Evolution and history of 35 years of hardcore/gabber music [XXL edition]
This talk is a "no clip" deep dive through a genre of music. We'll start in 1990 and discover the genre as it was discovered by its creators. While traveling through time we'll try to answer the question: what is hardcore?
There will clips and mixes of revolutions and sub-genres. We'll learn how it's made and how to win the loudness war. Hardcore spawned a youth culture with lasting international adoption. From art to cheese, we'll cover it all. We'll learn the dance and end with a live set.
This talk has it all: licensing, content, audience and noise problems in just one comfortable session.
During the talk we'll listen to the evolution of this genre using samples, short mixes and video clips. We'll touch upon the politics of resistance and adoption, politicization of nice people and the death and renaissance of the genre. There is a lot to talk about and to listen to. The "one hour" version of the talk was a hit at Hacker Hotel 2025, and immediately had a two hour sequel in the off-the-record room.
While going down this rabbit hole, and to expand on the "one hour" version, we'll take some more time to dive into audio engineering and how to win the loudness war. It will ruin some things some for some people, while opening doors for others.
The central question throughout the session will be: "what is hardcore?".
This talk mostly focusing on fun and interesting stuff, but due to the inherent nature of hardcore music there might (=guarantee) be references to sex, drugs, violence, profanity, recklessness and spooky scary skeletons in the first ten seconds. This talk is not for all ages and minds.
The plan is to have about one to two hours diving into this rabbit hole. After that we'll try to teach you the dance called "hakkuh" and end off with a super varied one hour live set (if time and noise curfew allows) touching multiple genres with different types of hardcore at its center.
Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/