yeah... Atmosphere and Sage Francis getting picked up was a bit of a surprise... and there are some strange projects in the works (ie: Error - which is a collaboration between members of Bad Religion, Nine Inch Nails and Dillinger Escape Plan)...

It's going to be an interesting year... especially as it'll be the follow up to their foray into CanCon (Weakerthans and Daniel Lanois both released on there last year)...

Wait... I thought I was supposed to be a narrowminded hardcore DJ that doesn't know anything about other forms of music. Ignore everything I've said here.

No... really.

Converge signing with Epitaph is probably better than some of the alternatives out there - especially since Equal Vision has apparently been picked up by Sony... and I can't imagine Converge fitting in what that camp.

I'll let you know what the Converge album on Epitaph sounds like - I'm pretty sure I'll be hearing it shortly.

As for 'Japanoise' bands... you mean stuff like Ruins, Boredoms, Keiji Haino and such? I followed that stuff in the mid-90s - but have paid more attention to the likes of Merzbow, Masonna and Aube since then.

Boredoms, however, put on an incredible live show... and Eye Yamatsuka was friendly when I met him in Minneapolis in '94... although I think he only understood a couple of things I said... the conversation was something like...

me: I really liked the show yesterday.
ye: Show? (moment of silence) YES!! Good!
me: The Praxis material you worked on was really cool.
ye: Yes... Praxis. Thank you.

just an aside - I found two copies of Glass' S'Express remix yesterday... weird. I bought one of them (as my copy still resides in Winnipeg).

I've had some disagreements with Chevreux on a few occasions. The guy seems incapable of reviewing a record without comparing it to something else - which is sloppy music journalism. Especially when he accuses people of ripping someone else off when he doesn't have a clue what's going on.

For some reason I feel obligated to mention Bombardier in this thread. His good stuff is really good - and the Demons & Angels cd is one of those really good pieces - it compiles a bunch of tracks from 12" releases on LowRes and Division 13. Tasty.

Locust was the same night at the µ-ziq show, if I remember correctly. I played at the SAT that night, then dropped my records off at home and made it to Sala in time to catch most of the µ-ziq set. I was kinda ticked that I had to miss Locust (there's so many nights when there's nothing going on - and then you end up with nights with too much to do... and that wasn't even a weekend)...

[fate of] Icarus did some pretty fucked up stuff - their second cd features a Venetian Snares remix.. and one of the members of [fate of] Icarus now has a breakcore project called Dev/Null that does some pretty insane stuff. I've been caning a track of his called Bolt Thrower In A Chinese Restaurant that came out on a 7" on the Sprengstoff label.

with The Locust. That should be a sick show... I've been kicking myself for missing them both last year.

That was fun - although the monitors were painfully loud. I managed to squeeze in a lot of old, hard techno... bits of acid... but not much of the 'hardcore' taht people associate with me.

I think it was still pretty hard, though... Those old Circuit Breaker and Cybersonik records can be terrifying.

(International) Noise Conspiracy isn't bad... but it's a very different sort of beast - one that's got a lot more pop music ties... Incidentally The Lost Patrol is a new project by Dennis Lyxzén of Refuse/T(I)NC. It's an acoustic one, though.

I never listened to Incubus... that smarmy guy on the cover didn't do anything for me... they remind me of that old, crap band Extreme who picked someone to rip off on every album. Maybe the guy from Incubus will end up fronting Van Halen... who knows.

Refused kicked all their asses anyways... they broke up, too... but The Shape Of Punk To Come is still worth owning. For real.

Carlos - you should learn the one that goes "I'm a raver baby... so why don't you kill me."

nobody says gay anymore... we say 'rugged.'

That 'Hardcore will never die" track is by The Hypnotist.... and the track is called "Night Of The Living E Heads"...

Strangely the track that follows it on that record is "God Of The Universe" - strange stuff.

God damn... it's the Ox!

nice one... but if he got kicked off then I'm thinking he wasn't scary enough. When it's too scary people are too freaked out to approach you.

I talked to Dominic last month in Toronto - he was doing some Darkrave show down the street from the club I'd played earlier on. He did a lot for hardcore in Toronto - and while we've got very different taste in music - I think it's important to acknowledge his contribution to the scene... and he's always been a good guy whenever I've dealt with him.

The Boredoms are one of the most insane live acts I've ever seen (caught them in Minneapolis in '96)... damn...

