Speedcore
is a form of
hardcore techno
that is typically
identified by its
high rate of
beats per minute
and aggressive
themes. Tracks can
range from 235
BPM all the way
up to 1000 BPM and
above (there is some
debate around a
genre called
extratone, in which
the music must be
1000 BPM or above
and is soaked in
noise. Some say it
doesn't exist while
others feel it
surpasses speedcore
in intensity).
Unlike other styles
of aggressive
dance music like
gabber, the high
rate of BPM makes
Speedcore less
accessible as a
danceable genre,
although most fans
of the genre
headbang and
mosh to the
music.
The
typical speedcore
track is
characterized by a
general anti-music
and anti-establishment
sentiment. The music
is angry, aggressive
and often attempts
to foster an
atmosphere of
hostility for the
listener. Speedcore
DJs push the
boundaries of
electronic dance
music and often
use offensive themes
in their music to
create such
extremes.
While
most speedcore
artists are content
to attack the normal
standards of music,
or even the gabber
music that spawned
them, the extremism
of speedcore has
caused some to turn
inwards and parody
the standards of the
genre. Much like how
happy hardcore
relates to gabber
and hardcore techno,
these songs utilize
samples of lighter
and more manic
themes, like
Bing Crosby and
Futurama, to
create their extreme
sound.
info
c/o
http://en.wikipedia.org/
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Sometimes music feels like it hits you in the
face. That’s how I felt watching the
First Seed, a.k.a. Adam Gabourie. I’ve never
had an S&M relationship, but the
First Seed delivered a taste of what
it might feel like on the receiving end.
Self described as “breakcore” or “speedcore”
beats, his particular form of musical expression
can also be characterized as bloody violent
technical meltdown.
This music is “a reflection of society at this
state in time,” Gabourie told me. “You can’t
listen to more than one song on the radio
without having a commercial, you can’t watch a
show without being interrupted by a commercial,
we rarely listen to a full song … we’re the ADD
generation,” and this is the soundtrack, he
said. The twitchy sounds he produces are
the score to break down for a technologically
driven society. And while “a lot of people
didn’t get where I was coming from,” he said, of
the initial response to his music, there now
seems to be growing receptivity as artists and a
hesitant general public come to question what
defines artistic form, and what defines their
individual taste.
So there is a method to the madness – in this
case at least. But is the First Seed a
mere musical misfit, or is there a broader
consciousness in the musical and artistic
community tapped into this post-modern form of
angst?
The Agoraphobic Nosebleed (ANb) has been
producing music since about 1995, by front man
J. Randall’s best estimate.
If I’d thought the
First Seed
’s music abusive and
industrially abrasive, it was soon shown to be
little more than elevator music by ANb’s more
extreme sonic assault. With tracks that
rarely exceed the 60-second mark, ANb’s latest
release, PCP Torpedo, challenges the
limits of musical form almost to obliteration.
Much of ANb’s music, Randall explained with a
laugh, is simply driven by “hatred and contempt
for people that have just been sitting idle with
their music… I’m tired of costumes, I’m tired of
the articles they have, I’m tired of vague
lyrics – it’s so self-indulgent. I think a large
part of me hates music. I think a large
part of me wants to destroy it.”
Sound like a death wish? Not exactly,
Randall explained. “I think a lot of people are
just tired of bands,” he said. “The whole
dogmatic ritual of having a band – playing live
shows, having good stage presence… I just can’t
stand that.”
On the other hand, he explained, “one of the
biggest appeals of Agoraphobic is that we write
and record all our own stuff. So it gives
the guy who lives in the remote area and who’s
got maybe a computer or something the hope that
maybe he’ll actually get out of the basement or
out of the bedroom with his music … With a
computer and a nice sound library, pretty much
anyone can start producing tracks … I’ve always
liked music with a open door of accessibility
that has let me develop my own place within
it.”
That “open door of accessibility” is the
attraction many artists working in the digital
medium cite as its greatest appeal.
According to Taliesen Cleveland, a.k.a.
Talixzen, a Toronto-based IDM/breakcore
producer and DJ working with the Pin:ksox label,
“I think the internet has had a profound and
wonderful effect on music because now pretty
much any kid who feels like expressing
themselves through sound can just download or
pirate themselves a program … You can be a
fifteen year old sitting in your bedroom and you
can be writing crazy stuff that normally people
would pay twelve dollars a CD for. And I think
that’s amazing.”
It’s a scenario that resonates in a personal way
for
Talixzen. “I’ve been involved with
music ever since I was a kid,” he told me, “I
had piano lessons… and then I started learning
guitar, then bass and stuff when I was 15, and
drums. But I didn’t get into the computer
stuff until about late ’99 using a simple wave
editor that wasn’t very good. Then in 2000 or
2001 I got a copy of FruityLoops 2 and that’s
where everything started.”
