Rave music and its two-faced legacy

Raves. For people who were not in their teens or adolescent years in the 90's, the term is associated with a myth. It is hard to imagine today how these illegal pop-up festivals could exist without Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

Raves, the rave culture and the music played had a tremendous influence on the development of EDM. Still, was there such thing as “rave music”? And what is the musical legacy of the rave genre?

Rave music started with the crossing of Chicago house over the big ocean and developing into acid house in the UK. Acid house contain the unique sounds produced by the Roland TB-303 synthesizer, like squeaks and oonts. The very first acid house track was, very original, coined Acid Trax by Phuture in 1987. Acid house was coupled with heavy drug use (notably LSD or acid and MDMA or ecstasy). Helped by the drugs, the smiley logo and the energetic music, acid house initiated the Second Summer of Love in the UK.

In the UK, this happy vibe went to the next level in the early 90’s when DJ’s added upbeat piano rolls and high-pitched vocals with rapid snaring breakbeats. The English called this music “oldschool rave hardcore” or “breakbeat hardcore”. Classics are “Feeling So Real” by Moby, “Sweet Harmony” by Liquid, “Your Love” by The Prodigy, “The Chain” by DJ Sy, “Trip to the Moon” by Acen, “Don’t Go” by Awesome 3 and many more.

Breakbeat hardcore however laid the foundation of what is now simply known as breakbeat or breaks. Breaks is probably one of the most forgotten EDM genres, despite its short popularity at the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the 00’s under the form of big beat. Any EDM lover has heard “Hey Boy Hey Girl” of The Chemical Brothers, “Smack My Bitch Up” of The Prodigy or “The Rockafeller Skank” of Fatboy Slim. Today, breaks is surpassed by drum ‘n bass and dubstep as the main EDM genre with breakbeats.

At the same time, acid house (and EBM or Electronic Body Music) laid the foundation for New Beat in Flemish Belgium, a slower darker more psychedelic form of acid house with techno influences. New Beat originated as many things: by accident. As a local DJ in Antwerp played an acid house track at 33 RPM (instead of 45 RPM), it gave it a very sinister vibe that caught on in the emerging continental rave scene.

In Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, the New Beat took a different, more techno-oriented turn and developed into a second rave genre, which was also confusingly called hardcore. However this continental rave music was less happy than its Anglo-Saxon variant. The first hardcore song was released in 1990 by Mescalinum United (one of German DJ Marc Trauner’s many aliases) “We Have Arrived”.

And arrived rave did! The continental rave focused more on the harder but very iconic sounds such as the “Mentasm” and the “Anasthasia” sound. The “Mentasm” or “hoover” sound is named after the rave classic “Mentasm” by Second Phase and was further popularised by “Dominator” by Human Resource.

“Anasthasia”, named after the same track by T99 and was further popularised by “James Brown Is Dead” of L.A. Styles and “Rave the Rhythm” by Channel X. That sound is still popular today, like for instant “Space Raiders (Charlotte de Witte Remix)” by Eats Everything.

A variant of “Anasthasia” is the “Stereo Murder” and “Don’t Touch That Stereo” by Marshall Masters (another alias of Marc Traun) and had a lot of popularity in hardcore tracks (such as “Bass and Sound” by DJ Isaac and “Execute” by Neophyte). It sounds more like a piano but has the same echo.

There were other iconic synth sounds, such as the howling scratches of Razzle Dazzle Trax’s “Rattlebrain” or the twisting wreew from Ultimate Seduction’s “Ultimate Seduction”.

When you thus reference to “rave music”, it is important to clarify if you mean the happy breakbeat English rave music or the more rough four-to-the-floor continental rave music.

But wait, isn’t that continental rave music not just techno? That’s a common misconception that originated from America. As techno became more popular in the States, it became the passe-partout for all electronic music (even till today!). Techno is however totally different than continental rave.

For starters, techno is, even by EDM norms, very instrumental. You’ll find very few vocals in techno music. If there are vocals, they are as much monotone as the music. Rave (and its derivative hardcore) on the other hand, uses vocals frequently. Most often they are samples from other songs or movies. The vocals are part of the vibe of the song. It frequently tells you to do something, like for instant in ‘Cactus Rhythm’ of Plexus the song tells you to pump and jump and move your body till you drop. Rave is essentially party music.

Talking about vibes, techno has a very cold, dark and negative atmosphere. The frequent use of ‘technological’ and robotic sounds aids this even further. There is a lot of repetition in techno. The songs are lengthy, the build-up is very calm and climaxes are rare in techno, or rather anticlimactic. Techno is like trance meant to get you in a certain state of mind. Trance is uplifting while techno grounds you to the earth. Take for instant ‘Pneu’ of Tone King. It is practically the same bass drum, the same snare and the same sound for a full 8 minutes!

