The Answer Is In The Beat

v/a: Soundtrack for Breakcore Guidebook (Murder Channel, 2020)

February 14, 2021 at 2:30 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Two years ago, the founder of Japanese label Murder Channel published two volumes of a book covering the history of breakcore, tracing its roots from hardcore and industrial, as well as influences from death metal, ragga, IDM, free jazz, mashups, and rave music which became parts of the story over the years. Photos and easily translatable Japanese text are available to view here and here. Additionally, the label released a soundtrack on Bandcamp filled with new and unreleased goodies from several longtime favorites from the scene. An unreleased, unfinished Dev/Null remix of Duran Duran Duran from 2007 appears near the beginning, starting out with a buildup similar to the sound of hardcore during that era, then just going off the rails for the rest of its duration. OVe-NaXx reaches even further back for his 2003 track, which sounds a little rough and demo-y but its ecstatically sweet melodies and his inventive ways of contorting beats render the track a success. The genre’s evolution is traced with more elaborate, dramatic tracks by Ruby My Dear and Stazma, and there’s an all-too-rare appearance by Twenty Knives, who does a sort of gothy indie rock song with breakbeats and possibly a theremin. Electromeca does his usual dense jigsaw distorted hiphop-core, this time with shreds of static-riddled radio pop songs. Aaron Spectre continues his recent run of some of his best work ever, and Gore Tech and FFF similarly keep raggacore blazing in the 2020s. There’s another recent Bandcamp breakcore comp that I downloaded that I’m going to get around to reviewing soon which feels like more of an update of what younger producers in the scene are doing, but this is a quality example of how the ’00s/early ’10s school is holding up.