The Gabba / Hardcore / Hard Dance Revival

Not sure how popular this thread'll be on ILM but I'm interested in the current micro-revival of gabber/gabba and other hard dance genre that were consigned to the fashion dustbin back in the 20th century.

Boiler Room recently had a whole season of hard dance shows, much to the delight and disgust of Facebook commenters.

It's also interesting to see these styles, usually associated with white European males, being picked up by women and the LGBT+ community.

I wandered into an Ifeoluwa set a coupl eof years ago, quite off-guard, and I was blown away by the energy and excitement in her set. It wasn't strictly gabba, but something verging on hard-as-nails footwork. There were moments when it felt like the roof was going to fall down.

Other than that, there's not much I know about this. Don't have anywhere to start with tracks or mixes, but as someone who enjoyed a bit of Rotterdam hardcore as a teenager, I'm intrigued.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/10/gift-of-the-gabber-the-return-of-dance-musics-gloriously-tasteless-subgenre

Interesting to see that Danny L Harle is involved, was wondering what he's been doing these last few years

Broken Flowers isn't really connected to hardcore but if you listen to some of it other stuff then it isn't hard to see the join

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJRmD0OKnjg

PC Music isn't a million miles away from happy hardcore, which is a cousin of gabba, so there are definitely dots to join.

There's a local dance night run by a bunch called Psychotherapy Sessions who put on 160bpm people like Jana Rush and DJ Paypal, but also seem to have a revolving cast of in-house DJs like k means.
Again, their stuff isn't exactly 'gabba' as I know it, but it's fast and hard and it straddles both hardcore techno and footwork. https://www.mixcloud.com/tr-isha/

Would you say this is a second revival of these genres? Feel like there was one in early/mid 2000s with stuff like Hellfish & Producer, DJ Scud, others I can’t remember... some of the noisier 2nd or 3rd wave IDM guys.

I haven’t heard any new stuff, but am excited to.

i feel like this never really went away. although there are different scenes. the happy hardcore scene which, in the uk, was huge in the central belt of scotland and northern england (and perhaps elsewhere) in the mid 90s devolved into freeform hardcore which cribbed a lot from trance and prog house and got a lot softer and shitter. in the 00s you had that kind of tongue in cheek stuff like shitmat , dj scotch egg etc. but then i remember there being quite big non-ironic gabba nights in glasgow at the start of the 10s, though no idea who the djs and producers who were in the scene were
too old now for any of this tbh

Found memories of spinning in mostly empty hardcore rooms in the mid to late 90’s

I guess it's inevitable that after a long period where the washed-out/lethargic vibe is the dominant aesthetic in dance music, the pendulum swings the other way.

haha I think I mentioned before I once had Shitmat, Scotch Egg and Justice Yeldham stay at my house once.
Shitmat fell asleep in a doorway between two rooms. Justice was bleeding all over my couch after smashing glass all over himself on stage. Meanwhile Scotch Egg formed an impromptu scratch orchestra with the other house guests in the kitchen. And that's my Hardcore music claim to fame

A few years ago a friend was dating an ex-member of Robot Ninja Dinosaur Bastards and he'd completely moved on from that scene, thought it was all complete rubbish, he was not at impressed that I still liked quite a lot of it. To be fair it was always 20% brilliance to 80% troll noise, at best.

last time i saw shitmat (supporting wolf eyes i think) i could barely stay in the room. just unbearable.

but i'm interested in what's happening with younger acts. Casual Gabberz from France seem to have gone right back to basics rather than trying to IDM it up, whereas I'm also interested in its reclamation by non-white, non-straight, non-male artists too

Some newer records on this axis that are good (though I've been gravitating away from the harder end) -

Rui Ho
https://ruiho.bandcamp.com/album/in-pursuit-of-the-sun

Nkisi
https://uiqmusic.bandcamp.com/album/7-directions-uiqlp002

Gabber Modus Operandi
https://svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/hoxxxya

Giant Swan
https://giantswan.bandcamp.com/album/giant-swan

I can think of a ton more that's super hard/noisy but not necessarily coming from this angle, and other artists that are very influenced by UK hardcore but not making especially 'hard' tracks now.

Although here's a record I literally just found a moment ago by clicking through someone's bandcamp collection, and it's cool:
https://nara-music.bandcamp.com/album/there-is-no-sky

is this stuff “ironic”? is it related to breakcore at all? Sorry just asking the important qs

I still very much enjoy listening to the one Thunderdome cd I have

see that's the thing. I really do not give a hoot about ironic breakcore type stuff. so much of that Tigerbeat6ish stuff was coming out in the early 00s and it was all very nerdy and tongue in cheek and sort of missed the point. I think it's too easy to do that sort of thing

Giant Swan are from near me and I still haven't got round to checking them out

I really don't think there's any irony in the new wave

there was one trio on the Boiler Room sessions that were making this really ascetic minimalist modular gabba. the weirdest thing about them was one of them appeared to be wearing rubber gloves

here's some #ambientgabber
https://soundcloud.com/dj-netflex/san-junipero

here we go. they're called 3dancer

https://youtu.be/LAEeqw0GLb0

cheers Jordan, I'll check all this when I get a tick