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”…hey, remember WOMB? In Tokyo? Where John Digweed and the rest of the DJ Mag paypig gang used to headline?”
”Oh yeah, let’s check out how the Japanese scene is do-”
“…fucking hell.”
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The idea of a hardcore rave continuum, aka “‘ardkore”, was brought to a wider discourse via Simon Reynolds’ series of articles for The Wire in 2013. It starts with bleep and acid house around the start of the 90s, and from there it deftly maps out hardcore’s UK-centric mutations over the years: transforming from an anarchic, MDMA-fueled furnace of hedonism and goofball antics, morphing into a bass-soaked competition for how complex one could make Amen Brother sound, driving ever faster and louder into the dystopian ponderings of one Nicholas Sykes, before everything gets so loud and mid-range driven that London fiercely claws back its junglist innovations, dissolving the relentless amen pressure and bringing focus back to sub-bass in the shape of 2 step/UK Garage. Unfortunately, Reynolds’ idea loses utility, should you desire to incorporate ‘ardkore’s continued spread outside of England (possibly because Reynolds lost interest once breakbeats were traded in for 4/4). Thus, Scott Brown and Rezerection are not mentioned, nor is Parkzicht in The Netherlands, Cherry Moon in Belgium, Kevin Energy and his revitalization of both UK happy hardcore and German hard trance via Nu Energy Recordings or Lenny Dee’s US foundational label Industrial Strength (including the merciless onslaught from Aussie Amiga ProTracker trooper and general turntable wizard Mark Newlands of Nasenbluten/Bloody Fist). Once 4/4 is given any consideration what so ever, the idea of a hardcore continuum includes both the glitzy mainstream money flirtation of “Champagne Dance” by Pay As U Go Cartel and the blistering synth burn of 1994’s “Utopia” by Strychnine. It seems increasingly difficult to maintain the stability of a continuum, if said continuum encompasses more and more steadily-growing antagonisms of a subcultural and/or musical nature.
Then there’s Japan. While the country’s doujin ecosystem for music has sustained itself on a varied diet of otaku media and imagery for decades, it’s the osmosis of foundational Dutch gabber structures (a development that can be attributed to DJ Chucky and the Japan-Rotterdam connection) that in large part causes Japanese hardcore to merge into the idea of ‘ardkore. As mentioned previously, Reynolds’ idea of a hardcore continuum arguably starts breaking apart once 4/4 is taken into account, but its description of hardcore’s aesthetics still holds up quite well in Japan:
”Speed has mutated (some say, perverted) rave music’s development, unbalancing it at both the top and bottom ends of the sound-spectrum. Ardkore is all ultra-shrill treble and bowel-quaking bass.”
”Incantations from roots reggae are snatched from their cultural context to become animated hieroglyphs. Ragga chants add a grainy insolence that’s perfect for Ardkore’s ruff and tuff uproar. Dub bass impacts your viscera, its alien metre placed outrageously amid accelerated hip hop breakbeats at twice reggae’s pace. Having ‘swallowed hiphop whole’, Ardkore’s syncopation is a radical break with the programmed machine rhythms of early UK Techno.”
”Ardcore abolishes narrative: instead of tension/climax/release, it offers a thousand plateaux of crescendo, an endless successions of NOWs.”
Indeed, hardcore in Japan barrels down the data highway at speeds increasing in time with the rapid development of new digital audio workstations. Nothing is off the table. Everything is compressed and brickwalled to hell and back. Skrillex’ mid-range driven chainsaw brostep inferno is hacked into small pieces and thrown into the centrifuge. Drum ‘n bass gets an even more slick, polished and streamlined makeover, and it’s then hurled down the audio highway like a fastball. Metal riffs, machine gun rap samples and strange instruments are punched into the mix every 4 bars. Speakers are battered by constant crescendos and bass drops. Producers have little choice but to do these things, considering that they are competing for the attention of an audience which already has an industry catering to them that rakes in more than 1 trillion yen a year domestically. However, the intense aural pressure from a BPM count blasting past 220 might just be riveting enough, or it will at least prevent you from noticing that your synapses are being borderline singed by a raging audio data vortex.
Reynolds’ pinpointing of ‘ardkore’s tendency towards infantilization of its audience continues to hold up as well. However, in Japan, this phenomenon has far more complex implications, tied as it is to an industry profiting in droves on an increasingly alienated and isolated population with plummeting birth rates and soaring rates of sexual inexperience. When pioneer DJ Sharpnel first started to splice classic anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion into European hardcore techno tropes, DJs and producers would steadily build up a distinctly non-traditional fan following. Instead of ravers, the followers were dedicated geeks (not in a pejorative sense) and other young consumers of Japanese pop culture, who were just as likely to listen to the music at home instead of at raves. Producers were quick to adapt their format to this reality, according to DJ Technorch:
“Most of the [electronic] hardcore fans in Japan still buy CDs (…) Artists do not need to make a ‘Japanese sword’ for practical DJ use like in Europe because we have a few tens of thousands of hardcore listeners who do not go to clubs. Many of my tracks are constructed in Radio Edit forms and have tempo changes. They are produced for home listening and the vocals are mixed louder. No one dances at home while listening to CDs as the houses in Japan are extremely small. Therefore, we tend to avoid loops. Also, when it comes to music for music videogames, as you have to squeeze in everything in 120 seconds, so people look for more powerful melodies and changing song structure and speed.”
