thirdform

pass the sick bucket
usually pillhead music is stereotyped as simple, lacking subtlety or nuance.

however if we take some cannonical pilhead genres, hard techno, hard techy dnb, gabba, hard house, hoovers and hard trance, of course ardkore and darkside, then the picture looks a bit different. we aren't talking about peace and love here but the euphoria of being in a warzone. using mdma as it was originally intended, but not to get its pseudo-mystical spiritual effects.

so maybe the mdma as peace and love was a colonial imposition from conservative soulboys and balearic Claires and lauras? as the 808 state bloke said, maybe the most revolutionary thing to do is solidarise with the sharons and tracys? maybe craner has been sneaking his girlfriends ideals into the dissensus framework? Maybe it is time for a great purge? maybe dubstep should have merged with gabba and hardcore acid to create the most revolutionary pillhead music of all time?
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
maybe the truth is in fact that we hang the bourgeois on pills? maybe that is the ultimate subversion?
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
we were discussing this with blissblogger. that actually the classic art core atmospheric jungle and even some of the harder ragga stuff is emnantly musical in the sense of the way the drums and bass drop like in bebop and hardbop after it. not musical in the sense of real instrumentation or pads blah blah. and it's not loops like minimal techno. whereas hardcore techno is just grinding noise with a kick really. and 92 ardkore is collage.
 

chava

Well-known member
MDMA was not intended to military use.

They use MDMA for PTSD treatment now, and that is/was probably what's happening at raves. Massive PTSD therapy.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I feel like you're in some kind of imagined dialogue with events of the early rave years. It's interesting but also jarring at moments. For instance, what you diss as "Claires and Lauras" I experienced as an opening up on the class front. Prior to '88 the club scene was pretty small, exclusive, fashionable, centred on West End clubs like the Wag - in the mid-late 80s they were beginning to open up to suburban working class boys (like me) into soul and jazz funk etc but this was nothing like the mass democratisation that took off with raving and free parties. There were thousands of people going to raves who wouldn't have dreamed of going to West End clubs. And it wasn't middle class/bourgeoise at all at least in my experience. And there's absolutely a cheesy mass market "soft" element associated with this, cue Italo piano. Why it was interesting for me musically was this diversity.

It's similar to the pills - part of the excitement at the time was that sense of emotional opening up. "Peace and love" might be a hackneyed slogan (it was even back then) but the experience of a mass shift from pints to pills was very different.
 
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bassbeyondreason

Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
Seems like most of the moments you're talking about there are speed rather than MDMA, or MDMA after the empathogenic elements wear off. Speed is the proper avant-prole drug, from mod onwards.
I'd like to see a new darkside based on the fact that everyone's on SSRIs nowadays, which kill the euphoria side of MDMA and give this weird, dark energy buzz.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Speed and ketamine make for fucking shit parties. The weird emotional looseness of MDMA was what made raving weird and amazing. Emotional incontinence.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Dunno about anyone else but the higher get, the more I want to listen and dance to music that's harsh, cybernetic, industrial, science-fictional - the diametric opposite of nice jangly pianos and samples of old soul vocals.

And when I say high, I very much mean MDMA.
 

droid

Well-known member
Seems like most of the moments you're talking about there are speed rather than MDMA, or MDMA after the empathogenic elements wear off. Speed is the proper avant-prole drug, from mod onwards.
I'd like to see a new darkside based on the fact that everyone's on SSRIs nowadays, which kill the euphoria side of MDMA and give this weird, dark energy buzz.

SSRIs and MDMA is a terrible combination. Its actually quite dangerous and can lead to serotonin syndrome.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I feel like you're in some kind of imagined dialogue with events of the early rave years. It's interesting but also jarring at moments. For instance, what you diss as "Claires and Lauras" I experienced as an opening up on the class front. Prior to '88 the club scene was pretty small, exclusive, fashionable, centred on West End clubs like the Wag - in the mid-late 80s they were beginning to open up to suburban working class boys (like me) into soul and jazz funk etc but this was nothing like the mass democratisation that took off with raving and free parties. There were thousands of people going to raves who wouldn't have dreamed of going to West End clubs. And it wasn't middle class/bourgeoise at all at least in my experience. And there's absolutely a cheesy mass market "soft" element associated with this, cue Italo piano. Why it was interesting for me musically was this diversity.

It's similar to the pills - part of the excitement at the time was that sense of emotional opening up. "Peace and love" might be a hackneyed slogan (it was even back then) but the experience of a mass shift from pints to pills was very different.

yeah but I'm team Sharon and Tracey all the way. thing is, once tech house was invented in the UK in the early 90s and people were like no no, we're not having any of that rave curfuffle those divisions reasserted emselves right. there's still a world of difference between like a craig richards fabric night and a renegade hardware thing. granted nowhere near as prominent in the 90s but still.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
giving the side eye at the thirdform ruined this forum tag. who was that? not sure how to interpret it.
 

bassbeyondreason

Chtonic Fatigue Syndrome
Speed and ketamine make for fucking shit parties. The weird emotional looseness of MDMA was what made raving weird and amazing. Emotional incontinence.

Speed and acid, though... (which I hear was actually really popular on the early rave scene due to the price and scarcity of E, especially outside of London).
Ketamine is actually an incredible party drug in very small doses, but once you reach the tipping point it kills everything good.
 
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