The digital medium allowed for greater
creativity and experimentation, allowing him to
play with sounds and their interaction with
other noises in new ways. As
Talixzen
explained, music “doesn’t
have to follow the rules that people set down
years and years ago. Any sound, absolutely
any sound whatsoever, can become music very
easily, and that’s a lot of what I do… I’m all
about the breaking down of rules and the
breaking down of structure because when you
break it down and build it back up you come up
with different things and new things and
creative things.”
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Breakcore
is a loosely defined
electronic music style that
brings together elements of
jungle,
hardcore techno and
IDM into a
breakbeat-oriented sound that
encourages speed, complexity, impact
and maximum sonic density. Similar
to
punk or
jazz music, breakcore adheres to
a loose set of stylistic 'rules'.
Musically, breakcore is centered
around the deconstruction and
creative reassembly of common
breakbeats from other music
genres.
info c/o
http://en.wikipedia.org/
|
Duncan Rodger, a.k.a. Skeeter, heads
HeresMyCardRecords and Smerk Records, two of
Toronto’s underground digital labels. Also
a breakcore producer, he says that the digital
genre “interests me sonically. It excites
my ears, if that makes any sense … The freedom
allowed in composition and sound and ideas that
are permitted [is exciting] because it’s not as
regimented into a sort of marketable format.
It’s way more creative.”
This creative freedom, he explained, reflects
the political underpinnings of the genre –
another of its greatest appeals for him.
And while he qualifies this by saying “the
politics is not a direct thing,” it is
nonetheless present. As he explained, “I
wouldn’t say it’s strong left wing or
intentionally anarchist, but there is a current
of that within the music that is very present.
It’s sort of like an underlying current of a lot
of ideas. I would have to say that the
majority of people who are doing this hold
radical left wing or strong left wing views.”
An appreciation of digital music’s accessibility
and the freedom it provides to deconstruct
existing musical form hold clear resonance with
each musician. For them, the future of
music is democratic – even, as Skeeter
suggested, to the point of anarchy. Music need
not be driven by the profit factor of elite or
monopolistic mainstream labels. Through
digital technology, they suggest, the potential
for expression is broadened and made more
accessible. In other words, the
accessibility digital technology provides means
music need no longer be viewed as a commodity,
but can be democratically revitalized as a form
of art for all to experiment with.
But how, in that case, does one evaluate musical
quality? Are acts like First Seed or ANb
pioneering experimental artists, or are they
no-talent arseholes screwing around with a drum
machine? With the potential for either
extreme, the crux of post-modern theory rears
its head – if everything is relative, from where
does one determine direction or a sense of
progress?
When I spoke with
Talixzen he took a momentarily modernist
approach to this question, suggesting that
“obviously, if you break [structure] down too
much it descends into chaos and you get a lot of
stuff that’s not good.” But just when it
seemed standards of musical evaluation would
have to be addressed from an absolutist
position, he quickly dismissed such concerns,
stating that “if your ear enjoys it then some
other ear is going to enjoy it – even if a bunch
of people don’t like it, someone will. We
shouldn’t just limit ourselves to ‘oh, you can
only write stuff that sounds like this – if you
write this sound it has to follow with this kind
of beat.’… Everything is personal.
Something I’ve kind of had to convince myself of
is that there is no good and bad, there’s what I
consider good and what I consider bad … With my
own music, the songs that I think are utter crap
but I put out for the public anyways, I love to
hear people say that that’s their favourite
song. So there’s no judging, right. I
never know who’s gonna like what.”
So does this herald the end of elite art? Has
the definition of creativity and its value been
expunged from regulatory institutions?
While extreme, such questions may not in fact be
too far from the truth. As the musicians I
spoke with suggested, the organic redefinition
of artistic form and standard is little more
than a natural corollary of society’s
continually advancing technological capacity for
democratic inclusion. As a foundational
pillar of the Western social order, it is a
development that shows little sign of abatement.
Technologies such as the Internet expand
inclusion in cultural discourse by the minute.
Sites such as myspace.com, zed.cbc.ca, and
youtube.com allow users to post video and audio
files to share with anyone with access to a
computer and an Internet connection. With such
accessibility, it seems hard to imagine that the
definition of artistic value will remain an
elite driven process.
And perhaps it shouldn’t. Perhaps the whole
notion of artistic value is rather redundant in
the first place. As Toronto jazz trumpet player
and long-time musical experimentalist Nick
“Brownman” Ali put it so succinctly, “Let me put
it in perspective: do we need to put Monet side
by side Dali and allocate score points? It’s
art, and art is to the individual what it will
be… It’s not sports and I really hate American
Idol for doing that to the public.”
copyright
James Sandham,
May 2006
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