Mainstream hardcore
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Gabber, gabba, or hardcore, is a style of electronic music and a subgenre of hardcore techno. "Gabber" literally means buddy or friend. Although in the late 1980's a house variant from Detroit first reached Amsterdam, the Netherlands it were the producers and DJ's from Rotterdam who evolved it to a harder house variant wich we today know as "Gabber" style or "Hardcore". Tough house-productions from Frankfurt's Marc Acardipane were quite alike to the Rotterdam style it was the populairity of this music in Holland wich made Rotterdam the cradle of Hardcore Gabber. The essence of the gabber sound is a distorted kick sound, overdriven to the point where it becomes a square wave and makes a recognizably melodic tone. Often the Roland Alpha Juno was used to create this sound. Gabber tracks typically include samples and synthesised melodies with the typical tempo ranging from 150 to 220 bpm. Violence, drugs and profanity are common themes in gabber, perceptible through its samples and lyrics, often screamed, pitch shifted or distorted.
Origins
The origins of the gabber sound
In general the track We Have Arrived (1990) by Mescalinum United is considered to be the first gabber track. Hardcore/gabber music is a fusion of techno and industrial with a dark, aggressive atmosphere. One of the first Dutch gabber tracks was Rotterdam Termination Source's Poing (1992) which became a major hit. The record shop Midtown in Rotterdam is one of the shrines of gabber music, while the Rotterdam based club Parkzicht was the birthplace of the whole gabber culture. In the early to mid nineties a clear gabber fashion took form. Between 1993 and 1998 loads of gabber fans dressed in (multiple, layered) Australian and Cavello tracksuits, Nike Air Max sport shoes (with punctured air chambers), bomber jackets, and the majority of the male gabbers had shaven heads. Female fans often shaved the sides and back of their head and wore their hair in a pony tail. Later, in 1999 and beyond, their clothing style more and more changed and brands like Fred Perry, Lonsdale and Ben Sherman were added to their outfits. Nevertheless, in most other countries around the world, no dresscode is associated with gabber, and this "training-suit/londsdale" code is actually mocked. Even in Holland, the trend, which culminated in the Happy Hardcore age, is disappearing.
The style began in the late 1980s, but some claim that it was diluted in 1995 by happy hardcore and, for hardcore fans, by commercialisation which resulted in a younger crowd being attracted to the scene. The commercial organisation ID&T helped a lot in making the music popular by organising parties (most notable are the Thunderdome parties) and selling merchandise. After the airing of what were felt by many hardcore fans as humiliating video clips, notably Hakke en Zage (1996) by Gabber Piet, some gabbers felt they were being made fun of. The name gabber is somewhat less used these days to describe this music style, specially due to this stigma created in the mid 1990s. Many would now prefer to call the style 'hardcore'. After surviving underground for a number of years, in 2002 the style regained some popularity in the Netherlands, although the sound is more mature, darker and industrial. Around the world, it never lost its original grip, and music was evolving and creating new subgenres and approaches, from Digital Hardcore to Breakcore, from Noisecore to Speedcore. Labels like Ant-Zen, Hands and other industrial/experimental ones use many hardcore/gabber elements and come close to what nowadays is called darkcore. It was as if the "happy hardcore period" was ignored, and gabber kept evolving from the oldskool times, maintaining the original industrial harshness with a broad variety of talented artists.
Nu style gabber
There was a somewhat decisive split in the hardcore scene starting in the late 1990s. Some producers started embracing a slower style characterized by a deeper, harder bass drum that typically had a longer envelope than was possible in the traditional, faster style. This newer sound was referred to as "Main stream" or "New Style" (or "Nu Style") and "New Skool" and as the tempo got slower and slower it began to become similar to hard house. Many hardcore enthusiasts hated hard house and the club scene it typified, and frequently DJs would be booed by one group of fans and cheered for by another at the same party, depending on the tempo and style of music they were playing. This is similar to the rivalry and mutual dislike that surfaced earlier between fans of "regular" hardcore and happy hardcore. Eventually the two styles met in the middle, and most gabber today is produced in a bpm range of 160-170. This is typically a little bit slower than the Rotterdam style of the mid-1990s and somewhat faster than the slowest New Style tracks that emerged.
Style
Gabber is characterised by its bassdrum sound. Essentially, it comes from taking a normal synthesized bassdrum and overdriving it heavily. The approximately sinusoidal sample starts to clip into a squarewave with a falling pitch. This results in a number of effects: the frequency spectrum spreads out, thus achieving a louder, more aggressive sound. It also changes the amplitude envelope of the sound by increasing the sustain. Due to the distortion, the drum also develops a melodic tone. It is not uncommon for the bassdrum pattern to change pitch throughout the song to follow the bassline.
The second frequently used component of gabber tracks is the "hoover", a patch of the Roland Alpha Juno synthesizer. A "hoover" is typically a distorted, grainy, sweeping sound which, when played on a low key, can create a dark and brooding bassline. Alternatively, when played at higher pitches, the hoover becomes an aggressive, shrieking lead. Faster gabba tracks often apply extremely fast hoover-patterns - gapping (changing the volume rapidly between the maximum and silence) is often used. Common elements also include guitar riffing (often done live at gabber parties) and MCing (more often than not also distorted).
The aforementioned two subgenres of gabber differ in essentially one thing: the tempo.
- Oldskool gabber, staying true to its mentality, defines "hardness" in speed; tracks rarely go under 160 BPM, and bassdrum rolls often go up to a speed where the beats themselves are hardly distinguishable from each other.
- Nuskool gabber, however, slows the speed down to 150 BPM, but extends the length of the bassdrum so the bass-frequency resonance keeps on longer. (In this aspect, "nugabber" obviously cannot be considered less powerful than its precursor, although slower hardcore is often less energetic.) A typical style is one best made known by Rotterdam Terror Corps: the beats are divided into triplets and all hoover notes are played in a short, staccato-like fashion, giving the song a march-like feel.
Misconceptions
The gabber scene is often associated with the use of amphetamines, ecstasy, ketamine and other drugs.
A misconception about gabber is that it is 'primitive' music. The style (somewhat limited by the fans' taste) evolved into a creative genre, in which complex rhythmic and melodic combinations became more common. More recent gabber music has included melodies and drums that are overlayed with various effects, which adds richness to the music. Gabber wants to grow into a more serious music genre, in which producers are encouraged to experiment. This is largely because of the limited characteristics of hardcore, which force artists to approach several different music styles to create memorable music.
In the early 1990s, gabber gained a following in the neo-fascist rave scenes of Germany and the American Midwest.[1] However, most gabber fans do not belong to the aforementioned groups, and many producers have released tracks that vocally speak out against racism.
See also
Record labels
- Rotterdam Records
- Neophyte Records
- Offensive Records
- Megarave Records
- H2oh Recordings
Notes
- ^ Silcott, Mireille. Rave America: New School Dance Scapes. (Toronto: ECW Press, 1999), 114-117.
External links
- Portuguese Hardcore Gabber Portal Info on Hardcore and Thunderdome
- Geordie Gabba Mafia (Newcastle, UK) Artists and DJ's from Newcastle (UK) Gabber scene. Run by DJ Smurf