Reload It!
A primer on the UK hardcore continuum ahead of my DJ night at Sounds Good
Reload It! at Sounds Good in Toronto is this Saturday June 28th
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an Anglophile when it comes to music. It probably started with trip-hop in the ‘90s. Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead have to be some of the most formative music of my entire life. I was similarly attracted to the big, nasty sounds coming from groups like The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers, who had each risen out of the rave and into the mainstream. In the 2000s, I came of age right alongside the phenomenon known as grime, where I saw an echo of my embryonic music in what they were making in London.
What I didn’t know back then was that many of these artists that made it onto my radar from the UK were forged through institutions that were normal across the pond but weren’t relevant in the part of Canada where I grew up, such as pirate radio and soundsystem culture. After reading the seminal rave tome Energy Flash by Simon Reynolds, I became aware of the umbrella term he created for a group of British genres that informed each other: the hardcore continuum.
“[Hardcore rave] abolishes narrative: instead of tension/climax/release, it offers a thousand plateaux of crescendo, an endless successions of NOWs” - Simon Reynolds in The Wire Magazine, 1992
The hardcore referred to here is definitely not the punk-adjacent genre that I grew up watching live in Edmonton. It refers to ‘90s hardcore rave music that incorporated elements of ragga, dub, rap and techno in the UK, further mutating as the decade went on.
From that hardcore root sprang forth branches that stretched out to include jungle, drum and bass, UK garage, bassline, dubstep, grime, drill and more. The continuum teeters between varying degrees of sweetness and darkness, ambience and heaviness, ecstasy and agony, R&B diva vocals and ruffneck ragga slackness.
This Saturday June 28th, I’ll be throwing a party called Reload It! at Sounds Good in Toronto with my partner in crime, Do Not Push! Our shared affinity for sounds across the spectrum of UK music made him a perfect DJ to share the decks with me. It’s gonna be a celebration of the hardcore continuum all night long.
If you’re around, grab a ticket at the button below:
If you wanna do us a huge favour, please click Interested on the Resident Advisor ticket link, it helps to improve the ranking of our event in their search results, making it easier for people to learn about the party. Thanks and hope to see you there, Toronto crew!
Upcoming shows
(more announced soon)
June 28 - Toronto - Sounds Good (Downstairs) with DO NOT PUSH! - DJ set
Sounds from the UK hardcore continuum - UKG, bassline, grime and more
July 18 - Toronto - Danforth Music Hall with PUP - live
August 15 - Elora - Riverfest Elora - DJ set
September 13 - Hamilton - Supercrawl - live
September 14 - Victoria - Rifflandia Festival - DJ set
You can find me updating my playlists or hanging on Bluesky, Twitter and Instagram. You can listen to my music on Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp and you can get Cadence Weapon merchandise here. Read my monthly column in Hazlitt, pick up your copy of Bedroom Rapper here and please rate it on Goodreads.