"People go there to get fucked up and dance"
September 29, 2017 12:31 PM Subscribe
But to WIXAPOL, this change in attitude is “a perversion. You’re going to go to the club and get drunk or take drugs and be ridiculous, but at the same time feel better about yourself because it’s a ‘better type of party’, which is bullshit,” says DJ SPORTY SPICE. “You can’t categorize music in that way—especially club music. We were sick of that when we started, so we tried to do something completely different. We tried to do something raw, untasteful and ‘not good.'”In Poland, they're reviving Gabber, led by a trio of djs called DJ SPORTY SPICE, DJ TORRENTZ.EU and MIKOUAJ REJW.
Just when I think we've finally hit peak subgenre, I see the phrase "Papal donk music" and know that the kids are gonna be all right.
posted by Uncle Ira at 3:12 PM on September 29, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by Uncle Ira at 3:12 PM on September 29, 2017 [11 favorites]
Hardcore will never die.
posted by glonous keming at 3:32 PM on September 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 3:32 PM on September 29, 2017 [3 favorites]
The Parisian hybridstyle/*core collective Casual Gabberz included some of the WIXAPOL S.A. lunacy on their recent INTUILE DE FUIR compilation. Hard techno isn't just drug-fuelled crap for gurning losers - even the much-maligned donk endemic to the north-east of England centres around a mutually-supportive scene of artists and parties dedicated to advancing the style (even if you don't like it, it's certainly inventive).
TFA doesn't give much in the way of the music, but here's a couple of my faves:
WIXAPOL S.A. - Girls and Boys United
Indecorum - Fire In My Body
posted by prismatic7 at 3:48 PM on September 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
TFA doesn't give much in the way of the music, but here's a couple of my faves:
WIXAPOL S.A. - Girls and Boys United
Indecorum - Fire In My Body
posted by prismatic7 at 3:48 PM on September 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
Everything about this sounds awful, and this is coming from someone who really enjoys getting fucked up and dancing.
posted by mannequito at 5:30 PM on September 29, 2017
posted by mannequito at 5:30 PM on September 29, 2017
"youth is wasted on the young"
"naw, man woodstock 1999 was way better than woodstock '94. Generation NeXt forever!"
posted by lkc at 7:41 PM on September 29, 2017
"naw, man woodstock 1999 was way better than woodstock '94. Generation NeXt forever!"
posted by lkc at 7:41 PM on September 29, 2017
gabber's not my bag but cmon dj torrentz.eu is a hella good name
posted by juv3nal at 7:47 PM on September 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by juv3nal at 7:47 PM on September 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
This brings back fond memories of going up to house music DJs at parties and asking them "where's the hardcore?"
posted by foobaz at 10:58 PM on September 29, 2017
posted by foobaz at 10:58 PM on September 29, 2017
Oh, man. This is the perfect place for my favorite gabber story. Flaterik, you might even remember this.
There's a hardcore DJ from Southern California named Ron D. Core who was pretty instrumental in bringing hardcore techno sounds to LA very early on. And I mean very early on, his club Funny Farm running at Club Post Nuclear as early as 1990ish.
Roll forward to about 1996 or so. This is the birth of an era of the mega-rave where promoters started promising 3, 4 or 5 stages and ludicrous amounts of attractions and fairground rides breathlessly detailed in poster-sized fliers crammed with way too much text. This is when the first Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal Wonderland parties from the now world famous Insomniac happened, for example.
And a lot of these promised megaparties never happened. This was also an era of frequent police busts of unpermitted parties of enormous size and an era where the promoters massively overpromised or had their complicated plans go sideways. Frequently. It was an era known for "make up" parties to try to atone for busted or failed events.
The first two Nocturnal Wonderland parties were busted/shut down for example, AFAIR. I know the first one was a total disaster and involved riot cops and rubber bullets. I'm actually still irritated and stunned that Insomniac and EDC managed to get as big as it did.
