Derivative forms Drum and bass | ||
Stylistic origins Oldschool jungle
industrial Cultural origins Early 1990s, United Kingdom Typical instruments Synthesizer
drum machine
sequencer
sampler | ||
Darkcore or darkside is a music subgenre of jungle (not be confused with the more recent developments of hardcore) that became popular in the United Kingdom. It is recognized as being one of the direct precursors of the genre now known as drum and bass. Popular from late 1992 and through 1993, Darkcore was a counter movement to happy hardcore, which also evolved from breakbeat hardcore.
Contents
Characteristics
Darkcore is characterized by aggressive, often syncopated breakbeats; low frequency bass lines; and a strong 4-to-the-floor beat, owing to the subgenre's hardcore origins. Tracks are generally between 150 and 167 BPM, with 160 BPM being especially common. Many tracks feature dark-themed samples such as choirs, synthesizer notes, horror movie theme music, or cries for help.
As the style evolved, the use of horror elements was dropped as producers relied more on simple effects such as reverb, delay, pitch shifting and time stretching to create a chaotic and sinister mood. The use of time-stretching features on many tracks and gives a scratchy, metallic quality to some samples, particularly breakbeats.
Notable artists
Many of the British hardcore and jungle DJs of the day dabbled in darkcore for a time, mostly around its heyday in 1993, but some of the more notable DJ/producers of darkcore include:
Significant releases
The 1993 CD release Hard Leaders III - Enter The Darkside contains many popular darkcore tunes of the era.
Today
Today, darkcore is used to describe the entire array of breakbeat producers and DJs who work within the 160-190+ BPM tempo range. Its current configuration, darkstep, is notably different in quality and process availability as the modern drum and bass elements are included.