Gabber: Square wave bludgeoning

IdleRich

IdleRich
Wow this dancing is terrible, I've seen videos of gabba dancing before and it's not been like that. It's the way that they are kinda leaning back, reminds me of morris dancing or makes it seem as though they are about to do that Russian army thing where they kick their legs out as though they were sitting on an invisible chair - except that is really really hard to do.

 

forclosure

Well-known member
god this is just making me think "i wanna go to a warehouse/underground rave" i know alot of you can't help me but those of you that can help a man out innit?

i want the proper ting
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Awaits Third’s napalming

A friend went somewhere in Czech Rep, long story short he ended up escorting a random to a nearby hospital. They get seen and the Dr comments on their hygiene etc, but the kicker was as this straight Dr starts lecturing them an ant had crawled out of this injured lad’s attire onto the examination table further horrifying the Dr
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind

the bit that starts at 26:18 is incredible i think, last few minutes of a rave, lights turned on and the dj's and crowd are having fun playing a few extra tracks. it's proto-gabber i think, not very much diverged from uk rave at that moment still?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich

Good documentary. Id love to go to one of these raves, think it would be really cathartic i think, but doubt I'd last very long.
I'd definitely give it a go. Ideally a proper one, like, if I were in Rotterdam or whatever for the weekend and there were a load of regulars who were into the scene. I wouldn't be so keen if for some reason one of those djs was playing in Lisbon and it was just a kind of curiosity cos for me that wouldn't feel like the real deal somehow. But yeah, if I had the opportunity to check it out I would go and I bet I would enjoy it too... though probably not every weekend you know.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
one thing that is kind of interesting is how utterly obliterated traditional english dancing is as a practice, how comprehensively that's been washed away by dance forms which are essentially imported from other traditions from far-off places and which frankly are much harder to pull off.

one thing that i was amazed at in both afghanistan and bangladesh, and it seems to be a bit that way with mexicans as well (though perhaps someone will school me on that) was how your everyday person would be able to pull of dancing pretty well. like in afghanistan almost every geezer seems to be able to do the attan which is a cool and not that straightforward dance. england has had such a different trajectory, all of that is gone, and more or less no-one knows how to dance, i guess the netherlands is probably pretty similar.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
quite like the dancing in this one. like that people can get involved without any skill at all.
Ideally music at a rave or any kind of dance party should be such that anyone can join in and get away with moving primitively as long as it's vaguely in time to the music... but also those who are more skilled or practised can do something better. What I'm saying is I've been to nights with breaking - or northern soul come to think of it - where you feel that you can't go on the dancefloor unless you can do somersaults and then spin round on your head and that makes it too exclusive, but if there are only four steps that work and everyone is just repeating those in various combinations then it gets kinda boring to do and look at after a while.

In fact, in general, if you've ever been in a smallish party that goes on for a long time there can sometimes come a point where you feel that you've seen every single person do every thing that they are going to do. When you have that feeling then maybe it's a sign it's time to go somewhere else.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
Ideally music at a rave or any kind of dance party should be such that anyone can join in and get away with moving primitively as long as it's vaguely in time to the music... but also those who are more skilled or practised can do something better. What I'm saying is I've been to nights with breaking - or northern soul come to think of it - where you feel that you can't go on the dancefloor unless you can do somersaults and then spin round on your head and that makes it too exclusive, but if there are only four steps that work and everyone is just repeating those in various combinations then it gets kinda boring to do and look at after a while.

In fact, in general, if you've ever been in a smallish party that goes on for a long time there can sometimes come a point where you feel that you've seen every single person do every thing that they are going to do. When you have that feeling then maybe it's a sign it's time to go somewhere else.
this is definitely your territory more than mine, but when i was 17 this was one of the obvious appeals of d&b, that it was so fast that everyone had the option of flailing about, and you can dance in a macho way as well, but then you could also wind your waist and do all sorts of things if you wanted to. as opposed to anything more slinky where your average lad wouldn't know what the hell to do, would feel out of it, like they couldn't join in, that you had to be 'good', etc
 

IdleRich

IdleRich

the bit that starts at 26:18 is incredible i think, last few minutes of a rave, lights turned on and the dj's and crowd are having fun playing a few extra tracks. it's proto-gabber i think, not very much diverged from uk rave at that moment still?
Yeah that's wicked. I love the way that those guys on the platform at the front of the picture (but back of the rave I guess) look genuinely exhausted. They have given their all and now they are just about still moving to the music but look ready to drop... determined to keep going though, like a marathon runner desperately holding on to their place with the finish line just about in view. I wonder how long that party lasted...
 
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WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Ideally music at a rave or any kind of dance party should be such that anyone can join in and get away with moving primitively as long as it's vaguely in time to the music... but also those who are more skilled or practised can do something better. What I'm saying is I've been to nights with breaking - or northern soul come to think of it - where you feel that you can't go on the dancefloor unless you can do somersaults and then spin round on your head and that makes it too exclusive, but if there are only four steps that work and everyone is just repeating those in various combinations then it gets kinda boring to do and look at after a while.

In fact, in general, if you've ever been in a smallish party that goes on for a long time there can sometimes come a point where you feel that you've seen every single person do every thing that they are going to do. When you have that feeling then maybe it's a sign it's time to go somewhere else.

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
somebody i know whose couple years younger brings up this guy Sleaze and how he was pivotal to bringing it to Germany,not only that but back in the 90s it was actually more multiracial before the neo nazi skinheads took over

the appeal for them with the music is that its rooted in "hey man, lets make something sick" making music that they think is cool and will go off in an illegal rave while off their face on fuck knows

Yeah, some of the UK ogs were black. Loftgroover, HMS, Easygroove. Lofty was from Sarf London aswell.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Been to few teknivals (lol) with house rigs, Eastern France, Barca, a site near Prague. The problems were multiple and not restricted to sound

Drug choice of only one - ketamine, ketamine, ketnoming. Nihilism, def not life affirming. Passing out in your own piss. Then dog piss. Casualties. Doesn’t it get old? Wannabe Liberators, coalesced around Spiral Tribe’s uniforms too. What is that? Could it be less creative?