Should you take a brief look at a random Japanese hardcore label’s back catalog around Y2K, it very often yields releases smothered in wild colors, doe-eyed anime girls and every other Shibuya pop culture store staple you could shake a stick at. Nobody seems particularly concerned with the possible social implications of this. When your audience to an overwhelming extent consists of otaku, making use of your audience’s moe, the emotional affection for the signs of anime/manga hyperreality, for profit is more or less a necessity in order to survive. A possible encounter with the ethical concerns around the use of lolicons does little to put the brakes on here. Can Japanese hardcore really create a vibrant local community and shatter social barriers, considering that it simultaneously subsists on the same hyperreality that papers over an unsatiated hunger for social bonding?
More tension crops up when looking at the economic side of things. Japanese hardcore’s ties to pop culture necessarily compel it to operate on the borderline to the mainstream. Because of this, the actual music produced is becoming increasingly devalued in the same manner as in the mainstream. It can even be argued that music is completely relegated to the status of data fodder for marketing purposes in other areas of entertainment. A prominent example of this is the finger-and-arm-breaking rhythm games that producers routinely supply music to, such as Arcaea, Chunithm and WACCA. Sure, producing short, narrowly defined tracks for an industry with a humongous user base is an easy way to put food on the table. It also has given rise to a number of wildly creative figures, such as doujin veteran DJ USAO and the digital audio fireworks of Akira Michishita aka Mr. C/C-Show. However, said constraints in format and formula will always represent a major risk of going into assembly line mode in the studio. If you then add the ease and speed of production that a digital audio workstation enables, the output of a Japanese hardcore producer will inevitably be in a constant battle between the need for churning out hits and pushing the envelope creatively to maintain ‘ardkore’s chaotic energy. Said battle is made even harder when taking into account hardcore’s transgressive nature when it comes to sampling. Under the watchful eyes of social media platforms crucial to hardcore’s survival and pop culture giants like Bandai Namco, anyone sticking their heads too far above the parapet in this regard are likely targets of demonetization and cease and desist orders.
The question, then, is how to sustain a local economy in a scene as volatile and buffeted by capitalism’s mutations as Japanese hardcore is. The answer seems to be absorbing and integrating a versatile roster of talent for as many pop culture media formats and platforms as possible (video, livestreaming, rhythm games, live shows, physical record sales, visual art etc.). In 2003, Yoshikazu Nagai aka REDALiCE used the infamous textboard 2channel to lay the foundations for a collective that seems to have cracked the code: HARDCORE TANO*C. By recruiting big players like DJ Myosuke, DJ Genki and t+pazolite, making use of these players’ extended networks throughout the scene and placing artists on a highly varied media menu for the public, the collective’s brand has become strong enough to sustain cross-country tours. It has also established a permanent home for live shows at WOMB in Tokyo, gaining access to a fixed source of critical financial sustenance via gigs that attract several hundred people at a time.
Inside the doors of these gigs, the role of the DJ is shifted along mainstream lines as well. Otakus don’t go to gigs to rave. They go to see their favorite stars at a live show, even though said stars, at the end of the day, are playing their or other people’s pre-recorded music the same way a traditional club DJ would. Otakus don’t have the patience to go through a traditional mix narrative. They want the stimuli of digital hardcore at maximum velocity from the second the faders on the mixer go up. Otakus don’t care about mixing. They’re used to have everything compressed into 2 minute furnace blasts of ideas pillaged from every adjacent genre of music, which will turn most attempts at a traditionally beatmatched transition into a complete cacophony. Conditions like these thrust DJs into a merciless drop competition, where they pummel the audience repeatedly with breakdowns and crescendos to get a big enough reaction that can be converted into merch sales. The skills required for this are surprisingly different from the toolset of an average club DJ, as tracks must be dropped into the mix with razor-sharp precision and phrase matching to maintain constant momentum. When performing in this manner at peak efficiency, the end result is an absolutely exhilarating rush of melody and rhythmic propulsion that goes far beyond what previous generations have accomplished.
Make no mistake about it: the tension inherent to HARDCORE TANO*C’s modus operandi also functions as one of its greatest sources of vitality. With no purism, allergy to pop persuasion or classicist ok boomer notions shackling its players, the path is cleared to any necessary musical evolution for the future. This leaves DJ Myosuke free to direct a full bore assault of distorted kicks, metal guitar and jagged splinters of noise towards its audience on tracks like “SuM” and “Megaton King”, while DJ Genki happily feeds UK hardcore on jet fuel to the very same audience on tracks like “Toymatic Parade!!”. The compilation series Irregular Nation also shows that REDALiCE still values pushing his crew outside of their comfort zones.
When the doors to another successful HARDCORE TANO*C event slam shut, several questions remain. Is it sustainable to base your business model on the speed and unpredictability of a mutating, ruthless, multi-trillion yen industry? How often can you subject your audience to a drop competition before the returns start diminishing? How long can you keep on innovating at such a breakneck pace? No matter how you slice it, HARDCORE TANO*C is a huge underdog in the fight. However, it still seems unwise to bet against it. As a label, it has stayed on top of the industry’s movements for almost two decades now, and the talent picked is highly adept at both absorbing the traits of adjacent genres and recontextualizing hardcore history for newer generations. Combine this with a traditionally unrelenting Japanese work ethic and the persistence of hardcore as a subculture, and you might just have the recipe for a groundbreaking industry anomaly.