Three of the many takes on hardcore

DUTCH HARDCORE/GABBER:

Rotterdam Termination Source – Poing (1992) 1

Representing the brash, almost silly end of the hardcore scale, Poing was an unlikely number two hit in the Dutch pop charts, making the top 30 in the UK. Based around little more than 909 drums and a fairly irritating rubbery twang sample, Poing really shouldn’t work as well as it does. The secret lies in the intricacy of the drum programming, which producer Maurice Steenbergen claims was the result of six months’ work. The distorted 909 kick morphs into a square wave packed with harmonics, one of the definitive sounds of gabber.

BREAKBEAT HARDCORE/PROTO-JUNGLE: Rufige Kru – Terminator (1992) 2

Right on the cusp of breakbeat hardcore morphing into early jungle, Goldie’s Terminator exemplifies the technological experimentalism at the heart of most hardcore, using the Eventide H3000 to stretch and pitch shift samples. Looking back, it’s a sign that hardcore was a fertile breeding ground for new sounds from the very beginning.

HAPPY HARDCORE:

DJ Hixxy & MC Sharkey – Toytown (1995) 3

The track which kicked off the very first Bonkers mix album, a series that ran for over a decade and helped define happy hardcore. Toytown follows on from the toytown techno craze which swept UK rave music a few years earlier (think The Prodigy’s Charly and Urban Hype’s A Trip to Trumpton), employing sing-song vocals but ramping up the tempo to keep up with the ever-increasing tempo of hardcore’s speedrush.