Darkcore

What it is

Metalheads put out Terminator in late 1992 and it did two things at once. It time-stretched a break so that the snare changed pitch while the tempo stayed put, which nobody had heard, and it took the piano, the diva and most of the cheerfulness out of hardcore. Doc Scott's NHS, 4hero's Mr Kirk and Origin Unknown's Valley Of The Shadows followed inside a year. The scene called it darkside or darkcore, and it lasted about eighteen months before turning into jungle proper. Musically it is subtraction: the four to the floor goes, the piano goes, the vocal is reduced to a sample of somebody in trouble, and what is left is a lot of empty space with a sub underneath it. Producers have described it as a reaction to the drugs going bad. The records back that up.

What it sounds like

Cold, spaced out and low. A hard short kick, a break that has been stretched until it warbles, and long stretches where nothing much happens except a sub note and a pad. Horror film dialogue, a stretched scream, an air raid siren buried in reverb. The snare is treated with a big dark hall rather than a bright one. Very little top end and almost no mid-range melody, so the few notes there are feel enormous. Bass is a filtered saw or a sine, played slow, with a long release.

Key elements

• Timestretch as an effectThe Akai S1000 stretched by looping tiny grains, and at extreme settings it warbles. Metalheads pointed that at a break and the artefact became a genre marker within months.
• The snare on beat 3Pulling the main backbeat to beat 3 instead of 2 and 4 halves the perceived tempo. The drums stay at 158 and the track feels like it is at 79, which is the trick the whole style runs on.
• Space where the piano wasWhole beats with nothing on them but a reverb tail. Hardcore filled every sixteenth, and taking that away is what made these records sound sinister rather than fast.
• The dark padA detuned string or choir patch, low-passed hard, held for eight bars. Usually one chord for a whole section, because a second chord makes it sound hopeful.
• Sampled dreadA line from a horror film, a scream stretched to four times its length, a heartbeat. Kept quiet and drenched, so it sits behind the drums rather than over them.

How to get them

• Stretch until it breaksTake a break at 136 and stretch it to 158 with a granular algorithm and a deliberately long window, 80ms or more. You want the warble, so pick the setting that sounds wrong and keep it.
• Move the backbeat to 3Cut the break so the loud snare lands on beat 3 and nothing loud lands on 2 or 4. Add a single ghost near the end of each bar so the ear still knows where the barline is.
• Reverb the snare, not the kickA 2.5 second hall with the high end rolled off at 4kHz, on the snare send only. The kick stays completely dry, which is what keeps the low end tight while the top half of the kit smears.
• One sub note per barA sine with a 600ms release, low-passed at 90Hz, playing one note a bar and occasionally sliding a fifth. Sidechain it only to the kick, with a 120ms release, so the gap between them is audible.
• Leave the arrangement emptyThirty two bars of drums, sub and one pad chord, then take the drums out entirely for eight. Adding a second melodic element to a darkcore track is usually what stops it being one.
• Reversed cymbal into everythingReverse a crash, put it before every sixteenth bar, and duck it under the kick. It is the cheapest way to give an arrangement this sparse a sense of direction.

Reference points

Metalheads, Doc Scott, 4hero, Origin Unknown, Rufige Kru and the Reinforced and Moving Shadow catalogues of 1992 and 1993. Given as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.