Rave / Old-School Dance
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Rave / Old-School Dance is the warehouse-era explosion of breakbeat, techno, acid, house, hardcore, Belgian new beat, jungle, hoover riffs, stabs, sirens, and ecstatic samples. It is rawer and more collective than later EDM, built for illegal parties, huge PA systems, pirate radio, flyers, and all-night dancing. The sound is less one genre than a shared energy: speed, repetition, bass pressure, and a sense that club music had become a youth movement.
History
The family grew from Chicago house, Detroit techno, acid house, Belgian new beat, UK warehouse parties, pirate radio, breakbeat sampling, hip-hop cuts, Jamaican sound-system influence, and European festival culture. The Prodigy, Altern-8, SL2, Acen, 2 Bad Mice, T99, Moby, L.A. Style, Joey Beltram, Human Resource, N-Joi, Orbital, Shut Up and Dance, Kicks Like a Mule, and Praga Khan defined different routes through the early 1990s. The rave boom was shaped by police pressure and moral panic as much as by music, but its methods fed jungle, drum and bass, big beat, happy hardcore, hardcore techno, trance, and modern festival dance.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Guardian hardcore-rave ranking
- UKF Altern-8 interview
- Bandcamp Daily Belgian new beat guide
- 909originals T99 feature
- jungle history references