Kutski Blogs: Refreshing Hard Dance

Hello one and all! So this is my first blog, allow me to introduce myself... I'm a DJ from the Northwest of England, and musically I play everything that sits under the rave umbrella, out in the clubs as well as my BBC Radio 1 show. I got into the music in the early '90s when it was all white gloves and whistles, and have lived for scene through all its incarnations of happy hardcore, hard dance, freeform, gabber etc..

I assume many people reading this may not think they are into the music, and probably have a cheesy stereotyped view of chipmunk vocals and pitch up piano riffs... I'll hold my hands up, I do still love all that stuff, but there is also a great deal of depth in the scene that I think would surprise most people! There is no better example of this than the exciting emergence of the 'rave breaks' scene that has been bubbling up on the underground for the past few years!!

This is basically the sound and ethos of the breakbeat hardcore sound of the early '90s (thinks acts like Ratpack, Altern8, Liquid), but with modern day production styles and influences. The scene has actually been around for many years with artists simply recreating the classic rave sound in new tracks. For me though, the scene really got exciting when hardcore legends Slipmatt and Billy 'Daniel' Bunter stepped in and, instead of trying to recreate the sound, they took the ethos and values of the scene and injected all that is good from modern dance music to give birth to this new incarnation of the rave sound!

With de-tuned electro style synths, dubstep wobble basses, and chunky breakbeats, this scene has been growing slowly but steadily with more artists getting on board and experimenting with the style, and some great talent emerging from the scene too, such as Flashback Project, DJ Faydz, Dub Heroes, Twista, and Peacemaker to name but a few!

So as an opening blog, if you think you have 'grown out' or are 'too cool' for the rave scene, I plead with you to search for some of the artist I have mentioned and I think you will be pleasantly surprised!! Who knows, you might even find yourself heading to Homebase to pick a dustmask ;)