Rave on the other hand is energetic and uptempo like house. It doesn’t groove like house though. Rave can use the same type of sounds like techno but it is constantly in motion rather than monotone. It never bores you.

But let’s continue with our little history trip. So we are in the early 90’s. In the UK, rave is as its peak. On the continent, a very different kind of rave was also booming. But then there was a Scottish party-pooper. He didn’t like the breakbeats in English rave. It sounded weird to him. So he put the same happy tunes from English rave and put it on a fast bouncy beat with a fat bass. He called it ‘bouncy techno’ (yeah, even artists used the techno passe-partout).

A Rotterdam DJ called DJ Paul Elstak heard the music from Scott Brown and brought to his home city Rotterdam. There, he called it happy hardcore and it conquered Europe, even surpassing the original creator. Despite its cheesy sound, it made crowds go wild.

Happy hardcore didn’t have the same breakbeat allergy as Scott Brown, so you’ll find breakbeats alongside snaring bass drums in happy hardcore songs.

Despite its popularity, happy hardcore with its heavy beat was not really commercially-viable. So happy hardcore developed a softer variant with the same speed but a more boing boing boing beat and bass (which was called happy rave). Happy hardcore like its English cousin features a very happy (and high-on-drugs) atmosphere with high-pitched tunes and vocals that talk about rainbows and love. Most tracks had both a soft and a hard mix of the same song.

However, Rotterdam was also at the crossroads of the original continental rave. So alongside happy hardcore developed early hardcore, oldschool hardcore, oldstyle or Rotterdam hardcore. It is pretty much the sum of the bass and beat of bouncy techno and the sounds of continental rave. The hard bass and uptempo beats made hardcore even more energetic (and even aggressive) than its rave predecessor.

This hard sound of happy hardcore and early hardcore lent itself to a whole new subculture called gabber (‘gabber’ is Yiddish for friend or mate) with its own unique dancing style called hakken. Both hardcore’s were called ‘gabber’. Gabbers had also a very odd dressing code: they wore bomber jackets and Nike sport shoes. Sometimes they shaved their heads bald. They looked like this:

From the Netherlands, hardcore conquered Europe and then the world. In America, some translation error happened. While the Europeans used the noun ‘house’ with hardcore, the Americans chose (you can guess it) ‘techno’. Let’s be clear, hardcore is neither house nor techno.

Who has also bald heads and can really crash a party? Skinheads. By the end of the 90’s, the harder sounds attracted so many skinheads it tarnished the gabber reputation as some far-right extremists. Hardcore was also commercially exploited by fakers like Scooter, who called his music ‘hardcore’ just to make him look like a tough guy (as a result, Scooter is probably the most hated person in the hardcore community). On top of that, the odd subculture of the gabbers became a laughing stock. So hardcore went underground. But as the gabbers keep saying: hardcore will never die. Today, hardcore is still alive and kicking and it is still the hardest genre of whole EDM!

So far, we have encountered five different rave genres:

• Breakbeat hardcore or oldschool rave hardcore, from the UK with happy sounds and a breakbeat.
• Hardcore or just rave, from continental Europe with rough sounds but with a soft four-to-the-floor beat.
• Happy rave, commercial happy hardcore with a soft and fast boing beat.
• Happy hardcore (or bouncy techno in Scotland), happy tunes of breakbeat hardcore with a hard and fast four-to-the-floor beat.
• Early hardcore, oldschool hardcore, oldstyle or Rotterdam hardcore that combined the hard and fast four-to-the-floor beat of happy hardcore with the rough sounds of rave.

As only the last two are ‘hard’ as we now know as hard, it is better the name ‘hardcore’ is reserved for such harder genres, while ‘rave’ is used for the softer versions. To distinguish the English rave from the continental rave, I suggest calling the former ‘breakbeat rave’ or ‘rave breaks’ and the latter simply ‘rave music’. ‘Happy rave’ is the softer version of happy hardcore.

I hope I’ve made a strong case to include rave as a separate genre, alongside house, techno and trance. Rave can clearly be distinguished from techno by being more upbeat, dynamic and vocal.

Rave music has tremendous impact on EDM. Without rave breaks, there would be no jungle or big beat. No jungle means no drum ‘n bass or dubstep. Without hardcore, ID&T (who started by organising hardcore festivals like Thunderdome) wouldn’t host the largest EDM events in the world. Hardcore has lead to a more popular little brother: hardstyle. Thanks to the commercially more viable hardstyle, the harder styles gained more acceptance on main EDM festivals, like Tomorrowland.

With this wave of 90’s nostalgia, will we see a comeback of rave music (and then I’m not talking about these indie wannabe ‘nu ravers’)? Maybe, I think there is a market for it. But how would the current rave genre sound like?