thank you soundcloud algorithm i definitely needed to hear a happy hardcore remix of bedrock
lemme hear it
ask and ye shall receive
This is actually a fairly informed pastiche of over a decade of trends in happy hardcore (“hard trance” was the attempt to create a less luvvy anthemy branch that DJ Muppetfucker called “Kenneth”)
TIL there was a person who went by “DJ Muppetfucker” and seems to have no connection with Homestuck in either direction
thank you soundcloud algorithm i definitely needed to hear a happy hardcore remix of bedrock
lemme hear it
ask and ye shall receive
This is actually a fairly informed pastiche of over a decade of trends in happy hardcore (“hard trance” was the attempt to create a less luvvy anthemy branch that DJ Muppetfucker called “Kenneth”)
Listening to the Caramella Girls Caramelldansen and it’s taking me back to the late ‘90s listening to MP3’s of this Rotterdam bullshit cause it was 1999 and that was what you could get for happy 160+ bpm music
One of the first happycore songs I ever downloaded. I never really understood the Dutch or Spanish scenes. From Badtz’s hotline server, if that means anything to anyone. I was Paperthin.
One of my least favourite categories of music is rock songs about how great rock music is and we’re playing the best rock music now everyone wants our rock music yeah. Another is raps about how great and cool the rapper is and how many albums he’s selling etc. Booooring.
yo the tautology crew is in the house to say: the tautology crew is in the house today
Yo, MC Quine in the house to say, “Yo, MC Quine in the house to say,
surely MC Quine is in the house to say, the same sentence but in a quoted way
Honestly all the "happy hardcore” I loved in later adolescence was basically “I’m sure on MDMA right now”, the 160+ bpm song with childhood cartoon samples
thinking about how I grew up on a North American happy hardcore listserv that unstatedly took Anabolic Frolic’s Toronto “Hullabaloo” parties as bullshit
Like yeah unspoken, that’s why we’re all here and why people in upstate NY and Ohio are particularly key, but still
Was just thinking that the new Rocket League music seemed to be progressing sideways into happy hardcore, then I looked up and the next track was by Styles, Gammer, and Dougal, so yeah
First thing about happy hardcore is that the genre is constantly changing. Happy hardcore from 1994 sounds nothing like the happy hardcore from 1999, or from 2004, or so on. Every couple of years the sound shifts, which is why an introduction to happy hardcore needs to be given sort-of chronologically.
Another fun thing about happy hardcore: there are only a handful of people who make it, but they have more aliases than fingers and toes. Discogs is a really good site to check what an artist’s other names might be, or joint acts, or what have you. The best is to look up music by the labels they were released on, rather than the artists themselves.
First up, oldskool happy hardcore was considered an offshoot of jungle back in the day. It is sometimes called “breakbeat hardcore” or just “old school”. You’d be looking for out for artists like:
Good places to start are Kniteforce Records and Just Another Label. Unfortunately for the old old school above, most were listed on bootlegs to avoid copyright issues (like 89 Revival and SMD) or found in cassette tapes of live mixes like Vibealite and Helter Skelter. Lots of songs sampled preexisting house/dance classics of the early 90s like Bizarre Inc. and Ratpack, and therefore had trouble with official releases.
==A shameless plug for my friend M27, an amazing DJ with an enviable collection of the old school classics, which he regularly mashes with jungle and hip hop and releases on cassette.
Moving on, there is a variant of old school sometimes referred to as “toytown” or “cheese” because it is regarded as being highly infantile, featuring chipmunk vocals, slamming piano riffs, and children/cartoon samples. This is around the mid to late 90s where things really start getting hyperactive and separating from jungle influences, trading breakbeats for 4/4; It is the happy hardcore. This era is very important because 90% of these artists founded happy hardcore as it’s known today, and continued throughout the years to produce and splinter the sounds and directions of the genre.
==And here, another shameless plug for my good friend DJ Flapjack, who professes in the cheesy style of happy hardcore. If you like this stuff, you’ll get more than enough from his expert mixes. Check the labels Essential Platinum, Next Generation and Blatant Beats, and as Slammin Vinyl for more. Cheesy happy hardcore has its own fair share of bootleg labels, including but not limited to Juicy Cuts/Silk Cuts and Ravers Choice.
FROM THERE, happy hardcore in the early 00s started taking a harder, yet more trance-like direction usually dubbed UK hardcore, with many of the above artists following suit:
From this came an acid-influenced (that’s 303 acid, not the drug acid) even harder, more driven style of hardcore called freeform. Aforementioned DJs Sharkey and DJ (Kevin) Energy had made their homes in this genre when I came into the scene.
V.A.G.A.B.O.N.D. (closer to the ‘bangin hardcore’ of NextGen/Blatant Beats but cooperates well with the genre, I think)
Good labels to check out are Nu Energy and its multitudes of sublabels, Bedlam Records, Thin N’ Crispy, Raw Elements, and the Hardcore Tsunami compilations released by HappyHardcore.com. Unfortunately I have lost touch with this subgenre, as it is no longer being produced (to my knowledge) and didn’t resonate with me much in the first place.
And now there’s the new “clubcore”, nicknamed such for being released on the Clubland X-Treme Hardcore compilation albums. I personally can’t stand most of this, but it’s super popular. I dunno any of the labels it’s being released on, so your best bet is just to stick to the Clubland CDs.
Chwhynny (plays her own instruments and does her own vocals)
This brings us about to the modern era, but I have lost touch with the newest stuff coming out. The genre is closing in on being two decades old and has changed so, so much in that short time (and this is without even going into its actual “hardcore” roots that eventually sprout into gabber, speedcore, terrorcore, hardtek, and the like). The journey into happy hardcore is an expansive and rewarding one, and hopefully these links will provide a great start into discovering more from the kind that interests you.
Enjoy!
This is the genre I listened to all the time in adolescence into my 20s
With insight, I’m like “wait, I remember definitely thinking it was better music to think to ‘cause I could kind of match my mind’s clock speed to a 180+ bpm 4/4 kickdrum with random sound effect stabs, I wonder if that was a related thing
Because I definitely know I’ve been this way for a long time; it got worse around senior year of college but even as like a 13 year old I identified it as “bloodlust” after the Warcraft II spell
And then I was like “hey do you remember the first song you got and realized this was the genre for you cause you’d play the .mp3 in the morning before you left for school and get so pumped you got like a physical sense of euphoria?
And also me was like “hmm… ah. That’s a little on the nose.”
It’s the strangest thing, this weird music I listened to in high school – and like no one else except the people I introduced it to and like 30 people on the internet and some ravers in England and Toronto, as far as I knew – and there are people in this room that I’m pretty sure are younger than the first time than I listened to these songs