Oh yeah... the last High On Fire album (Surrounded By Thieves) is great... and I picked up the 180 gram press of Cephalic Carnage's Lucid Interval not too long ago... which is fuckin' explosive.

I think I heard some of the Earwigisbent stuff at work today. This guy Christophe had a disc of it. Really impressive.

I think Kriss pegged it... I've never thought of hardcore as being a genre... and by saying I associate myself with hardcore - and not with gabber - doesn't necessarily mean that gabber isn't a style of hardcore (although - I will say that there's a reason it's often called gabberhouse)... even Rob Gee made the distinction back in the day... "Anyone who says hardcore techno and gabber house is dead - fuck you."

At any rate - back to the approach vs. genre discussion... I've always been of the idea that once you settle on a genre - once it's been given a name and people start defining what it is... then what it *isn't* has been defined as well. Which means that you're now working within confines. Hardcore, to me, involves thinking outside of those confines and taking things in different directions.

The new Fantomas album (Delirium Corda) is pretty fuckin' weird. Fluctuates between ambient and bursts of doom... if you're familiar with the first album and Director's Cut - then you probably know that the crazier moments on Director's Cut are akin to the mellower moments on the first one... the most active parts of Delirium Corda sound like the more symphonic sections of Director's Cut. Oh yeah - and it's one 74 minute track.

The stuff I've heard from the new Blood Duster album is great (the album is out in Australia - but not out here)... I've got the lead 7" (I Wanna Do It With A Donna/Midnight NAMBLA) and it owns... It's beautiful that they do a cover of Turbonegro (from the Ass Cobra album).

mmmm... Metal.

I said I didn't like the word 'gabber' - meaning, specifically - that I've don't like it when I hear people refer to me as a gabber dj. As I said - I stopped playing that style of music about 8 years ago. I didn't say "I stopped playing it because [insert random derogatory comment]."

For the record... I stopped playing it because I got into techno via industrial... the hardcore coming out on labels like Dead End, Fischkopf, Praxis, Brutal Chud, Six-Sixty-Six and especially Epiteth was more attractive to me... a lot of the Dutch and Scottish stuff was harder and faster dance music. It has, I find, more in common with house music than with the industrial that I cut my teeth on...

Looking up above I don't see anything elitist in my post. I suppose if someone was actively trying to find something of that nature in my words - then they probably could. Why go to the effort, though?

have you guys ever heard the speedcore/noisecore record that Cybersonik (Dan Bell & Richie Hawtin) cut? Jackhammer/Machine Gun. It's straight up sickness. Kicks off at 140bpm, then doubles up to 280. I think that was pretty much the end of an era for them. Thrash (also Cybersonik), Trac-X (Circuit Breaker) and Annexia (dBx) are still some of the heaviest records I can think of.

y'know... despite the fact that my site is hosted by [ gabber.org ] - I've never really liked the word. I've always associated it with the cheesier elements of hardcore... the bouncier stuff. The kind of tracks that I quit playing almost 8 years ago.

I seem to recall seeing some sort of Mills connection with Reload when I was picking up records at a shop in Vancouver years ago... did some digging on discogs and found this ( [ www.discogs.com ] ). Which is remixes of tracks originally on Reload. There's a lot of weird stuff that comes out under pseudonyms. The stuff that VDD Energise released on Six-Sixty-Six and Future Galactic (a track from the latter shows up in the acid mix I did NYE) is a good example of that. I'm not sure how many people are aware that VDD Energise is DJ Valium (his Running In October release on Teknotika is brilliant)!

There's some really crazy stuff out there.. Jasper Dahlback, Joel Mull and Adam Beyer all cut records for Drop Bass (Mooses On Acid, Transparent 303 and Hemlock - respectively)... and the likes of Richie Hawtin (as Circuit Breaker, remixing Glitch), John Selway (as Spy) and Daft Punk (working with Manu Le Malin) all saw some of their earliest work released on Industrial Strength.

Oh yeah... a personal favourite from the 'reading the liner notes' files... Lenny Dee is all over The White Room by KLF. He did the beats for a good portion of the album.

Skeeter's an interesting guy. I've played a couple of shows with him (including one last month in Toronto). Laf-o's stuff is really good, too - although he prefers to call his material 'speedbient'

The Speedbass thing started out as a joke in '97 or so... the guys from SPAZ (Space Pirates of the Autonomous Zones - a freetekno collective out of San Francisco) started it up. They released a couple of records and it sort of disappeared. Skeeter apparently took it upon himself to revive it. We'll see if he meets with much success.

