It kind of puzzles me how parallel the rails of dance and rock music are, and how they develop with some of the same aesthetic responses to their environments, and yet they very rarely overlap. The juxtaposition of these distant shores, with scarcely a bridge between them, is in many ways exemplified by the genre of breakcore. Breakcore, as I'm sure you know, but which I will recount here for the benefit of others, is a descendent of interbreeding experiments with subcategories of dance music conducted in the hilariously unsterile environment fostered by hardcore techno (not to be confused with hardcore punk), essentially smashing together jungle and drum and bass, with an increasing interest in heavy metal riffs and industrial tempos, combined with brutally clipped house beats and jarringly placed, obscure samples, that are just as likely be gleaned from an anime OVA as a '70s kung-fu film or hip-hop hook. In the '00s the genre began to experiment more openly with inspiration and samples taken directly from videogames, and overlaps between it and the nascent chiptune scene emerged through the work of artists like Tarmvred. Back to my original point though, because breakcore is an incredibly aggressive and mischievous genre of music that is both extremely sincere and at the same time drowning in ironic appreciation for its source material, it feels very punk rock to me. Almost quintessentially so. Yet you'll almost never hear a rock act touch this stuff outside of those who are "attempting to push the boundaries of hardcore and metal" or some other kind of self-aggrandizing mission. Very few are willing to take it simply as a mode operation to integrate dance with rock elements outside of maybe the narrowly defined genre of digital hardcore, or Igorrr's more danceable experiments. Althought, these are all outliers in their field of extreme music (especially Igorrr). I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're one of the punks or rockers who follow me, give dance music a try once in a while. I don't think you'll be disappointed with what you find once you've given it the ol' acid test. And if you need a place to start, why not Golden Boy's Chao Garden? The album begins with the incredibly wet and chaffing chirp of "808 MAN AFTER (Metallic Madness Zone)" which I do not believe was made with an 808. I think an 808 drum machine would overheat and melt into a puddle of resin about a third of the way into this hot little digital hail storm. Things escalate quickly on Chao Garden exploding into a bass-gloved punch-out with your eardrums after taffy pulling some samples over a needle-fingered groove on the delightfully spastic "RUFFNECK KILLA (Genocide City Zone)." The sharpness of the tones on the back end of "RUFFNECK" becomes the baseline sonic range for the knife-toed dance and clandestine discharge of "ILL MAKE THEM PAY (Atomic Destroyer Zone)" and the bass-themed punishment continues to pummel on the outlandishly propulsive "LOVE (｡♥‿♥｡) (Scrap Brain Zone)." "PUBLIC ENEMY (Balloon Park Zone)" is a combative dancehall crasher that you can vogue to and the mysterious ghostship shimmer of "BLUE MOON NEXUS (Star Light Zone)" will transport you to the belly of a basement rave that is so much fun it is may actually be illegal. Some people's mileage may vary with this sort of thing, but at this many BPMs your odometer is likely to pop right off its peg. You may not be able to tell how far you've gone by the end of the album, but I give you my guarantee that Chao Garden will take you places. Hopefully places you won't mind staying a while.
Grab a copy of Chao Garden from Portland's Norm Corps Records.