As if this all wasn't dizzying or silly enough the electronic dance music scene in LA at the time was exploding into fractured tribes and related genres from jungle, goa/trance to west coast breaks and big beat to a revival of deep house - as well as a really intense and silly revival of hardcore and gabber - that somehow wasn't just happy hardcore again? *shrug*
And one of the odd micro-fads of this silly and often very day glow (even by raver standards) gabber contingent was the use of "gabber sticks" - which were just those brightly colored foam pool noodles. Which these gabber fans would use to whack on each other and the speakers as they happily pogo'ed around to music that generally sounded like a dozen horror and war films playing at once in a blender pulsing at 180 beats per minute.
The scene for the actual story is a makeup party for a badly failed overly complicated party involving fairground rides and other silly crap. Even the free no-ticket-required makeup party promised something like three sound systems and carnival rides, which was just stupid and everyone knew it.
The actual location is a badly used scrap of desert somewhere north of Lancaster of Interstate 14. It's obviously been used as a local dump. There's coiled skeletons of burnt out mattresses all over the place, a couple of trampled barbed wire fences, broken glass, shot up TVs and fridges and crap. Someone's got a small bonfire going reeking of plastics and sage, and it's about the only real light besides the ebb and flow of car headlights as people keep arriving.
I don't think anyone who was there didn't get cut by something. I remember getting home and finding random cuts and scratches all over me. While I was out there, I distinctly remember pondering the status of my tetanus shot seriously for the first time ever as a young adult.
It was not a pretty scene. People were kind of milling around and obviously irritated by how shitty everything was and trying to get sorted and figure out what was going on.
There's two sound systems, one dinky but punchy little thing that looked like it might have come in a box labeled "My first underground DJ soundsystem" and one fairly large wall of blown out, dirty speakers from a sound crew/guy called Shredder, who was notorious for his authentic euro-style blown out earbleed sound, as well as taking his crappiest speakers out to the crappiest parties. Like this one.
And at some point Ron D. Core is suppose to play the larger system. His rabid fanbase is milling about and waiting for his set. There people zombie-walking around this apocalyptic hellscape brandishing silly neon-colored foam sticks like spears, clad in garish, tribal neons and day glow, like a mashup scene somewhere between The Young Ones and Liquid Sky and Mad Max.
And then the word gets out that Ron D Core's set is being shunted to the smaller sound system, and it suddenly becomes crystal clear that the majority of these weirdos milling around with gabber sticks looking all silly and tribal are there specifically for Ron, and they're totally fuckin' pissed about this new news, and, well... actual riots weren't unheard of at this point in LA's history with raves and underground parties and the mood went from a bit tense to potential Lord of the Flies in seconds.
And Ron is visibly pissed, too. He then proceeds to play the hardest, angriest, fastest and most terrifying DJ set I've ever witnessed anywhere. It was a full on surgical, sonic bass assault at 180-200 BPM. Like, I felt sorry for and pain for the speakers, but I didn't know how strong that feeling was going to be, yet.
So, Ron's weird gabber posse is mobbing the poor little speaker stacks, a simple pair of maybe a subwoofer or two each with a decent sized full range top strapped to it with ratcheting cargo straps. They're pogoing all around it and whacking each other silly with their gabber sticks and whacking the speakers, too. Keep in mind this is all happening at 180+ frenetic beats per minute. By firelight. In a barbed wire and trash strewn sun-blasted hunk of bad high desert on a really dark, moonless night.
I don't exactly remember when it first started, but at some point the mob of about 40-50 people around each stack had, as a group, picked up each speaker stack and were holding it several feet in the air. And shaking it in time to the beat. With people piled up on it. While everyone else was still pogo-ing all over the place and whacking the heck out of each with their goofy gabber sticks.
