That's really all it takes

I hate to rant on in a sort of 'freaky electronic music' binge, but it's all that's on my mind lately, excepting progressive time signature crap - and that's not for everyone.

Neither is breakcore, really, and I can see why. A synopsis couldn't hurt. Basically, as I understand it, Breakcore is a fusion of the genres of gabber, glitch, noise, and IDM. Just as speedcore was a response to the childishness of nu-style gabber and happy hardcore, breakcore is the response to IDM being too ambient... or something like that. I see Aphex Twin and Squarepusher listed as Breakcore a lot, and I'm not sure if it's true. I doubt that AFX (that's Aphex Twin, don't ask me why, it was his idea - him being Richard D. James, fyi) really qualifies, unless some of his more obscure and harder to find stuff fits the label. As for Squarepusher - he's really all over the place. As long as no one calls him jazz, it's all good. Anyway.

Breakcore, in my experience, is typified by harsh breakbeats, and a maximum output of sonic density. Artists will try to cram a lot of sound into one piece of music... resulting in what can sometimes seem an imposing wall of noise. Noise music, however, is an altogether different thing - it's made with lots of static, tape-looping, and vicious feed-back. I do enjoy some noise music, but it takes a very specific taste to like it. If someone you know doesn't like Venetian Snares and calls it 'not music', do not show them noise music. Heck, even the most hardcore VSnares fans don't like the searing feedback... I do, but again, I'm not everyone.

Breakcore is primarily made with sampled drum noises, synths, and crazy smooshing off sounds together to create sound effects that can't be replicated acoustically - a good example is the 'snare rush' VSnares does in a lot of his songs, that blurs the sound together into one continuous grating stream. If you're a fan of gabber, IDM, glitch or noise music, breakcore is probably a good idea to check out. There's some melodic type stuff out there: notably, a lot of Dev/Null's tracks, and a huge amount of VSnares, cosnidering his vast discography - especially the much toted album Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett by Venetian Snares - the title is Hungarian, and means 'born under a bad star'. Everyone who like VSnares usually loves this album, and it's reccomended by people getting other people into breakcore, which bothers me immensely. It's like reccomending Metallica to people looking for Progressive metal... perhaps not that bad. But the album doesn't really epitomize the genre - it is an amazing album, don't get me wrong. Hungarian feeling string orchestras mixed with vicious VSnares-esque breakbeats is awesome, but... it's not the best example. VSnares goes melodic on a lot of his other albums too, so people should check those out. I'd reccomend Rossz, as well as The Choclate Wheelchair Album and Higgins Ultra Low Track Glue Funk Hitsn 1972-2006 - yes, they all have long and weird titles, but those are some good albums.

In any case, I'm going to link BrEaKcOrE-AdDiCts, and say that anyone who's intersted in checking out this totally diverse, unreal, out of the way and awesome genre gives it a look. I reccomend Dev/Null and Speedranch - they have the most stuff for free download. Dev/Null is a lot more melodic, and Speedranch is a lot more noise influenced, but their both good.

As a sample of this delicious genre, I'm providing todays song of the day - Bolt Thrower In A Chinese Resteraunt by Dev/Null. This might not be the best song he offers, but it's my favorite. It starts off a bit frighteningly, so for those who want something more accessable, check out Symphonies of Suckness. Instead of wasting my bandwidth, and dealing with Megaupload (though I love them), I'm just going to link to the page for downloads on Dev's site. Here is the link - the MP3 section isn't hard to find. If you like it, please check out more, and if not... well, you're silly.