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, 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.
Freetekno is a cultural movement that is present in Europe, Australia and North America. Freetekno sound systems or tribes form in loose collectives, frequently with anarchist philosophies. These sound systems join to hold parties wherever a viable space can be found – typical locations include warehouses, fields, abandoned buildings or forests. Because freetekno parties are usually held illegally this sometimes leads to clashes with the police, as was the case at both the 2004 and 2005 Czechtek festivals and many other, smaller parties around the world at different times.
Jungle is a genre of dance music that developed out of the UK rave scene and sound system culture in the 1990s. Emerging from breakbeat hardcore, the style is characterised by rapid breakbeats, heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples, and synthesised effects, combined with the deep basslines, melodies, and vocal samples found in dub, reggae and dancehall, as well as hip hop and funk. Many producers frequently sampled the "Amen break" or other breakbeats from funk and jazz recordings. Jungle was a direct precursor to the drum and bass genre which emerged in the mid-1990s.
A free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one system or of many and if the party becomes a festival, it becomes a teknival. This typically means that drugs are readily available. The word free in this context is used both to describe the entry fee and the lack of restrictions and law enforcement.
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.
Hardcore is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the United Kingdom, 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.
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 Scottish DJ and music producer Scott Brown under numerous aliases.
Teknivals are large free parties which take place for several days. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement. The parties often take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, beaches, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave, punk, reggae sound system and UK traveller scenes and spawned an entire subculture. Summer is the usual season for teknivals.
Chris Samojlenko, better known as Anabolic Frolic and Chris Frolic, is a happy hardcore DJ from Canada who is known for the Happy 2b Hardcore CD series and the Hullabaloo! promotion he threw in Toronto, Ontario.
The World Electronic Music Festival (WEMF) was an electronic music event held annually in various locations across Southern Ontario over a period of three days. It was created and run by Destiny Productions out of Toronto. In summer of 2008 Destiny put on what was said to be their last WEMF in Madawaska, however the event returned in 2011 for 2 more years.
Matthew Nelson, better known as DJ Slipmatt, is a British electronic music producer and DJ. He was one half of breakbeat hardcore group SL2, who had a 1992 UK hit with "On a Ragga Tip".
Helter Skelter is one of the longest running dance music promoters in the UK. It is one of the few remaining rave music brands which promotes early underground styles of electronic dance music, as opposed to the more mainstream house music clubs that followed during the 1990s.
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.
Thunderdome is a famous concept in hardcore techno and gabber music that was mainly used for a series of parties and CD-albums. It was organized by the Dutch entertainment company ID&T. The first party was organized in 1992 and the party held in December 2012 was advertised as being the end of Thunderdome. However, after the 2012 event, the party was brought back in 2017 for the 25th anniversary with a 2019 edition announced the following year. In 2022, Thunderdome celebrated its 30th anniversary at the Jaarbeurs convention centre, Utrecht.
Stu Allan was a British dance music DJ and producer who worked for Piccadilly Radio and Key 103 in Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s. His hip hop, hardcore techno and house music mixes ranked him the world's No. 3 DJ by DJ Magazine in 1993 and his performances influenced significantly the music scene during this period. Allan continued to remain a major contributor within the UK hardcore scene..
Sensation is an indoor electronic dance music event which originated in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and organized by ID&T. The original event, which ran exclusively in the Amsterdam Arena for a period of five years until 2005, is now located throughout various European and a few non-European countries.
The Beacham Theatre is a cinema built in 1921 by Braxton Beacham Sr. in the city of Orlando, Florida. The current address of the theater is 46 North Orange Avenue, and it is located at the southwest corner of Orange Avenue and Washington Street. The building's current lack of impressive architecture is offset by its significant cultural history. The Beacham Theatre was considered an important contributing structure when the Downtown Orlando historic district was created in 1980 and the building was granted local landmark status in 1987.
Gabber is a style of electronic dance music and a subgenre of hardcore techno, as well as the surrounding subculture. The music is more commonly referred to as Hardcore, which is characterised by fast beats, distorted & heavier kickdrums, with darker themes and samples. This style was developed in Rotterdam and Amsterdam in the 1990s by producers like Marc Acardipane, Paul Elstak, DJ Rob, and The Prophet, forming record labels such as Rotterdam Records, Mokum Records, Pengo Records and Industrial Strength Records.
Happy 2b Hardcore is a DJ mix album by Canadian DJ Anabolic Frolic. It was released in 1997 on American breakbeat label Moonshine Music and is the first series in Frolic's Happy 2b Hardcore series of DJ mix albums, documenting the emergence of happy hardcore music in the United Kingdom and Europe. The series itself is a spin-off of Moonshine's Speed Limit 140 BPM+ series of fast-tempo dance music compilations. The album was conceived to introduce American audiences to happy hardcore, and contains sixteen of the genre's anthems which carry many of happy hardcore's defining characteristics, such as fast tempo, frantic breakbeats, major key tonality, off-kilter, quirky keyboard effects and "semi-melodies."
