Katana VentraIP

Breakcore

Breakcore is a style and microgenre of electronic dance music that emerged from jungle, hardcore, and drum and bass in the mid-to-late 1990s.[3][4] It is characterized by very complex and intricate breakbeats and a wide palette of sampling sources played at high tempos.

Not to be confused with Breakbeat hardcore.

Breakcore

Mid-1990s,[1]

Australia, North America, Netherlands, Germany, UK

  • Cyberculture[2]

Influences[edit]

In London, DJ Scud co-founded Ambush Records in 1997 with fellow producer Aphasic to focus on more extreme noise-oriented hardcore drum and bass. Some artists released on Ambush are Christoph Fringeli, Slepcy, The Panacea, and Noize Creator. "Scud and Nomex tracks like 'Total Destruction' helped create the blueprint for much of breakcore's sound, a high-bpm mash-up of hyperkinetic, post-jungle breaks, feedback, noise, and Jamaican elements paired with a devil-may-care attitude towards sampling that pulls from the broadest musical spectrum of styles (hip-hop, rock, industrial, pop, and beyond)."[7]


At the same time, Bloody Fist Records based in Newcastle, Australia, released many records of hardcore/gabber, industrial, and noise. Artists signed to Bloody Fist in its lifetime include Syndicate, Xylocaine, Epsilon and Nasenbluten. Label founder Mark Newlands said, in 1997, "I think that the uncomfortableness also comes from a reaction towards the mainstream and popular culture that's constantly shoved down our throats, that's forced on the people via television, radio, mass media, etc. I think that also fuels the fire and keeps the aggressiveness there and the uncomfortableness."[17] Newlands described their music as products of "cut'n'paste mentality" and an industrial environment.[18] In her Experimental Music, Gail Priest credits the label as recognized globally for its contributions to the breakcore genre,[19][20] and for spurring its 1990s development.[18] The Bloody Fist sound became breakcore from what was the noise genre, with added elements of high beats per minute and "extreme, thick, low-fi textures".[20] By way of example, Nasenbluten's 1996 Fuck Anna Wood exemplified this style with controversial public affairs audio samples collaged into dialogue atop early hardcore beats.[20]


Formed in 1994, Digital Hardcore Recordings released music by artists such as Alec Empire, Shizuo, Atari Teenage Riot, EC8OR, and Bomb20, shaping the breakcore sound.[7] This label is also responsible for digital hardcore, a genre developed simultaneously to breakcore. The Alec Empire album The Destroyer is often noted as the first breakcore album.

Reception[edit]

Vice magazine compared the genre to the types of music used during Guantanamo Bay interrogations.[4]

Digital hardcore

Kleinl, David; Könighofer, Bertram (Dirs.) (2006). (Documentary motion picture). Austria: Erlacher, Daniel. Archived from the original on 12 October 2013.

Notes on Breakcore

Priest, Gail (2009). . UNSW Press. ISBN 978-1-921410-07-9.

Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia

Whelan, Andrew (January 2008). . Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84718-657-7. Retrieved 5 October 2013.

Breakcore: Identity and Interaction on Peer-to-Peer

Sources