#nordcore

[splitterimhirn]

[druffdurchsleben]

Durch Pillen und Speed

Wird jener Druck von innen erzeugt

Der mich schließlich durchdrehen lässt!

Nordcore GmbH - Operation Nordcore

[hdrips-blog]

[geosneptune]

this is definitely one of the most romantic songs ever created, and if you disagree we probably don’t have anything in common.

[hdrips-blog]

DARK INVADERS - TROOPS OF DOOM.MP3 (NORDCORE VOL 3)

[mondo-musica-blog]

Lieben das Thumpin!

Nordcore G.M.B.H, true behemoths of hard-as-you-like dance. “The 'Core” or “Das Nords” as no-one calls them, were a group of German gabba producers mostly active in the mid-to-late nineties, and associated with The Box club, Hamburg.Their name comes from the German for North, (and I imagine they use Nord synths) and also, the G.M.B.H is a postfix which denotes a business or company in Germany, although in this case it also stands for Gabba Mutants Gang Hamburg - see what they did there?

The Nordcore sound is best described as heavy. Really heavy, like “did someone just drop a tractor?” heavy. And I don't mean in the way Motorhead are heavy, Nordcore aren't just a screaming wall of distorted noise, they're more subtle than that and more pernicious. The bass and kicks in an average Nordcore track have a really weighty feel, they almost have a mass and are so low-slung it's like someone made a puppet show out of granite. On a decent sound system the beats come at you through the floor and walls. Get a load of it on this early track which has become a classic of German gabba.

The pounding of the beat is nicely counter-pointed by the synth washes that are Nordcore's hallmark. At times they refer to themselves as Gabba-Trance, which is a fair description as long as you keep in mind that it's trance of a seriously dark and sinister sort. The best of their tracks are almost cinematic in the depth of atmosphere they create, grandiose in a very Teutonic way it's like Hyno goes hardcore. Stripped of the beat, a lot of these songs would have a similar ethos to Tangerine Dream or Kraftwerk, endlessly looping, inhuman sounds designed to create a sense of cold isolation. Personally, I found they make an excellent backing track for the Doom games.

A good example of the more developed Nordcore sound is Stairway To Hell, one of the first of their tunes I heard and one that blew me away simply because it was so different to the upfront buzzy bass of the Dutch gabba, but cleaner and sharper than most British producers.Stairway... is an enveloping tune, the synths swirl around and pull you into the world Nordcore have created.

Despite the predilection for creating beautifully atmospheric terror, Lord Nord and crew always have at least one eye on the dancefloor, making some more straight up and down gabba tracks; witness No More Happy Hartcore a mission statement for sure and one hell of a noisy bag of spanners.

And then there's the downright aggressively weird.....Dexosed....a track which seems to be less of an attempt to rally the dancefloor and more a challenge to your gabba dedication. It's like they invited a metal-saw to piss around with some sequencers. Dexosed is grinding, doesn't like you very much and is fucking brilliant. I can't wait until Basshunter gets around to remixing this then realises just how ironic his name really is. I suspect Marcos Hartmann is behind this one as he made productions under many names (Quindoors, Liquidator etc) which were all a little hat-stand.

There is an official Nordcore website  but it doesn't seem to have been updated for years, it's still well worth a visit though as you can download some pretty vicious mixes, I like the DJ Stahlin and Xenomorph ones. Dig around your local vinyl shop and look out for stuff on the label Hartplastik, as stuff by various members of Nordcore tends to turn up there.

In the meantime you can track down the various Terrordrome compilation CDs, they're not hard to find and well worth the money. Volume seven, the one with Chucky on the front, has a mix CD shaped like a buzzsaw blade which is awesome for cleaning out your PC disc-drive with. Get the tunes and some decent subs and you can even turn milk into butter with the pounding, pounding beats of the mighty Nordcore!