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speedcore

v/a – 電​子​暴​力​大​集​会 (2024)

Ozigiri is one of my favourite discoveries of the last years. He makes an extremely fast, violent and energetic electronic form of grindcore. The weird mix of styles goes from beats up to 1000 BPM (let us just call that “splittercore” for convenience sake), faster beats (“extratone” because you no longer hear a beat, but a tone) with screamed vocals and guitar. Much faster than your average grindcore and way more energetic. Brilliantly neckbreaking.

There are more such violent projects coming from Japan, but none as constantly great as Ozigiri. It appears that Ozigiri was picked up by the already established project M1dy and the two indeed cooperate frequently. M1dy finds it funny to mix in children’s voices and happy melodies (making a truly insane version of hardcore techno) which I often find too cheerful. Ozigiri also does that sometimes, like on the mentioned last album. Fortunately not too often and on this compilation, no such thing.

I seems that I missed that the album “Party People Must Die” of last year was the first release on Ozigiri’s own new label わんぱくレコーズ (“Naughty Recordings”). The compilation “Electronic Violence” is the second. He gathered similar projects to create a 12 track, 32 minute digital release. “Electronic Violence” opens with a great Ozigiri track. After an intro, the tempo sets in with Ozigiri’s brutal violence. His buddy M1dy did a wonderful speedcore track. Then follow projects that I did not know (except for RedOgre and Qureless). There is the grindcore type electronic music of RoughSkreamZ, Qureless and Maruosa; the more hardcore techno sound of Coakira and sHimaU; the breakcore of Sabi, 鬼畜生 (“Bastard” is not as energetic as the other tracks) and Haizai Audio and the splittercore of RedOgre.

All in all this turns out to be a very enjoyable compilation. Ozigiri is certainly the best project here (to my ears), but most of the other tracks are great as well. If you are interested in some extremely energetic electronic music, check out this compilation. It is available through Bandcamp.

Link: Bandcamp

Cock Rock Disco, more free music

Cock Rock Disco

I do not visit the Cock Rock Disco website enough I guess. When I did last week I noticed that there are 7 new free releases since the last time I looked. They are mostly mix cds and not all as extremely breakcore as often happens on this label. As a matter of fact, there seem to be more DJ Donna Summer ideas here, with mixing the weirdest and silliest tracks from soul to AC/DC, happy hardcore and speedcore. Unfortunately the DJs are not as gifted as DJ Donna Summer, the label owner. Kid Kameleon has a rather standard mix if you have followed the label. All kinds of popmusic mixed with a regular beat. The Beast Within is a mix of CRD project and does contain the more extreme forms of electronic music. There seems to be a (new?) liking for electronically made metal, but mostly you will hear the extreme breakcore that you might know from this label. Projects such as The Teknoist, Duran Duran Duran, Bong-Ra, along with new and crazy names such as Toecutter and DJ Floorclearer. There are some way too unstructured f**ked up tracks, but there are also surprisingly calm tracks this time. Another nice free compilation of extreme music. Nero’s Day In Disnleyland is a quite typical CRD mix with music varrying from The Cure and Skinny Puppy to Hole and Morrisey to a whole range of bands that I don’t know, hiphop, rap, soul, jazz, rock, metal; all very weird of course, but not mixed together too well; it just sounds like a weird bunch of musical styles. DJ Rainbow Ejaculation has got to be a country mate, since (s)he mixes the most faulty happy hardcore of 12 years ago that I can not image ever left our country. People of my age (well 30+) will recognise many things that have been repressed from our memories and all that layered with “gabber” beats, truely awfull 🙂 . CDR then “is a Japanese dude who has been fucking Amen breaks for years…” and so he does with his extreme breakcore “CDR on CRD”. Way too chaotic for my liking, but as often with these kind of releases, it contains weird findings and crazy humour, but musically all build around the same breakbeat. And yes, there is some more crazy free stuff there, so just have a peek if you are interested in (a new kind) of digital extremism.
Cock Rock Disco believes in free music!

Johnny Violent * Shocker (cd 1996 earache)

Johnny Violent is best known for his project “Ultraviolence” (see below). This is a quite old cd with Johnny’s early extreme techno experiments. Based on the Dutch “gabber” (or “gabba” for non-Dutch speaking), but taking is 10 steps further. This may result in a not-danceable variant, but I prefer Johnny over most gabber because it is far more extreme. Not all tracks are great, but there are some of the most violent techno-tracks that I know, making this cd an absolute classic.

