In this blog post, Holly Dicker shares the story behind Dance or Die: A History of Hardcore, a book born from years immersed in the global hardcore scene. From Rotterdam raves to lockdown radio shows, she traces the obsessive path that led her to document a sound and culture too wild to pin down.

What is hardcore? But actually, what is it? What does it mean, really? If it’s more than music – and a music that’s definitively tricky to pin down – what is hardcore?

I’m not sure when the obsession began. The covid years have scrambled my sense of time and self, but somewhere between the never-ending lockdowns (and protests and setting up a 24/7 streaming radio app with PRSPCT) I found myself with a book deal, a culture grant from Gemeente Rotterdam, and a whole bunch of ambitious intentions. At this point – let’s say, end of 2022 – I had been intensely reporting on hardcore for six years; both the digital diaspora artcore “revival” (Gabber Eleganza, Casual Gabberz, etc) and its pre-internet history.

2017 was my flashpoint. From second wave British industrial techno acts like AnD and Bleaching Agent pushing “Reaktor’s most hard-lined techno concept” Unpolished into the red (in the same venue where Amsterdam gabberhouse hardened into hardcore); to hearing my first OG Rotterdam gabber set in the plush Koninklijke Schouwburg theatre in the Hague, of all places, during TodaysArt; to finally witnessing Dutch hardcore history unfold in a human-hive of Australians (tracksuits) and undercuts at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht for the resurrection of Thunderdome: 2017 felt like a seismic year for hardcore, and I was at the epicentre, living in the Netherlands. I was also uniquely placed to start writing about it, as a newly-appointed staff writer at Resident Advisor, my freelancer homebase since 2011.

Interviews with legends quickly followed, including the God of the Godfathers Marc Acardipane – between his own comeback and Unpolished debut as the Mover – and Manu Le Malin, the “Black Duck” of the French Touch. (Both terrifying prospects at the time). Around this time I started my talk radio series, The Core Show, with Red Light Radio (RIP) as an outlet to dig deeper into my hardcore curiosity, which launched with a Thunderdome special with Holland’s preeminent club culture journalist Gert van Veen and a set by DJ Promo. PRSPCT chief Thrasher and Somniac One joined me for the second broadcast in championing our adopted underdog homescene of Rotterdam.

I had moved to the Dutch harbour city in May 2015 (attending a PRSPCT XL within days of arriving) after escaping Berlin, where I consumed – and was consumed by – techno (and breakcore) for four strobing years. I experienced diehard club culture beneath the streets of Köpenickerstrasse in Kreuzberg and Gerichtstrasse in Wedding, spending every Friday to Monday – but usually starting on Wednesdays during Boiler Room Berlin stream days (where I interned) – shuffling between repurposed reinforced concrete wombs, feeling truly liberated in the crush of human bodies synched up to sound.

I lived and died for the music, slipping into the comforting anonymity of the rave. I was fortunate to turn that feeling, that urgency, into a career…until covid.

I pitched a version of this book to Colin from Velocity Press during that first year of lockdown, when it felt like we might never rave together ever again, and clubbing institutions were turning into museums. But actually, fighting for this culture and for our hardcore community just took over: seated club concerts at Worm, a very Spiral Tribe office intervention, daily radio streams with PRSPCT; I even learned to mix. If we weren’t going to keep this scene alive, then who will? When the world opened up again, the rush to normalise – to write those magazine features and promote those festivals – took precedence over the book, because who knows when these opportunities will come again, or be taken away. I played my first proper festival DJ set (terrifying).

It’s now summer 2023, and I am stuck in chapter one, mired in rewrite after rewrite, unsure how to get out. The starting point was always clear: We have Arrived. But where do you go from here? Hardcore scenes and sounds erupted simultaneously worldwide – so how do you chart that chronologically? I had set myself an impossible task, but thankfully I was too stubborn (or invested) to quit. I kept doing interviews, travelling back to Berlin for Fuckparade and to interview Christian Xol Dog 400 outside his ’90s “living room” club the Bunker. But the fear was creeping in. What if I cannot actually do this?

Then I met Dennis van Rijswijk at a rave. He was as stuck as I was with his own project: a documentary about Rotterdam rave culture. I emailed him the next day, and we were filming through Autumn, capturing our broken city by night, emerging from another detrimental blow – and the soundtrack was hardcore! Gabber at the Laurenskerk? Gabber in the Kino. Paul Elstak at the Maassilo playing to the “hard techno” kids! It felt like the best of times, and the worst of times, because we were still fighting to save our club scene. And I was still on chapter one…

I just had to get out of Rotterdam to escape the escapism. I spent months in Portugal, with the ocean, alone. (Massive thanks to Viv and Ebba and Pete for providing the sanctuary needed to do something as all-consuming as writing a book). I had to cut myself out of my life to write this, and the wound has sealed up behind me. I’m not sure if I can ever get back.

Talking about rave culture is much much easier than writing about it. And I really miss my radio shows with Red Light Radio and PRSPCT, which inspired the chatty informal style of the book. I hope when you read this, it feels like you are backstage at a rave with us, eavesdropping on the stories – or around the kitchen table at the inevitable after. This history of hardcore has taken years to complete, and it’s still not finished. It will never be finished because hardcore cannot be tamed to a page or forced into a single narrative. It’s too rich and rebellious for that.

You don’t “get” hardcore, you are hardcore, in the hard times and the harder times. As PCP commented to i-D in 1993: “If you look around, what do you see? Wars, poverty, and a bunch of guys in suits trying to fuck everybody else. I believe we are the last generation to walk the Earth safely. Hard music is there to show you how to stay strong and survive in the ’90s.”

And ’00s.
And ’10s.
And ’20s.

Hardcore isn’t for everybody, but everybody is welcome in this enduring phuture rave movement. And once you’re in, you’re in all the way, diehard and dancing to the death. Dance or Die!