Hardcore Techno

What it is

Marc Trauner released We Have Arrived as Mescalinum United in 1990 on Planet Core Productions, and the record does something no techno record had done: it drives the bass drum so hard that the distortion becomes the melody. Everything in this family descends from that decision. The Frankfurt records that followed on PCP, and the Rotterdam and Belgian ones that answered them, still had one foot in rave: a breakbeat somewhere in the mix, a hoover, a sampled shout. The kick was already the point, but it had not yet pushed everything else out of the track. That happened two years later, ninety kilometres north.

What it sounds like

A 909 bass drum through an overdrive pedal, ringing for most of a beat, with the top of it fizzing. Over that, a break running quietly underneath rather than up front, a Juno hoover bent by hand, and shouted samples lifted off other records. The reverb is a cheap digital hall on the snare only. Mids are crowded and there is no real sub, because these were made to sound enormous on a club rig with the bass cranked, not on headphones. Almost everything is in mono.

Key elements

• The overdriven 909A TR-909 bass drum with decay near maximum, run through a guitar distortion box. The tail is longer than the gap between beats, so the low end never closes.
• A break still in the mixA funk break underneath the four to the floor, high-passed and quiet. It is a texture here rather than the rhythm, which is what separates this from the breakbeat side of rave.
• The hooverThe Alpha Juno What The patch, pitch-bent by hand over four bars. Belgian new beat invented it, hardcore inherited it, and it has not left since.
• Shouted samplesA single word or phrase from a film or a rap record, dropped in at phrase ends. Twelve-bit, mono, and often clipping on the way in.
• Thin, offbeat hatsClosed hats on the and of the first three beats, with beat 4 left to the kick tail and the snare. Three hats a bar, and the top end is thin on purpose.

How to get them

• Build the kick909 bass drum, tune to about 55Hz, decay to 400ms. Send it into an overdrive with the drive at two thirds, then low-pass at 4kHz to take the fizz off. Do not compress after; let it clip.
• Bury the breakHigh-pass a Think or Amen loop at 250Hz and sit it fifteen decibels under the kick. If you can pick out the break on a first listen it is too loud for this era.
• Bend the hooverThree detuned saws, low-pass with resonance near three quarters, pitch range set to twelve semitones, and play the bend with the wheel rather than drawing automation. Record several takes and keep the sloppiest.
• SnareA break snare, not a machine snare, with a bright 1.2 second hall on it and no pre-delay. Layer a short noise burst under the attack so it survives the kick.
• Mix it wrong on purposeRoll off below 45Hz across the whole track. These records had no sub, and the weight came from the 80 to 150Hz band being enormous. A modern sub under this makes it sound like a different genre.
• ArrangementSixteen bars of kick, sixteen with the hoover, a break where only the sample and the reverb tail survive, then everything for thirty two. Six minutes, no more.

Reference points

Mescalinum United, PCP, Ilsa Gold, Marc Acardipane, Rotterdam Termination Source, and 80 Aum and Ruffneck Records. Given as reference points for the sound rather than as endorsements.