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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A sound system is a group of DJs and audio engineers contributing and working together as one, playing and producing music over a large PA system or sound reinforcement system, typically for a dance event or party.
Free tekno, also known as tekno, freetekno and hardtek, is the music predominantly played at free parties in Europe. The spelling tekno is deliberately used to differentiate the musical style from techno. The music is fast and it can vary between 150 and 185 bpm and is characterised by a pounding repetitive kick drum. Nevertheless, bass drum distortion by clipping is used less often as in the related genre of mainstyle hardcore. Nowadays, some tekno producers also use drum sets that rather sound trancey, since many members of the tekno subculture as well as the psytrance subculture frequently attend the same raves and the two scenes are closely connected.
The Castlemorton Common Festival was a week-long free festival and rave held in the Malvern Hills near Malvern, Worcestershire, England between 22 and 29 May 1992. The media interest and controversy surrounding the festival, and concerns as to the way it was policed, inspired the legislation that would eventually become the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
Free festivals are a combination of music, arts and cultural activities, for which often no admission is charged, but involvement is preferred. They are identifiable by being multi-day events connected by a camping community without centralised control. The pioneering free festival movement started in the UK in the 1970s.
Exodus Collective was a community collective and sound system formed in 1992, in the Marsh Farm area of Luton, England. It organised free parties and became involved in housing, social exclusion, and community projects, founded upon the principle of DIY culture. The group squatted buildings and repeatedly came into conflict with Bedfordshire Police, which by 1995 had resulted in Bedfordshire County Council voting for a public inquiry into alleged police harassment. The license of a pub owned by the mother of people in the collective was revoked, a decision which was later overturned by a judicial review.
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It introduced a number of changes to the law, most notably in the restriction and reduction of existing rights, clamping down on unlicensed rave parties, and greater penalties for certain "anti-social" behaviours. The Bill was introduced by Michael Howard, Home Secretary of Prime Minister John Major's Conservative government, and attracted widespread opposition.
Network 23 was a record label founded by the Spiral Tribe sound system in 1994. Its last release was in 1996. In 2005, the label Network Repress was set up to rerelease tracks.
Tribal Gathering is the original British electronic dance music festival that between 1993 and 2004 catered for different types of dance music cultures such as techno, house and drum & bass. After 18 years, Tribal Gathering returns in 2023 for a two-day event to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
Vox Populi was a sound system based in South East London. It was active in holding free parties in both the United Kingdom and Europe, between 1993 and 1996. These sound system events were often held in disused industrial sites and warehousing.
A doof or bush doof is a type of outdoor dance party generally held in a remote country area, or outside a large city in surrounding bush or rainforest. Events referred to as doofs are now held worldwide and have built from a small set of social groups to a subculture with millions of active members worldwide, considered by some as a full blown culture similar to raves or teknivals. Doofs generally have healing workshops, speakers, art, live artists and DJs playing a range of electronic music, commonly goa, house, dub techno, Techno, acid heavy sounds and psychedelic trance.
Every Picture Tells a Story were a series of all-night electronic dance music festivals held at different venues in Melbourne. In 1991 Heidi John and Richard John started a series of warehouse, rave parties. In 1993 they formed the Melbourne Underground Development (M.U.D.) crew with Phil Woodman. From 1993 to 1997 the parties were held at the Global Village in suburban, Footscray. Some 21 such parties were held until the year 2000. A one-off Every Picture Tells a Story event was held in April 2010.
DiY Sound System, also known as the DiY Collective, was a British house music sound system, co-founded by Harry Harrison, Rick "Digs" Down, Simon "DK" Smith and Pete "Woosh" Birch, in 1989. The group "divided their activities between free parties and legal club nights, acting as a bridge between counter-culture and the mainstream".
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.
Frenchcore is a subgenre of hardcore techno. The style differs from other forms of hardcore in terms of a faster tempo, usually above 190-250 BPM, and a loud & distorted offbeat bassline.
