What Are You Doing Right Now? (435 Viewers)
- Thread starter ßöмßäяðîëя
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So I love art that makes me laugh. Ridiculous stuff that I have no other response I can give.
This weekend I got the musical equivalent. I'm a board advisor to the Sónar Lisboa festival, which happened last weekend. So Saturday I walked in on a performance called "Gabber Eleganza presents 'The Hakke Show'".
Sónar is heavy electronic/experimental music, so there's an Italian DJ set at center stage. But surrounding him was a wild array of athletic characters on platforms. They fist-pumped, fast-stepped, and kicked to furious 180bpm beats with thundering kick drums and distorted synths.
The whole spectacle gave off a ridiculous crystal-meth-infused rage of 8-bit Donkey Kong music mashed with a Jane Fonda cardio workout video. A Mad-Max-refugee hype man wearing only shorts, sweat, tattoos, and a mullet fist-pumped the audience into a fervor as he yelled into his mic, "I AM THE BAAAAD BOYYYY!!"
My brain could only guess I was witnessing performance art mockery of our addictive self-improvement, optimization, and performative fitness culture mixed with gamer narcissism at a rave. So I busted out laughing. It was beyond ridiculous.
Then I only later learned this was a revival of 1990s gabber culture - a mutant offshoot of Dutch electronic hardcore from Rotterdam with an underground subculture that blew up, got appropriated by the commercial mainstream (as always happens, used in Kit Kat commercials and crap like that), and retreated for years in the wilderness of Holland's Bible Belt. With people shaving their heads, wearing tracksuits and Nikes, and doing the same hakken dance of spastic kicking and finger-pointing.
Here's just two sample clips (pretty tame edits vs what I saw, btw) from Sónar Barcelona last year:
A total "WTF was THAT??"
Can any fellow Dutch juventini comment on this scene? Apparently it's been making a comeback in recent years.
This weekend I got the musical equivalent. I'm a board advisor to the Sónar Lisboa festival, which happened last weekend. So Saturday I walked in on a performance called "Gabber Eleganza presents 'The Hakke Show'".
Sónar is heavy electronic/experimental music, so there's an Italian DJ set at center stage. But surrounding him was a wild array of athletic characters on platforms. They fist-pumped, fast-stepped, and kicked to furious 180bpm beats with thundering kick drums and distorted synths.
The whole spectacle gave off a ridiculous crystal-meth-infused rage of 8-bit Donkey Kong music mashed with a Jane Fonda cardio workout video. A Mad-Max-refugee hype man wearing only shorts, sweat, tattoos, and a mullet fist-pumped the audience into a fervor as he yelled into his mic, "I AM THE BAAAAD BOYYYY!!"
My brain could only guess I was witnessing performance art mockery of our addictive self-improvement, optimization, and performative fitness culture mixed with gamer narcissism at a rave. So I busted out laughing. It was beyond ridiculous.
Then I only later learned this was a revival of 1990s gabber culture - a mutant offshoot of Dutch electronic hardcore from Rotterdam with an underground subculture that blew up, got appropriated by the commercial mainstream (as always happens, used in Kit Kat commercials and crap like that), and retreated for years in the wilderness of Holland's Bible Belt. With people shaving their heads, wearing tracksuits and Nikes, and doing the same hakken dance of spastic kicking and finger-pointing.
Here's just two sample clips (pretty tame edits vs what I saw, btw) from Sónar Barcelona last year:
A total "WTF was THAT??"
Can any fellow Dutch juventini comment on this scene? Apparently it's been making a comeback in recent years.
Yeah I can comment on this. Hardcore never went really away in The Netherlands. It’s not as big in the 90’s where you saw guys with bald heads in Australian tracksuits, but the scene as a whole is still quite big. It’s also no coincidence that you saw a Italian dj, it’s the second biggest hardcore country in Europe. People there still walk around with crazy piercings and stuff.
But you have to understand this is not some niche or underground kind of thing, this is fully integrated in Dutch culture and I dare to say that the huge part of Dutch people have visited at least one or more parties. I still have co-workers or friends well in their 30s who might visit a festival once or twice per year. You can work for the police here and nobody would look strange to you at work if you said that you’re going to a hardcore party next weekend.
But you have to understand this is not some niche or underground kind of thing, this is fully integrated in Dutch culture and I dare to say that the huge part of Dutch people have visited at least one or more parties. I still have co-workers or friends well in their 30s who might visit a festival once or twice per year. You can work for the police here and nobody would look strange to you at work if you said that you’re going to a hardcore party next weekend.
What’s wild is what I know has “hardcore” is more punk rock, like Minor Threat in Washington D.C. But I had heard about how the Dutch dance hardcore ended up with people doing non-gabber things like wearing pig masks, dressing up like Mad Max extras, etc. So I get your last points about the parties and police.
Thanks
Thanks
I have a work lunch soon I have to attend, barbeque, and then a social dinner at a steakhouse later and I already feel sick to my stomach, had diarrhea and just want to go home and resume shitting my brains from the safety of my porcelain throne
I should have another cup of coffee to settle my nerves and stomach
I should have another cup of coffee to settle my nerves and stomach
