techno and electro. It was pioneered by electronic artists such as B12, Aphex Twin, the Black Dog, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Biosphere.

Glitch is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the 1990s. It has been described as a genre that adheres to an "aesthetic of failure," where the deliberate use of glitch-based audio media, and other sonic artifacts, is a central concern.

Alec Empire is a German experimental electronic musician who is best known as a founding member of the band Atari Teenage Riot, as well as a prolific and distinguished solo artist, producer and DJ. He has released many albums, EPs and singles, some under aliases, and remixed over seventy tracks for various artists including Björk. He was also the driving force behind the creation of the digital hardcore genre, and founded the record labels Digital Hardcore Recordings and Eat Your Heart Out.

Happy hardcore, also known as happy rave or happycore, is a genre of hard dance typified by a very fast tempo, often coupled with solo vocals or sentimental lyrics. Its characteristically 4/4 beat "happy" sound distinguishes it from most other forms of hardcore, which tend to be "darker". It is typically in a major key. In its original incarnation, it was often characterized by piano riffs, synthetic stabs and spacey effects. This genre of music is closely related to the typically Dutch genre of gabber and the typically Spanish genre of makina. Happy hardcore evolved from breakbeat hardcore around 1991–1993, as the original house music-based rave became faster and began to include breakbeats, evolving into oldschool jungle which evolved into drum and bass. Some of the most famous artists of this genre include Brisk and Ham, Scott Brown, Force and Styles, Sy and Unknown, Hixxy, DJ Paul Elstak, Anabolic Frolic, Dune, Scooter, Critical Mass, Stu Allan, Vibes, Dougal, Slipmatt, DJ Sharkey, DJ Seduction.

Breakcore is a style of electronic dance music influenced by hardcore, jungle, digital hardcore and industrial music. It is characterized by the use of heavy kick drums, breaks and a wide palette of sampling sources, played at high tempos.

Hardcore is a subgenre of electronic dance music that originated in the Netherlands from the emergent raves/gabber in the 1990s. Its subgenres are usually distinguished from other electronic dance music genres by faster tempos, 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.

Progressive house is a style (subgenre) of house music. The progressive house style emerged in the early 1990s. It initially developed in the United Kingdom as a natural progression of American and European house music of the late 1980s.

Bouncy techno is a hardcore dance music rave style that developed in the early 1990s from Scotland and North England. Described as an accessible gabber-like form, it was popularised by Scott Brown under numerous aliases. The sound became prominent in the northern United Kingdom rave scene before it broke into the hardcore homeland of the Netherlands through Paul Elstak, where it became known there as happy hardcore and funcore.

Power noise is a form of industrial music and a fusion of noise music and various styles of electronic dance music. It should not be confused with "power electronics", which is not influenced by electronic dance music and is closer to harsh noise. Its origins are predominantly European.

Hard trance is a subgenre of trance music that originated in Western Europe in the early 1990s as the breakbeat hardcore production community began to diversify into new and different styles of electronic music, all influenced by hard house, happy hardcore and jungle. The popularity of hard trance peaked during the late 1990s, and has since then faded in scope of newer forms of trance.

Drum and bass is a type of breakbeat hardcore that originated in the UK that emerged from the countries jungle scene in the early 90s. The genre would go on to become one of the most popular genres of electronic dance music, becoming international and spawning multiple different derivatives and subgenres.

Cyberdelic is a term used to refer to either:

Immersion in cyberspace as a psychedelic experience.
The fusion of cyberculture and the psychedelic subculture into a new counterculture of the 1980s and 1990s.
Psychedelic art created by calculating fractal objects and representing the calculation results as still images, animations, music, or other media.
Rave dance parties where DJs and other performers play psychedelic trance music, with the accompaniment of laser light shows, projected images, and artificial fog. Attendees often use "club drugs".

React Music Limited was a London-based independent record label that was formed in 1990 by James Horrocks and Thomas Foley. James Horrocks was initially involved with successful dance music independent Rhythm King, and React pursued a similar approach—specifically electronic dance music, house music, acid house, techno and rave along with newer "dance" oriented subgenres which emerged throughout the '90s—including hard house, tech house, trance, hardbag, happy hardcore, drum and bass and chill out.

DJ Sharpnel is the collective alias for Japanese electronic artists Jea and Lemmy. Via their dōjin label Sharpnelsound, they release albums consisting of their own speedcore, gabber, happy hardcore and trance works as well as guest tracks from acquaintances of the group, such as DJ Chucky, m1dy, and M-Project.

References

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[Profil_hardcore_by_Michel_Van_Grevelinge-1] Socio-anthropological book about the techno scene with a lot of references on hangars liquides - Author Michel Van Grevelinge - l'Harmattan editions 2010

[flashcore-2] Extensive article about Flashcore and Hangars Liquides - "spannered" blog - author Jon Weinel - 2007

[manifesto-3] Manifesto of Hangars Liquides. Retrieved 29 September 2013.

[the_world's_largest_cyberpunk_city-4] The Guardian features a video of Hangars Liquides as the world's largest cyberpunk city - 2014