Music
No rest for the wicked: How gabber took root in the UK
The European dance sound went big on the continent – but in the UK it's remained a firmly underground sound, strictly for the hardcore. We meet some of the true believers.
Most four-to-the-floor music – house, techno, trance – rarely edges above 150bpm. That aligns it with the kind of heart rate you'll be reaching while raving, your pulse in sync with the pulsating bass. Not so with gabber. A form of hardcore techno that surfaced in Rotterdam in the early '90s, it’s the musical equivalent of tachardyia – the medical name for a heart beating too fast. With beats pounding up to 200bpm – and an even more insane offshoot, speedcore, going beyond 300bpm – gabber feels permanently at the verge of cardiac arrest.
Gabber attacks you, it doesn't like you, it's giving you a good boot in the head
A devilish blend of rave, techno, hard house and industrial music packed with super-charged rhythms and Belgian style rave stabs, gabber spread rapidly throughout continental Europe, where it still flourishes today, along with its bastard offshoot hardstyle. Curiously, though, for such an uncompromising sound, it has also leaked into the mainstream. Its streetwise aesthetic – shaved heads, garish ‘90s tracksuits, Nike trainers – has re-emerged as a retro style; Vetements and Reebok, for example, released a Rotterdam track jacket. Christian Dior incorporated the hakken – a dance associated with the cheesier side of gabber – into their Winter 2017 campaign, while the web archive turned production outfit Gabber Eleganza offer a distinctly avant-garde twist on the sound.
If gabber quickly became part of the dance music culture in Holland and Belgium, it’s always remained an outsider sound in the United Kingdom. Irregular holiday camp events like Bangface dip into the sound, drawing on its nihilistic nuttiness with occasional bookings of European acts like Rotterdam Terror Corps. Beneath this though is an underground of soundsystems, labels venues and individuals who remain committed to the gabber cause. “It’s practically pop music in Holland,” says Jim Bones, one of the founders of Crossbones, a free party crew who have been throwing raves since 1996. In the UK, he says that “you’d go to a big rave because it’s three soundsystems all Funktion One and about 300 people.” But, he continues, “the Dutch raves are disgustingly enormous...you look at the poster and you can’t see the people at the back – it’s daunting.”
GOING OFF GRID
In the UK, gabber never found its way onto the traditional club circuit. Rather, it was often heard in derelict warehouses, or sweaty illegal raves. Matt – aka DJ Nekro – also of the Crossbones crew and Drop The Bomb Parties, remembers the organised chaos of raves thrown in a warehouse on Hackney’s Beachy Road – a scene quite distinct from the day glo euphoria of the rave scene. “It was dark, there was a skull and crossbones spray-painted on the wall – [the audience was a] mix of punks, crusties and travellers and kids and dogs running around.” The music played here was a slower, darker variant on gabber known as ‘doomcore’, characterised by horror film samples and distorted 909 kick drums. (Even if gabber was a marginal scene here in the UK, there does seem to be a regional split – further north, a lighter and more accessible take on the sound emerged – ‘tartan techno’, a bouncier form of gabber, found a place on the Scottish underground).
Nekro on the decks
© Courtesy of Crossbones Sound System
Doomcore group Fifth Era
© Courtesy of Crossbones Sound System
The exterior of the Crossbones squat on Beachy Road, east London
© Molly Macindoe
Jim from Crossbones on the decks
© Courtesy of Crossbones Sound System
It was dark, there was a skull and crossbones spray-painted on the wall
Helping gabber’s illicit spread was radio. DJ Traffik started on Energy FM at 7am on a Sunday morning in February 1993, but, he says, soon landed a weekly show mixing up “gabber, acid and hardcore techno… no one else was playing this stuff.” It was an instant hit. “The response I got was great, people calling up loving the hardcore sounds. No one else was playing this stuff on Energy at the time. Straight away they gave me a full-time show, every Saturday night at midnight… this became my regular show for three years.”
