Dance Or Die: A History of Hardcore

Description

What is hardcore? It means many things to many people, and they’re all correct. It’s best described as a feeling, an attitude, a way of life. Hardcore began as an apocalyptic vision of the “phuture” that has since come to pass and a do-it-yourself rave movement that never stopped or backed down.

Hardcore is revolutionary and underground – and a mass-marketed phenomenon that refuses to die, because hardcore will never die. Its symbols have been tattooed onto millions of bodies, and its relics passed down through generations.

This book tracks those outsider youth who banded together en masse, as a crew, to party in protest, on ecstasy, in rage and escape, as a nighttime community, more family than family, who need this hard, loud, fast/slow, aggressive, noisy (occasionally silly) kickdrum and breakbeat music to connect with people, to survive the world, and get through the week.

Hardcore: Either you’re in, or you’re out. And if you’re in, you’re in all the way, diehard and dancing to the death. Dance or Die!

“From Rotterdam gabber to Scottish ‘tartan techno’, from the industrial strength beats of Brooklyn to the hedonistic mayhem of UK hardcore, ‘Dance or Die’ explores some of the lesser-documented areas of rave culture with enthusiasm and journalistic vigour, affording them the historical significance they deserve.” Matthew Collin (author of Dream Machines, Rave On and Altered State)

“Holly Dicker‘s definitive chronicle charts the amazing, ridiculous rise of the most outrageous club music in history with a journalist’s eye and a raver’s mania.” Michaelangelo Matos (author of The Underground is Massive)