Rave memories. Part 1: Introducing Breakcore!

Wait ... what? "Breakcore"? ... the hell are you speaking? ...

... well, I have always drawn but between 2004 and 2014 I was mainly into producing electronic music and more precisely in what could be qualified as "extreme". The exact name for that genre is "Breakcore".
It is unlikely you have ever heard of it.

Played under the silly moniker of "Sim on kor Funkle" (a nightmare for event promoters to write without mistakes)

It can be difficult to speak about music styles since people often have a very different vision and terms for them but my most succinct description -I already see hair standing up on some scalps- would be that it's a sort of bastard result between the hardest forms of rave music that were prominent from the end of the 90's; Jungle, Drum n Bass, Gabber, Hardcore, Speedcore, Techno, Acid, IDM, electronica, whatever you want to name it. All keeping a tendency for mostly violent, deranging effect while experimenting. It was not meant to please, it was sometimes trashy and wacky, had rather a punkish, self-whipping attitude or sometimes it would have gone towards more tight, incisive and intricate compositions but above all, there was a desire to take distance with the tropes of the "parent" genres and push boundaries of music and material possibilities (softwares allowing an unlimited tempo for instance). It somehow self-proclaimed not to fall into being formated, reduced to a few sentences like I just did, so don't take my word for granted. If you can, listen to various stuff to get your own idea.

Venetian Snares + Speedranch - Unborn Baby (Making Orange Things 2001)

Venetian Snares - Dollmaker (Doll Doll Doll 2001)

Xanopticon - These Days (Liminal Space - 2003)

Otto von schirach - Goat Sperm (Global Speaker Fisting 2004)

Toecutter - Come On Barbie (Real Sexual People - 2004)

A very criticized documentary but still a documentary

In my case, I simply always detested commercial and condescending diffused-all-the-time-and-everywhere music so the goal behind my creations was mainly to spit on them while torturing my poor CPU to virtual death (and additionnaly the audience). For that, I would have sampled a lot of the stupidest dance music, choped them, reduced them, destroyed them with various distortions then mixed them with fast saturated beats, disturbing hand glitched sounds and overdistorted Gabber kicks. There was a spirit of absurdity, self-derision, actually quite a lot of humour (Personnally I had a hard time finding myself serious when clenching my fist with highly saussaged friends in front of speakers loudly vomitting degenerate sonic patterns).

Some "song" of mine

But hey, producing this was indeed immense fun and the public, who was from so many different horizons, was very receptive and this is what made those times unique. Occupying spaces and playing the music we wanted offered an incomparable feeling of true freedom of expression. This is our culture.

Some worst "song" of mine.

Belgium was (and is still kind of) a huge hub for that music. "Breakcore gives me wood" is today a legendary crew of mainly Antwerpers who definitely did some of the best and biggest shows (over 4000 attendees). Bringing new artists from all over the world and dragging thousands of kids in dirty warehouses illegal raves till massive, well organised festivals in mainstream locations.

They also had an intense and bleak imagery, which really gave the tone.

I was lucky to be part of a group of friends with whom we decided to at some point, throw parties ourselves. We started with small events in village sport halls, illegal free parties in abandonned World War Two forts and ended up in bigger venues with 2000 freaks.

It was for me the first time that what I was creating had some sort of "success", so I jumped in and for around ten years, I played almost every weekend, in free parties, in clubs, festivals etc... We even organised some tours in Europe, USA and got invited in god damned Moscow!

Extract of a Liveset in Moscow - Circa 2007

At the same time I was still a bit drawing, doing some of the art for the flyers, posters etc...

It was just awesome that this passion, regardless how wreck-havoc some might see it, made me travel, discovered so many crazy places and people. It's been a great experience in matter of D.I.Y. culture and self-sufficiency.

Of course It also been really brain cooking with the airports/bus/trains/cars/vans/crappy venues, doomed promoters, drugs, sex and whatever else that might come with cyber-technoid-break-speed-music-noise-punk-trash pseudo wannabees musicians life.

It slowly went down as I somehow had enough of getting wasted 4 days a week and I got back to my first passion, drawing, then to even earlier passion which you might know a bit now, comics.

Extract of "A Breakcore Saga". (Short comic I published in "Datacide", a magazine dedicated to noise and politics".

I lost most of the websites I was managing but if you are interested in digging that obscure side of rave culture, you can still browse "Breakcore" and hope to find out.

Some of my music is still online on youtube, Soundcloud and my discography on Discogs.

A record I produced on my own label "Berzerk-Produkts" - 2004

There is a lot to say about those years and the many artists who were involved in, so I will make more posts like this. Keep in touch!

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Thank you Steemoids, for having read my post!

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