By 1990, techno had become a catch-all term denoting anything less traditionally soulful than house music. Hardcore techno was the first fully fledged genre of European rave music. DJ's in Holland were taking techno tracks that were meant to be played on 33 RPM on 45 RPM instead, creating beats that often exceeded 200 beats per minute.

As early as 1989, DJ duo Fabio & Grooverider were experimenting in a similar way. They conducted experiments with house music records that employed breakbeats and sped them up to similar speeds of 200 beats per minute. This led to the rise of UK Hardcore.

UK Hardcore was then influenced by Prodigy's 1991 anthem "Charly" and Acen's 1992 "Trip To The Moon." This new style served as the introductory rave sound in many North American cities. Hardcore fizzled out in most of those towns as their local flavors emerged.

In 1993 there was a concensus that hardcore was becoming too mainstream. Some producers began to develop what was at the time known as darkcore by stripping the elements of hardcore and making it "darker" with less pitched up vocals. All of the euphoric and happy elements were taken from it. This was the beginning of jungle. In response to this movement a different group of producers took the "happy" elements from oldskool hardcore to create happy hardcore.

With the rise of hardcore came an influx of drug use in the rave culture. The whistles and toys that were first seen in England at Danny Rampling's Shoom events became prominent everywhere hardcore was represented. Children's party accessories like glowsticks were suddenly also very popular and dancers began wearing excessively large T-shirts, wooly hats and children's bookbags.

In 1994 the Criminal Justice Act was passed which led to the crackdown of many illegal raves, outlawing them and preventing a large number of massives from taking place. This law also increased police powers of unsupervised "stop & search" along with an entire section that covered collective trespass & nuisance on land as well as a dedicated section to raves.

This episode is a look at some vital hardcore tunes that were released between 1991-1994.

Tracklisting:

Prodigy - No Good
Codene - Hilton Park
Vol 2 - Turbo Sound
Ramos & Supreme - Crowd Control
Prodigy - Out Of Space
Subdoh - Seduction
Yolk - Bish Bosh
Unknown - Mayday Anthem
Tyrrany - Off Me Head
Unity - Unity (FSOL remix)

Early jungle evolved from the acid house of the late 1980s. Key acid house tunes during the evolution period were 808 State's "Cubik" and Stakker's "Humanoid." Each of these are examples of the experimentation with broken beats. Also during the same time Frankie Bones is said to have "invented the broken beat." While this claim is argumentative he contributed to the experimentation towards breakbeat with his track titled "Bones Breaks."

At the time a lot of this music was considered to be hardcore. Music tempos were being pushed higher than had previously occured with traditional house and even acid house. A lot of the hardcore songs at the time were upbeat so certain producers responded to this with more agressive and dark-minded music. This was known at the time as "darkcore."

The dark sound appealed to many people in dancehall & reggae communities. Darkcore & dancehall were being mixed together at parties until soon dancehall reggae was incorporated into the sound of darkcore.

As the yet-unnamed genre evolved, the use of sampled breakbeats became more complex. The most notable sample is the Amen Break which was taken from a funk song by The Winston Brothers called "Amen, Brother."

This podcast is a retrospect at some of my early jungle collection with tracks from 1991-1993. To me early jungle was defined with tracks by Roni Size & LTJ Buken. Dj Hype, Goldie, Fabio & Grooverider were very big influences as well at the time.

Tracklist:

Rufige Kru - Fabio's Ghost
Q Bass feat. Skeng Gee - Gun Connection
Dubplate Remixes - Simply Rolling
Brainkillers & Lewi Cifer - Hurt Me
Roni Size - Fresh
Ravers Choice - Side B
Roni Size - The Refresher
LTJ Bukem - Bookworm
LTJ Bukem - Logical Progression
David Bryce - Logical Reprise
Bodysnatch - Euphony
Brainkillers & Lewi Cifer - On A Different Mission
Xenophobia - The Phoenix

A lot happened in 1993 from the first Essential Mixes being released on BBC's Radio 1 to the split of oldskool hardcore into two seperate genres: darkcore & happy hardcore. This was also around the time that the San Francisco rave scene was reborn.

San Francisco never jumped onto house music until several years after New York & Chicago. At the turn of the 1990's several English dj's and promoters moved to San Francisco to host events, including a crew called Wicked that hosted the SF Bay Area's "Full Moon" parties. The British invasion lasted until 1993. It was at this point that the Hardkiss Brothers who began hosting events and developing the sound for San Francisco ravers. In 1993 Scott Hardkiss produced "Raincry" under the moniker of God Within.

That same year Rabbit In The Moon made their breakthrough debut with O.B.E./Freak To The Beat which came out on Hallucination Recordings. Later that year Phases Of An Out Of Body Experience was released on Hardkiss Records. John Digweed and Nick Muir also established their label Bedrock Records, named after a clubnight in London.

This podcast features some of the biggest, most inspiring progressive and ambient songs from 1993 leading up to a remake of the very first trance recording which was produced in 1990 - The Age of Love.