They all thought this was the greatest thing, ever. It was correctly cheered as a totally new thing that no one had ever seen or done before. Ron was totally into it. I remember standing there to the side just watching, my face probably locked in an expression like this :D and just not believing what I was seeing. I remember walking around the back of the small stacks because the sound tech in me was curious, and seeing that the speaker interconnect cables didn't really seem to mind the unusual stress, and they had plenty of slack.
And those speakers didn't touch the ground again until Ron's set was over a good 90+ minutes later. People just kept constantly trading places to take a break or go dance or go whacking about with their foam gabber stick. During all of this, people kept piling on and off the speakers, too.
At the end of the set the speakers were gently put back on the ground and all that frenetic energy was spent and dissipated, like it all never happened.
I'd eat weird bugs to see photos or video of this night. Very few of these weird events were captured on either still or video.
posted by loquacious at 4:06 AM on September 30, 2017 [21 favorites]
There's a hardcore DJ from Southern California named Ron D. Core who was pretty instrumental in bringing hardcore techno sounds to LA very early on. And I mean very early on, his club Funny Farm running at Club Post Nuclear as early as 1990ish.
Roll forward to about 1996 or so. This is the birth of an era of the mega-rave where promoters started promising 3, 4 or 5 stages and ludicrous amounts of attractions and fairground rides breathlessly detailed in poster-sized fliers crammed with way too much text. This is when the first Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal Wonderland parties from the now world famous Insomniac happened, for example.
And a lot of these promised megaparties never happened. This was also an era of frequent police busts of unpermitted parties of enormous size and an era where the promoters massively overpromised or had their complicated plans go sideways. Frequently. It was an era known for "make up" parties to try to atone for busted or failed events.
The first two Nocturnal Wonderland parties were busted/shut down for example, AFAIR. I know the first one was a total disaster and involved riot cops and rubber bullets. I'm actually still irritated and stunned that Insomniac and EDC managed to get as big as it did.
As if this all wasn't dizzying or silly enough the electronic dance music scene in LA at the time was exploding into fractured tribes and related genres from jungle, goa/trance to west coast breaks and big beat to a revival of deep house - as well as a really intense and silly revival of hardcore and gabber - that somehow wasn't just happy hardcore again? *shrug*
And one of the odd micro-fads of this silly and often very day glow (even by raver standards) gabber contingent was the use of "gabber sticks" - which were just those brightly colored foam pool noodles. Which these gabber fans would use to whack on each other and the speakers as they happily pogo'ed around to music that generally sounded like a dozen horror and war films playing at once in a blender pulsing at 180 beats per minute.
The scene for the actual story is a makeup party for a badly failed overly complicated party involving fairground rides and other silly crap. Even the free no-ticket-required makeup party promised something like three sound systems and carnival rides, which was just stupid and everyone knew it.
The actual location is a badly used scrap of desert somewhere north of Lancaster of Interstate 14. It's obviously been used as a local dump. There's coiled skeletons of burnt out mattresses all over the place, a couple of trampled barbed wire fences, broken glass, shot up TVs and fridges and crap. Someone's got a small bonfire going reeking of plastics and sage, and it's about the only real light besides the ebb and flow of car headlights as people keep arriving.
I don't think anyone who was there didn't get cut by something. I remember getting home and finding random cuts and scratches all over me. While I was out there, I distinctly remember pondering the status of my tetanus shot seriously for the first time ever as a young adult.
It was not a pretty scene. People were kind of milling around and obviously irritated by how shitty everything was and trying to get sorted and figure out what was going on.
There's two sound systems, one dinky but punchy little thing that looked like it might have come in a box labeled "My first underground DJ soundsystem" and one fairly large wall of blown out, dirty speakers from a sound crew/guy called Shredder, who was notorious for his authentic euro-style blown out earbleed sound, as well as taking his crappiest speakers out to the crappiest parties. Like this one.
And at some point Ron D. Core is suppose to play the larger system. His rabid fanbase is milling about and waiting for his set. There people zombie-walking around this apocalyptic hellscape brandishing silly neon-colored foam sticks like spears, clad in garish, tribal neons and day glow, like a mashup scene somewhere between The Young Ones and Liquid Sky and Mad Max.
