Ever so often I go through my entire collection of records and CDs, usually to find that most of the crap I haven't been listening to for ages deserves that fate. But what makes it worthwhile is that there's always a few records that you forgot you owned.
There's always one record that stands out from all the rest. I keep forgetting I own it, but somehow it has survived even the hardest of times; when I was so broke I had to sell most of my records.
What makes it so interesting is that I have no idea about the artist, nor track title. Now I own a whole lot of 7"s with out labels, but they're just not good enough to actually wonder who the artist could be. But this is actually really good abrassive Gabber (or Gabba).
The 12" record comes in a black, blank sleeve, no lettering. The labels show little other than the words 'DYS' and 'AI' on the A-side and a horror-like image on the other.
The song I like best starts out with an unearthly, heavily distorted scream in a staccato rhythm which is quickly backed by loud distorted beats, which during the song picks up pace until it is nearly impossible to distinguish one beat from another.
boomp3.com
I must have picked up this record in '95 or '96, during what were the last dying breaths of the Gabber phenomenon in Holland. It's hard to believe for those that weren't there to witness it, but for a few years a good portion of Dutch youth dressed up in over-prized, shiny training suits with loud prints, shaved their heads completely bald and listened to the most abbrasive techno ever to emmerge from house music.
Starting out as an underground phenomenon in the clubs of the gritty and working class cities of The Hague and Rotterdam. Perhaps the genre was kickstarted by the track Mescalinum United - We have arrived from '90, but I think it gained popularity through the immense #1 hit record James Brown is Dead by Dutch DJ Wessel van Diepen under his monicker LA-Style in '91. (Sidenote: Wessel van Diepen was also the producer/DJ responsible for Nakatomi and the Venga Boys)
Purists will maintain that James Brown is Dead is not technically a Gabber record, but I'm sure it did make the general public more perceptible to raw techno music with abrassive beats.
Soon the genre gained so much popularity in the underground that the larger music industry started to show interest. Soon bald-headed four year olds would be jumping on 'happy hardcore', a more commercial, melodic kind of Gabber. School classes were devided by those that were and those that weren't.
At the same time, as a reaction the more underground orientated Gabber was moving towards an even grittier, aggressive sound and message. While at Gabber clubs the happy go lucky drugs like MDMA or XTC were slowly replaced by the cheaper aggro-drug Speed.
Subject matter moved from "poing poing poing" to horror, sexism, violence and sometimes even racism. And then the media caught on...
Some people cringe when 'the media' are treated as one big monolithic block. But in this case it was THE MEDIA that jumped on Gabber en masse, accused it of racism and violence. And soon Gabbers started to believe the picture that was presented to the general public. That's when a big part (but still a minority) moved into shady territory.
I believe a simular thing happened in the late 70s and early 80s when the Skinhead culture, with its origins in Jamaican Rude-Boy culture, quickly became associated with racism and violence. Of course that is not to say racism was absent from that scene before Skrewdriver dropped their bombshell, any culture that has its roots in the working class, multi-cultural urban slums will have its racist fringes. But it wasn't until THE MEDIA started to paint all skinheads as aggresive hate-mongers, that these Skinheads actually started to believe that image.
It wasn't until long that the Gabber phenomenon finally imploded, fueled by bad publicity and the short expiration date of media hypes. It moved back into obscurity, where it has been looming ever since.
And now, 10 years later, I find this record; could someone out there please tell me what I've been listening to these last few hours?
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