I've got a really old Mills record from the early days of Final Cut... I think it's from about 1988. True Faith featuring Final Cut - You Can't Deny The Bass.

It features "Mad" Mike Banks on keyboards. It truly is a not-so-wonderful record. All the UR stuff is brilliant, though. Riots is probably on the short list of unforgettable cuts.

It also shows that you know how to look up artist info on [ discogs.com ]

Damaged Person - there is such a section... but it's called 'Trance'.

That other Sidewinder release is J.K.Flesh (Justin Broadrick of Godflesh, Tech Level 2, Techno Animal) and K-Mart (Kevin Martin or God, The Bug). The released at least one other record under that name (I've got a 12" on Lo-Fi).

The released a new album last year on Ipecac as The Golden Vampires. I think a previous incarnation featured the two of them working with Alec Empire.

Download's score to the (still unreleased?) film Charlie's Family is pretty crazy too... I wonder when Jim Van Bebber is going to be finished with that thing - seeing as the screenplay and soundtrack were both released years ago and rough cuts of the film have been floating around for a long time.

that's when you need to dig out drum'n'bass or some more minimal hardcore sounds...

I've been out to a few 'industrial' nights and I've usually been sorely disappointed. A lot of what passes for industrial these days sounds like some idiot trying to pass himself off as Andrew Eldritch over top of some crap backing track that rips formulas from Darude.

None of which is a good thing.

Back in the day ClockDVA did some seriously great stuff (I still slip the instrumental version of The Act into techno sets - Connection Machine, The Unseen and The Sonology of Sex are all killer)...

On a more noise related front I picked up a copy of Masonna's Inner Mind Mystique 3x7" set... incredible stuff.

It was solid techno. I wasn't sure what to expect from him because everything I've heard was working from a different angle (ie: his rather varied work in Program 2 with Victor Calderone, stuff he did as The Genie on IST).

DJ Assault owns it... I got the chance to hang out with him in St. Louis about a year ago. I played a gig with Casey Hogan, Tony Rohr and Gene LaFosse. DJ Assault had played for the same promoters the night before... and he showed up at the afterparty and played in front of about 25 people in the basement of this house. It was awesome. I was standing halfway up the stairs, less than 10ft from the the tables.

Mad skills and one of the nicest, calmest people I've met in a lot of years of travelling around.

I haven't taken a pill in over ten years... and I hadn't taken anything when I got turned onto techno in '90. It's never been about drugs for me. It's been about discovery...
and as far as mixing goes - just about anything can be done. I learned the rules - and now I'm trying to break them... all of them.

next weekend... with Mark Verbos, Acrosome, Nevermind and Tocsin.

[ fukkital.gabber.org ]

I'm not sure what I'll be playing in New York... last time (April '02) I played a pretty straight set of broken beat hardcore... not sure if I feel like doing the same thing - although NYC really responded to the turntablism... as opposed to a lot of other places where DJs respond to it and it seems to be lost on most everybody else.

Also... I've already got travel sorted out for NYC - so I won't need a lift.

The fun never starts?

Damn... I feel like that old man sitting at the bus stop in Ghost World. Good thing I've got records to keep me entertained. They can keep you entertained to... check the 'mix 12-31-03' thread. I posted links to three new mixes in there.

[ www.dropbass.net ]

The majority of their events are in Wisconsin... although a couple of the Furthurs took place in Illinois... and they did on show in Winnipeg in '94 (bRave New Assembly - with JethroX, Woody McBride, Hyperactive, E-Tones, Jedidiah and a couple of others)...

I think people bring a different game to Drop Bass shows than they do to Destiny ones. I think Geezer played shortly after DJ Scud on the first night, so there was a pretty heavy feeling in the room... and he continued in that vein.

A lot of the guys from the UK acid techno scene have been around for a long time and cut their teeth in the dirty, gritty acid scene of the early 90s. DDR and Julian Liberator even cut records for the Crapshoot label - which is probably one of the sickest labels the UK ever had (Total Output, Simon Underground, Traffik and DJ Freak were also part of the roster).

I saw Geezer play live in '99... he actually put together a good set. It was at that summer's Furthur... which owned. Of course, most things own when you've been drinking with Tommie Sunshine.