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missthe90s
Starting Member
United Kingdom
3 posts
Joined: Apr, 2026
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 Posted - 2026/04/24 : 17:45:05
What I mean is those melancholy lyrics type of tunes which feel really deep and emotional. This is the best HH to me.
Examples for me to know what I am talking about:
DJ Demo Kingsize and Eternity - Magic Touch
DJ Stompy - I Believe (Force and Styles Remix) - I find their remix the best that I listened to as it breaks down into a more melancholy vibe and love how after a sad start it flips into super uplifting.
I used to have many more saved in a text file to refer to when I wanted a lift but have deleted it long ago.
There are some other newer ones - well not these days but mid 00s which is the last few years I feel HH had anything to offer with only a few dregs like CLSM and Sy, those bouncy ones, and a couple of other labels I forgot - oh some of Scott Brown of course. That tune "I will SET YOUR BODY FREEE" now that was a hard roller! the remix one, I think Sy?
For one from that period, I forgot who it was by, one of the duo names, and get a load of useless unrelated results when searching, but I am sure you will immediately know as I remember the track name is "The only ones" and the lyrics start out something like "you don't have to worry blah blah" then main lyrics "believe in what you are, believe in what you feel, forever, it will be our destiny" I love with this one how it sounds like the woman's voice is kind of distant and somehow encapsulated in the tune somewhere but getting her message across load and clear!
Used to be great hearing tunes like that on a big system at a club.
I think these sad type tunes felt more poignant for me because I got into HH, going out to it at least, listened to tape packs on and off through the 90s at high school, when the scene was on it's arse at around 2001. Well actually that wasn't the worst of the scene from what I have read later is it - 99 being the real bottoming out? This was supposedly an attempt at a renaissance with all the trancey HH rubbish - imagine my surprise when I knew nothing about this and my first times going out to HH nights in Bristol back around 2001-2002 type era and I am expecting that banging kickdrum from the mid 90s I was used to and I get into those nights and hear what I thought was straight trance! with the gutted kick replaced with some weak little 'tap' sound. Actually it was worse than trance because trance would often be great back then, that was at its peak, with the height of clubs like Gatecrasher (not that I experienced it) and such, but this trancey hardcore was just the worst of each genre.
As mentioned above though there were some redeeming tunes like CLSM which still had that stomping and driving sound we all know and love from the mid 90s.
Oh, back to my point...yea so I guess sometimes they would play some old school sets or tunes mixed to the newer rubbish and it felt those sad tunes were like a soundtrack to how awful the scene was then with the peak having long faded so the tunes felt so fitting for the scene at that time. I didn't mind this at all though. It still felt good going to these mostly empty nights and raving with what were mostly 100% chavs - which it always has been tbf from what I know.
Just the gloomy feel of it, still carrying on regardless with the poseurs having long left, added to the atmosphere somehow.
Another one - tunes like Unique (Force) - the 5 am one "it's 5 AM I'm all alone walking down this twisted road" Ok, now listening back to this tune years later it is pretty weak but I do remember getting feels for that at the time after having gone out to one of those empty nights and walking back and just feeling sombre. So it had more of an effect then.
I can only imagine what it would have been like raving at the peak of the happy period, I mean once HH found its legs away from breakbeat hardcore and that stuff before, for those couple of short years it had its time in the sun. It would have been great in a different way I bet. That is for another post to ask about that from the older heads. Would love to get a synopsis of how things were through the nascent late 80s through to the early 00s. Not interested in after really as it was really dead to my mind then unless there is the odd nostalgia night here and there. Just commercial and/or overly engineered rubbish imho.
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Edited by - missthe90s on 2026/04/24 17:46:24 |
warped_candykid
Advanced Member
United States
4,003 posts
Joined: Jan, 2004
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Posted - 2026/04/25 : 15:17:22
Adam Harris - Heaven's Above
Sy & Demo - Stay With Me
Quest - Images of You
Bang! - Give Me A Reason
Innovate - Don't Cry For Me
DJ Thoka - Heaven is Here
JHAL - Life We Share
Unique - Feelin Fine
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missthe90s
Starting Member
United Kingdom
3 posts
Joined: Apr, 2026
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Posted - 2026/04/25 : 19:38:45
quote:
Originally posted by warped_candykid:
Adam Harris - Heaven's Above
Sy & Demo - Stay With Me
Quest - Images of You
Bang! - Give Me A Reason
Innovate - Don't Cry For Me
DJ Thoka - Heaven is Here
JHAL - Life We Share
Unique - Feelin Fine
Oh yea some great picks here and a quite a few I had never heard of (and not listened to them all yet) such as Heaven is Here and Life We Share, plus a couple I knew very well but had forgotten! such as gimme a reason! That reminds me of another one..the one that goes 'lookin out from within my mind, I found a world of a diffrent kiiind, etc etc follow meeee and I'll let you take my ecstasy' oh and another amazing one 'break of dawn'!
Cheers.
Oh yea Images of You I know. From my past searches I know that label art to be one of those with lots of heavily emotional tracks.
Seems that 98 was a good year for this kind of stuff looking at discogs for their release dates, maybe the artists were anticipating the decline of the scene then or had already begun and reflecting in the music?