Rabbit in the Moon - Out of Body Experience
God Within - Raincry
Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea
Bedrock - For What You Dream Of
Havana - Ethnic Prayer
Grace - Not Over Yet
Unknown - Unknown
Jam & Spoon - Age of Love (Watch Out For Stella Club Mix)

The early 1990's can be seen as a season of extreme change for dance music beginning with the "death" of European acid-house and rise of hardcore. In the United States, Detroit techno and Chicago/NYC house maintained their roots. However, European hardcore techno quickly made it's way onto US soil and stomping, German techno came along as well.

DJ's Frankie Bones, Adam X, and Heather Heart paved the way for North American rave, hosting illegal parties known as "Storm Rave." These parties took place in obscure locations such as construction sites, brickyards, and derelict stables. Rave-baron, Lord Michael, brought rave music into the nightclub scene with the help of Peter Gatien. Scotto & DB joined to form NASA which promoted the nighclub events at Limelight and Palladium. This created conflict between the underground Brooklyn Storm Raves and the NYC rave clubs. During the same time dj's like Keoki and America's first "techno star" known as Moby came into the picture to move America onto a broader scale in the global culture.

In 1990 the first trance track was released titled "Age Of Love." From there acts like Art of Trance, Paul Van Dyk, and Union Jack defined the sounds of trance. Similarly, hardcore became popularized by records such as "Charly" by The Prodigy and Sesame's Treat, which was a rip of the Sesame Street Theme.

This podcast shows the upward swing from acid house and techno to some early trance tunes which were, at the time, considered to be techno tracks by their producers. This was still a period where people weren't yet completely set on genres but there were different scenes created by the history of traditional house music and "rave music." Through the early 1990's the notion of segregated genres starts to become more and more prevalent with the emergence of newer styles.

Outlander - The Vamp
Joey Beltram - Energy Flash
Joey Beltram - Jazz 303
Orbital - Chime
Tasti Box - Rush
Cybex Factor - Die Schopfung
Trilithon - Choice
Orbital - Omen

House music which had previously derived from disco grew famous in the gay club circuit in cities like Chicago & New York, mainly pioneered by Frankie Knuckles (Chicago) & Larry Levan (NYC). The music had come a long way from the late 70's and dj's who performed live remixes had started focusing on producing "house music." At the same time a sound known as "acid" was created by DJ Pierre of Phuture. The acid sound was made by tweaking a Roland TB-303 Bassline Machine, a device made to provide basslines for practicing guitarists.

In 1987 American house music began reaching European music charts. "Acid house" was also a term being used in England to encompass any form of house music that sounded "crazy." People also thought the drug reference sounded cool. Incidentally the drug of the acid house movement was not LSD, but MDMA (Ecstacy). During this same year a group of three dj's who were scraping by spent the summer in Ibiza. During their time on the island they they had taken their first Ecstacy trips and experienced the open-air disco known as Amnesia. These three dj's were Danny Rampling, Paul Oakenfold, and Nicky Holloway.

In 1988 each of these three dj's had opened their own club nights in London. One of the most notable was Paul Oakenfold's Monday night Spectrum party which pulled crowds of over two thousand people. At Nicky Holloway's "The Trip" had crowds of rivaled football players, whose violence was at an all-time high, dancing together in an Ecstacy induced euphoria. Clubbers during this time were living as if they had been transplanted back to the sixties, talking about peace and changing the world.

In 1988 the word "raving" was also finally coined and the acid-house culture had reached it's peak. The media began documenting the events while police worked in full-force to prevent raves from happening.

In 1989 the first fully licensed event took place on the London/Essex border hosted by a crew called Raindance. The yellow smiley face seen on Have A Nice Day signs became the logo for Danny Rampling's clubnight "Shoom" and simultaneously became the trademark for the acid-house revolution.

By 1990, while the music was continuing to be produced, acid-house was deemed as being "dead." The media had stopped their coverage and promoters began to set up an urban house scene in clubs like London's luxurious Ministry of Sound, bringing a second wave of ravers to the arena.

While I was not remotely close to DJ'ing during this time I've always had a passion for the songs that I chose to compile into this mini-mix, which was created a shortwhile before graduating college. This year marks the timeline for the 10 years that I have been dj'ing so I will be taking a step back and posting mixes each week of pure oldskool techno & house music.

Oval Emotion - Go Go (Deep Destruction Remix)
Drum & Bass - I Love You
Black Riot - A Day In The Life
Royal House - Can U Party (Todd Terry B-Boy Remix)
2 In A Room - Take Me Away
Underground Resistance - Jupiter Jazz
Simon Sed - Criminal

This was an unplanned, one-take session. I mixed this with all of my current favorite acid breaks tunes, both old & new. This is the follow-up of my yearly breaks mixes stemming from "Make 'Em Bleed" in 2006 and "My Destructo" in 2007.