Ultraviolence * Life Of Destructor (cd 1994 earache)

Wow! Eight years ago Johnny Violent already made his “extreme industrial techno”! “Life Of Destructor” sounds pretty much like the “Shocker” cd that Johnny released under his own name in 1996 (see elsewhere). Quite primitive still, but VERY extreme.

Ultraviolence * Psycho Drama (cd 1995 earache)

“Psycho Drama” is the ultimate masterpiece in extreme techno. No, it is NOT the most extreme cd that you can get, but Johnny took his style, multiplied it by 10 and added a healthy cup of soap. “Psycho Drama” is a techno cd with a story that is told in three parts. First you will learn about the miserable life of Jessica, abused by her father, picked up by ‘disco boyfriend’ and becoming addicted to drugs, later abused by the boyfriend and fleeing in the arms of a pimp who wants to get rid off her after having exploited Jessica. The second story is that of the hitman who also had a miserable life. The hitman is hired by the pimp to kill Jessica, but the two fall in love, commit suicide and have a discussion with God.
All this is told in music varying from cheesy top40 techno to extremely violent ‘digital hardcore’. Not really fitted for dancefloors, because you need to hear the whole cd, but perfect for in the car or the living room. An absolute must-have if you are interested in extreme techno and I think it was rereleased several times and still available.

Ultraviolence * Superpower (cd 2001 earache)

It was quite a wait after “Killing God” (1998), but here is a new cd by Johnny Violent. “Superpower” was anounced as a “Europop experiment” so I feared the worst. Listening to “Superpower” you will immediately hear Johnny Violent’s trademark of violent techno with a crazy twitch. The “Europop” influences are there though in the form of irritating vocal-lines and here and there a nurve-breaking melody. The biggest part is just ultraviolent hardcore techno, but I am not sure what to think of this cd yet.

v/a * Cunt Records 2 (2cd 2001 cunt records)

A cover like this and a label-name like this may make you think this review is in the wrong section. This suggestion grows when you see the horrible website! Anyway, this is no old-fashioned metal compilation, nor punk or anything. The “No More Rock ‘n Roll” compilation (see elsewhere) also showed a liking for the bad taste of old metal artwork, but “Cunt Records 2” is even quite far from the digicore of “No More Rock ‘n Roll”. Under the label name it usually says “terror speedcore industrial doomcore”, showing that this is actually a post-gabber cd. I suppose that this is what they call “terror”. This is supposed to be not only faster than gabber, but also more extreme and that definately goes for this cd!
A nice thing about this kind of music is that it always has the same speed. It is meant to be danceble in contrast to digicore or sometimes even speedcore (how can you dance on 500 bpm?). The first part of cd1 is a “megamix” which is of course the same speed the whole time. I am not sure, but I think it is somewhere near 250 bpm, still faster than most happy hardcore shit, right? It is actually pretty extreme and here and there fairly dark. The biggest challenge with this kind of stuff is, is that the people who make it have to try to use the same speed (otherwise DJs will simply ignore their records because it doesn’t fit in their repertoire) and still have to make something of it. Therefor you hear different sounds for beats, breaks that don’t break the rhythm (you don’t want to have to think when you are dancing on 250 bpm on drugs) and crazy samples. This is done pretty well in my humble opinion.
The second part of cd1 contains “remixes and new tracks”. Cd2 is filled with studio tracks of two projects. The first is Coffeecore, which is indeed hardcore inspired by cafeine and the second is Noisekick who show us how extreme speedcore can really get.
It all looks quite exotic, but this cd is ‘just’ a Dutch cd distributed by the most commercial gabbershop-chain Midtown and there are a few Dutch titles on the back and the national song of Friesland (a Dutch province with their own kind of people) is printed in the booklet.
So, if you are interested to hear some descent “post-gabber”, this double compilation is a good buy!

v/a * No More Rock And Roll (cd 2001 make some noise)

Actually this is a compilation with the idea that I had for these pages. Extreme techno from different scenes on one disc. However the line-up is very interesting, the result is less interesting. There are digital hardcore bands to be found, like Bomb20, Atari Teenage Riot, Cobra Killer. also there are more ‘serious’ techno acts like Hellfish, 2nd Gen and Kid606. Then a bunch of bands that I didn’t know. Unfortunately the digital hardcore bands’ contributions confirmed my idea that this scene has a lack of inspiration. It is still sampled breakbeats and a lot of unnecessary experimentalism like it got just after the hype began. By far the best tracks are those of the three mentioned ‘serious’ techno acts, which are all three quite hard, actually harder than the rest! In general it all isn’t too extreme.
The idea is there, but it could have been so much better.