Oh yea the Heaven is Here one is really growing me! It would make one hell of a set starter 'come up' tune! Simple little lyrics but somehow sad and the tune itelf strong and driving pushing it through! "time to leave the ground" that really gives you the lift. Reminds me of some makina tunes. speaking of which a massive one from that genre that fits the criteria for me would ve Van and Derr - Come at My Side. I feel like Makina is the 'spiritual successor' of happy hardcore - it is the direction the HH guys in the UK should have gone rather than the trancey crap they came up with. Makina is alot like CLSM UK stuff anyway.
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Edited by - missthe90s on 2026/04/25 19:53:59 |
Sparkz_LuckyStrike
New Member
United Kingdom
70 posts
Joined: Jan, 2021
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Posted - 2026/04/25 : 21:08:45
People never generally get hardcore and assume it's just an offer your head sound and that the lyrics are just "sped up" chipmunk crap.
I've always been against that grain and got into core as a lover of classical and chart music. The best elements of the music I liked at the time all bundled into one (cheesy vox, epic pianos, pads and so on).
So yeah, I totally get that.
There's too many to mention but the number one for me....
Force and styles simply electric (remix).
The keyboard. The fact it was on the first hardcore cd purchase of mine (millennium collection - dreamscape. Slipmatt mix).
I was at the family home. That dreamscape cd album had 3 cd's of jungle, 3 old skool and then 3 of happy hardcore.
I knew happy hardcore from some tapes some school kids had on the bus years prior.
So anyway, I went through the cd's. "Old skool".... With top buzz and so on, yeah not bad. Then jungle cd's, one with GQ, good. Then HHC, slipmatt, that simply electric track. Amazing, that was like the proper shit I heard on the school bus years prior.
It's always just stayed with me really. The good times, everything I liked thrown in to 1 track. Total reflection and happiness with hearing that track.
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missthe90s
Starting Member
United Kingdom
3 posts
Joined: Apr, 2026
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Posted - 2026/04/26 : 06:14:04
quote:
Originally posted by Sparkz_LuckyStrike:
People never generally get hardcore and assume it's just an offer your head sound and that the lyrics are just "sped up" chipmunk crap.
I've always been against that grain and got into core as a lover of classical and chart music. The best elements of the music I liked at the time all bundled into one (cheesy vox, epic pianos, pads and so on).
So yeah, I totally get that.
There's too many to mention but the number one for me....
Force and styles simply electric (remix).
The keyboard. The fact it was on the first hardcore cd purchase of mine (millennium collection - dreamscape. Slipmatt mix).
I was at the family home. That dreamscape cd album had 3 cd's of jungle, 3 old skool and then 3 of happy hardcore.
I knew happy hardcore from some tapes some school kids had on the bus years prior.
So anyway, I went through the cd's. "Old skool".... With top buzz and so on, yeah not bad. Then jungle cd's, one with GQ, good. Then HHC, slipmatt, that simply electric track. Amazing, that was like the proper shit I heard on the school bus years prior.
It's always just stayed with me really. The good times, everything I liked thrown in to 1 track. Total reflection and happiness with hearing that track.
Hmm I wouldn't particularly call that tune sad of wistful just a run of the mill mid 90s happy one, but to each their own. :)
I take more interest in your comment about listening to HH on the school bus which was exactly my introduction too. I lived in rural wales and took like an hour to get from our small village to the high school and the cool kids at the back used to put their tapes on which a lot were bonkers.
Those bus rides are inextricably linked to the earlier bonkers tapepacks. It was years later before I started going out to HH nights, when, as mentioned above, the music sounded nothing like those tapes by about 2001 when I was old enough and/or had the inclination/lived in a place where there were those nights.
I was going to forest and house party raves through the latter 90s - only a couple of years looking back but felt like many years back then as time seemed to pass slower somehow; a couple of years now goes by in a flash - and for some reason HH was not played at those, maybe because everyone else listened to it on the bus too and thought it cheesy and wanted something different lol; mostly Dnb, hard trance and later trancecore. It was kind of ridiculous back then as it felt like every week a new genre name was popping up. Trancecore while an offshoot of HH I see as closer to hard trance even though its roots are in HH and Sharkey and the boys and also hard house was popular.
Anyway I have fallen in and out of love with the scene due experience with the dark side of the drugs situation which I guess many can relate to and would swear myself off everything rave related periodically but now I think I have made peace with that and have now been able to separate the two things and really enjoy the music still without it giving me intense anxiety like it would have for some years after those heavy days where it would have a negative Pavlovian response. I kept coming back to the music because it just gave me a lift like no other stuff does.
It has been really interesting over the years to learn what those tunes were called and associated labels once the internet made that information more readily accessible. Some hard trance tunes would be huge on local tapes circulating and you would have no idea what they were and the tape would be your only reference, pre internet. What is that DJ Gollum (I think) tune where it goes "Activate" that was massive bombing around country lanes in XR2 and bomber jackets and baggy trousers. It is like another world compared to today. :) Also Lemonade Raygun - amazing trancecore tune. Hard Trance and Trancecore the perfect union.
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