And then the word gets out that Ron D Core's set is being shunted to the smaller sound system, and it suddenly becomes crystal clear that the majority of these weirdos milling around with gabber sticks looking all silly and tribal are there specifically for Ron, and they're totally fuckin' pissed about this new news, and, well... actual riots weren't unheard of at this point in LA's history with raves and underground parties and the mood went from a bit tense to potential Lord of the Flies in seconds.
And Ron is visibly pissed, too. He then proceeds to play the hardest, angriest, fastest and most terrifying DJ set I've ever witnessed anywhere. It was a full on surgical, sonic bass assault at 180-200 BPM. Like, I felt sorry for and pain for the speakers, but I didn't know how strong that feeling was going to be, yet.
So, Ron's weird gabber posse is mobbing the poor little speaker stacks, a simple pair of maybe a subwoofer or two each with a decent sized full range top strapped to it with ratcheting cargo straps. They're pogoing all around it and whacking each other silly with their gabber sticks and whacking the speakers, too. Keep in mind this is all happening at 180+ frenetic beats per minute. By firelight. In a barbed wire and trash strewn sun-blasted hunk of bad high desert on a really dark, moonless night.
I don't exactly remember when it first started, but at some point the mob of about 40-50 people around each stack had, as a group, picked up each speaker stack and were holding it several feet in the air. And shaking it in time to the beat. With people piled up on it. While everyone else was still pogo-ing all over the place and whacking the heck out of each with their goofy gabber sticks.
They all thought this was the greatest thing, ever. It was correctly cheered as a totally new thing that no one had ever seen or done before. Ron was totally into it. I remember standing there to the side just watching, my face probably locked in an expression like this :D and just not believing what I was seeing. I remember walking around the back of the small stacks because the sound tech in me was curious, and seeing that the speaker interconnect cables didn't really seem to mind the unusual stress, and they had plenty of slack.
And those speakers didn't touch the ground again until Ron's set was over a good 90+ minutes later. People just kept constantly trading places to take a break or go dance or go whacking about with their foam gabber stick. During all of this, people kept piling on and off the speakers, too.
At the end of the set the speakers were gently put back on the ground and all that frenetic energy was spent and dissipated, like it all never happened.
I'd eat weird bugs to see photos or video of this night. Very few of these weird events were captured on either still or video.
posted by loquacious at 4:06 AM on September 30, 2017 [21 favorites]
I think it's important to step back and reflect that someone said, and then someone else quoted
“For some orthodox gabber and hardcore fans, it’s unacceptable that we play this papal donk music or anything different alongside gabber,”
I am going to be laughing about papal-donk-music for a LONG time.
posted by jonnay at 7:00 AM on October 1, 2017
“For some orthodox gabber and hardcore fans, it’s unacceptable that we play this papal donk music or anything different alongside gabber,”
I am going to be laughing about papal-donk-music for a LONG time.
posted by jonnay at 7:00 AM on October 1, 2017
"they're reviving Gabber"
PRAISE BE!
Wait, I'm fifty one.
How the fuck is this going to work?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:07 PM on October 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
PRAISE BE!
Wait, I'm fifty one.
How the fuck is this going to work?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:07 PM on October 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
1. Purchase LED headlamp
2. Remove strap
3. Duct tape to cane
4. Enable strobe setting
5. Get fucked up
6. Dance
posted by mannequito at 2:25 AM on October 2, 2017
2. Remove strap
3. Duct tape to cane
4. Enable strobe setting
5. Get fucked up
6. Dance
posted by mannequito at 2:25 AM on October 2, 2017
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So, philosophically, I'm with them.
But just reading the word gabber gives me a headache. I might need a nap.
posted by flaterik at 2:07 PM on September 29, 2017 [3 favorites]