Limiting the spread of gabber in the UK was the fact that, before the late ‘90s, pretty much no gabber tunes were actually being made outside of continental Europe. Almost all the DJs relied on the aptly titled Simon Underground, the main distributor of gabber music. “I would go up to his lock up in Hertfordshire and buy a huge lot of records every couple of months,” says Nekro. There were a few record shops in London – Chocis Chewns, Ambient Soho and the Music And Tape Exchanges – but few dealers would give it the time of day. The shop owner of Chocis, Matt tells me, “hated gabber so wouldn't let you listen to the music.”
The fact that even the sellers despised it is testament to the sort of reception gabber has faced in the UK. Its highest profile mention in the mainstream press was a 1998 article in the Daily Star titled ‘Nazi Gabber Hell’, which warned that “Nazis have adopted gabber music as their unofficial anthem” and ended with the words “parents, you have been warned”. “That had a massive impact… it put such a negative spin on everything,” explains Matt. “A lot of people [in the techno scene] had shaved heads in the UK and Holland, but there was nothing behind that… they weren't wearing big boots or braces or anything like that – there was no fascist element.” All the same, says Matt, the article “went viral, even before the internet. It brought a very negative attitude towards the music.”
Inside the dance at Crossbones
© Courtesy of Crossbones Sound System
Inside a gabber rave
© Courtesy of Crossbones Sound System
Frankfurt producer Marc Trauner, aka The Mover
© Courtesy of Crossbones Sound System
NEVER GONNA BE RESPECTABLE
Perhaps gabber was just a bit too aggressive, a bit too dissolute, at a time when British clubland was looking for more mature or sophisticated sounds. Traffik points the rise of UK garage, and its more conventionally respectable “smart clothes and champagne” stylings. Elsewhere, intelligent drum’n’bass artists like LTJ Bukem were creating a more mature and sensible style of post-rave music, suited for home listening.
In fact, though, the UK gabber scene was far more friendly than the press, police and parents may have let on to. The name ‘gabber’ comes from the Hebrew slang for 'friend', and Matt says that his “group of friends became people that were also into gabber”. Sure, the sound was dark and threatening – that’s part of the appeal, says Jim. Rather than happy hardcore, which he says sounds like “it should be used for the next series of Barney The Dinosaur,” there’s something thrilling about gabber’s assault. “It attacks you, it doesn't like you, it's giving you a good boot in the head,” says Jim. But crucially: “You are enjoying it!”
And the appeal of gabber, for a select few, has not waned. There are the high fashion appropriations, and the Bangface Weekender, bringing extreme gabber sounds to holiday camps of excitable ravers. Elsewhere, there are other collectives, such as Chin Stroke Records, which take a more ironic approach, mixing up gabber sounds in a melting pot of TV themes, Italo and bubblegum pop. While for them it might be appreciation, for the original 'gabbers', it's not going to stick. Jim says that he “hasn’t really given it much thought. I think someone said there's a perfume advert and it's got a gabber track and I didn't click on it. It's going to happen once or twice on that front and won't happen again – it's not going to change anything.”
There are benefits to being unloved – people leave you alone to do your own thing. But gabber’s current trendiness presents problems to underground promoters throwing raves on a shoestring. Pietro Kowalski, organiser of Bristol’s Death Row gabber events, laments that “It's a moneymaker now... these DJs aren't cheap no more”. When trying to put on a reunion event a few years back, he was faced by a very British problem: “Bristol City were in the cup and they [the potential punters] all went to Wembley. Football's bigger than raving, that's how I see it.”
But it’s testament to gabber’s energy that in spite of the appropriation, the stigma, and the character assassination, the underground artists and promoters are still sticking at it. Fragrance brands and polished promoters try to tap into its energy, but the original hardcore rave on, still stimulated from the genre’s ‘90s beginnings. Hardcore techno legend Producer perfectly summarised why it's so special: “That old adage ‘hardcore will never die’ makes it immortal”. It seems there really is no rest for the wicked.
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