Free at Last - DJ Sandy
Bad Boyz - Bad Boyz (Cris Remix)
Tokyo Loading - Strider (2rip's Cut The Crap Edit)
Submit - Introspective (Bitrok Remix)
TFM - Lee Coombs
Summer Rolls - Robosapiens
Freestyle - JMekka & J.Bass (Robosapiens Remix)
Low Contour - Freeflow 45
Blow Your Mind - Speakers Junkies (Prodigy Remix)
High Noon On My Sundial - Tom Real

This podcast is actually the second half of a studio recording. The first half has yet to be released but will be titled "Physical Friction." The tracks selected here are some of my favorite progressive house songs from 2007 and they were compiled to reflect the programming of a late night mix leading up to the end of a party, hence the name "Last Call."

Ubu – Pixels
PMFM – Frogs & Gekkos
Romz – Rukker After
Remo – Ivision
Furry Nipples – Viggo (Martni H Remix)
Yanouz – King Of My Castle (Sander Van Doorn Remix)
Stereofreak – Gipfeltreffen
Booka Shade – Numbers
Gui Boratto – Beautiful (Sascha Funke Remix)
4om4 + Seal – Amazing (Thin White Duke Remix)

Although the name speaks for the original version, this mix was toned down to be more accessible to listeners all across the board. The final version is a representation of a variety of styles I contribute when playing a breakbeat set. Ranging from smooth, building basslines as you will hear in the beginning of the set to hard, driving, acid and tech breaks - all while managing to keep a high level funk. Sorry I didn't include any scratching on this cd, guys. I had a killer routine for the beginning but I decided to leave it out until I have it completely perfected.

This is currently my official breakbeat demo of 2007. It has been over a full year since the release of my last breaks CD which was titled "Make 'Em Bleed," so you can certainly understand the anticipation of this compilation. Here is the tracklisting:

1.Flashpoint - Birth Of Smurf [Sinister Recordings]
2.Molomekaniske - Ghost In Stereo [Sinister Recordings]
3.Introspective - Fatal Attraction [Sinister Recordings]
4.Psure - Blue Light [Title Fight Records]
5.Def Inc - University of Dub [Bochit Breaks]
6.Ben & Lex - Like This [Ape Records]
7.Rob Reng - Makin Ya Bounce [Ruff Dog Recordings]
8.Mortlock - Evolutionary [Guerilla Tactics]
9.Deibeat - We Rock The Party (Peter Paul Remix [iBreaks]
10.Control Z - The Tunnel [Hardcore Breaks]
11.D-Ranged - Get Shift (Far Too Loud Rmx) [Bombtraxx Records]
12.Nothing - Analogue Rush (Dopamine Rmx) [Unstable Records]
13.Dopamine + Klaus Hill - Ah Baby [Title Fight Records]
14.Robosapiens - New World Order [Dead Famous Recordings]
15.Robosapiens - Acid Reign [Sinister Recordings]
16.IIs - Angels (Santos Remix) [Distinct'ive Records]
17.Sugiurumn - Hot Plate (Santos Remix) [Mantra Breaks]

In January of 2006 I made my first trip hop mix titled "No Cause For Concern" which fully blossomed my love for the entire genre of downtempo. For over a year I have promised everyone some new listening material of this type.

It's finally here... Cloudbreak. This compilation was actually based around a central storyline, even moreso than previous mixes. I stumbled upon a series of records that spoke volumes to me and arranged them in a way that not only flows but also takes you through. This theme is an aural description of a persons death and the guidance through the tunnel towards the light and some suprises found on the other side. Use your imagination - the rest is open for interpretation.

Tracklisting:
Trentemoller - Miss You
Coach - Dal Mare Lontano
Don Carlos - Sun Is Shining
Kevin Yost - Deep Inside My Soul
Dave Warrin - Somewhere
Fresh & Low - Feels So Good (Hanna Rmx)
Coach - Long
Blue Mood - What Does It Mean
Blue Mood - Roses
Zeb - The Water & The Sun
Kevin Yost - Long Distance Goodbyes
Richard Les Crees - Slow Ride
Hanna - Dayspring
Ohm Guru - Montedivenere
Mystic Diversions - Interracial
LTJ Experience - Moon Beat
Trentemoller - Like Two Strangers

This mix was my official CD release for the summer of 2005. Over 500 copies were dispersed to friends, fans, and production companies. Two release parties were held in celebration, one was a pool party titled Sinner's Paradise where the majority of promos were distributed along with stickers that read "2RIP IS MY BABY'S DADDY."

This session was my first crossover from progressive & tribal house to electro. I think the transitions on this CD clearly represent that journey I was taking, musically, at the time. From the introduction and beginning tracks the mix would appear to be more progressive & tribal but as it carries out the feel for electro-house with some of the biggest hitting tracks for that summer.

2rip vs. The Shadowstarr - Attention (Intro)
DJ Evil - Darkness Falls
Paul Hammill - Jam The Box
Tony Mendez - The Trip
Oscar Goldman - Thrust 2(Paranoid Jack Rmx)
Cargo - Broken Piano
Truby Lounge Collective - Electrobossa
Peter Paul -Cristalline (Paranoid Jack Rmx)
Rock One - Body Shake
Santi B & Vic Del Guio - NOFX
Steve Angello - Voices (Prydz Rmx)
Sucker DJ's - Banrock (Paul Rogers Rx)