The playlist writes itself but fuck listening to it

That's much closer to trance than gabber though.

And spiral tribe were mostly shite. It was all about the force inc. frankfurt crew, Unit Moebius, stuff that could saw your face off but also had a funk to it.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Gabber is a nebulous term. A lot of the stuff I like is more properly categorised as hardcore techno, hard acid, or speedcore.

In fact, if you speak to dutchy diehards they will be like that's not gabba, and recommend you something much cheesier, like evil activities or neophyte. Gabber is more a culture than a sound in Europe, but in the UK it is basically anything with an overdriven 909 running at around 170+. Gabber in its orthodox form is much closer to happy hardcore after '94-95, which is where it starts to lose me, the stuff I like after that is called hardcore. But obviously hardcore means something different in the UK. Funnily enough some Germans also think that Rotterdam sold out in '95, and have a closer taste to mine.

I wouldn't go to a gabber rave because it will generally have loads of wannabe goth or trancey toplines. But I'd go to a night which said they played a certain kind of hardcore techno. Maybe a pedantic distinction for people on here but it's one worth making.

Patrick Cattani E De Cologne is like the hyper on experience of euro hardcore, so many bizarre ideas, incongruous samples in his tunes, proper kitchen sink hooliganism.

And of course some of the French stuff like Mouse and No-Name is like musique concrete, but at 250 bpm+. Really warped psychedelic horror. But again, it's hard to imagine any of those instagram knobheads posted in this thread recognising it as legitimately tied to their music.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
here is some original Dutch gabber from '93 - when the dutch rave scene went through a similar trajectory to the UK in trying to go very dark.

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
one thing that is kind of interesting is how utterly obliterated traditional english dancing is as a practice, how comprehensively that's been washed away by dance forms which are essentially imported from other traditions from far-off places and which frankly are much harder to pull off.
You mean like morris dancing or maypole or country dancing could have sort of survived and evolved and then been absorbed into the dancing that went with rave but instead it just disappeared and was replaced? Well, or let's say that there were already dance scenes such as northern soul and rare groove and so on and those had already replaced country dancing etc but that just pushes the question back to one of why didn't those scenes incorporate the folk dances? I guess - just off the top of my head, might be totally wrong - that the answer is cos they were based around American musics that had dance styles that went along with them and those were imported along with the music.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
A lot of the stuff which fed into the dj boxes of gabba djs were not much different to techno djs at the time like Colin Faver. A lot of Belgian hardcore. This one was actually played by Kenny Ken - believe it or not.

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
this is definitely your territory more than mine, but when i was 17 this was one of the obvious appeals of d&b, that it was so fast that everyone had the option of flailing about, and you can dance in a macho way as well, but then you could also wind your waist and do all sorts of things if you wanted to. as opposed to anything more slinky where your average lad wouldn't know what the hell to do, would feel out of it, like they couldn't join in, that you had to be 'good', etc
I dunno if it's more my territory. I suppose that the way that I stated that previously it made it sound as though it was a cast iron universal rule but I was really talking about my own preferences. It's not just dancing though to be honest, I reckon that if I think about most (not all) of the activities that I enjoy, they must have been accessible enough to allow me to enjoy almost from the start to some extent, while at the same time having room for improvement or development which meant that they didn't become boring after a few goes.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
You mean like morris dancing or maypole or country dancing could have sort of survived and evolved and then been absorbed into the dancing that went with rave but instead it just disappeared and was replaced? Well, or let's say that there were already dance scenes such as northern soul and rare groove and so on and those had already replaced country dancing etc but that just pushes the question back to one of why didn't those scenes incorporate the folk dances? I guess - just off the top of my head, might be totally wrong - that the answer is cos they were based around American musics that had dance styles that went along with them and those were imported along with the music.
yeah right, I mean what i mean is just that it's gone completely, and the way people dance in england now has absolutely nothing to do with traditional english dancing. the american thing that you described sounds right.

i do think that england is a culture which is a bit deprived of dancing, overall. i mean there are outlets for it obviously. but i reckon the majority of people, even most young people, almost never dance. i don't think these two things are totally unrelated, obviously there's a lot more going on and i'd rather dance to d&b rather than become a morris dancer, although a combination of the two could be good as well.

singing is a bit like that in england as well, people basically don't let you do it unless you're 'good'
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
aidiothir August 23, 2016

edited over 5 years ago
Yes, Gabber in its early days around 1993 had an industrial attitude, and was so dirty so noisy and so hard as term Gabber ment to be, with all those industrial noises, distorted kicks, distorted sounds, distorted claps, distorted hats, distorted voices, everything was distorted. But from 1994 and after, Gabber music changed face, and only the distorted kicks remained, as the sounds replaced with oldskool rave stabs, cheese melodies, pianos, happy vocals, and generally flirted with happy hardcore. Rotterdam records was one if not the finest example of that turnaround.
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user
August 25, 2006

edited over 15 years ago
This label just embodied the scene at the time from 92 to 94, but talk about going downhill fast! Every release before ROT036 was pretty much a riot.. Bald Terror, Hard Attack, Euromasters, U.N.O.R., RTS (the merry x-mess 12"), top, hard, takin the piss, hooligan gabber. Then all of a sudden it just lost the plot, crap ital gabbers, happy hardcore, cheese etc.. haven't touched a new record since 1994.
 
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