The 9 best Breakbeat Hardcore tracks of all time
Breakbeat Hardcore
Britain's rave music between acid house and jungle: sampled funk breaks sped to breaking point, piano riffs, cartoon samples and a sub-bass borrowed from Kingston. Two frantic years that produced two whole genres.
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Lennie De Ice / We Are I.E.
Routinely named as the first jungle record, made two years before anyone used the word. A reggae bassline under a hardcore break, and the entire future of British bass music in four minutes.
The Prodigy / Charly
A public information cat sampled over a hardcore breakbeat, and a top three hit that the scene never forgave for the wave of novelty records it licensed.
2 Bad Mice / Bombscare
Moving Shadow's calling card and hardcore at its most musical — a genuinely lovely chord progression fighting a breakbeat that keeps trying to fall over.
Metalheads / Terminator
Goldie and Mark Rutherford discover time-stretching and use it to make a break sound like it is being pulled apart. The technical leap that turned hardcore into jungle.
SL2 / On a Ragga Tip
Number two in the national charts with a record built on a Jamaican vocal sample and a hoover bass. British pop has rarely been this directly a report from a field somewhere off the M25.
T99 / Anasthasia
Belgian, orchestral, and completely deranged. The stab sound on this record became a standard component of British rave within about six weeks of its release.
Human Resource / Dominator
Dutch hardcore, and the origin of the hoover — a synth patch so recognisable that it functions as a genre marker thirty years later.
Origin Unknown / Valley of the Shadows
Two spoken words about a long dark tunnel, an Amen break and a sub-bass. The point at which hardcore has clearly become jungle and everybody involved knows it.
Shades of Rhythm / The Sound of Eden
The euphoric end of the spectrum: piano, a diva sample and no cynicism whatsoever. Hardcore is remembered as chaotic, and half of it sounded like this.