Hard Dance

Time to increase your BPM tolerance, as we begin our salute to the ranks of the Hard Dance nation at a monumental pace that shows no sign of slacking. Brothers Matt and Scott Harris — a.k.a. the Organ Donors — set light to the touch paper with the groundbreaking "Turntablizm" while fellow Nukleuz star (and former Cappella member) Mauro Picotto lays down the skeleton for "Lizard".

Think that was hard? You don't know hard 'til you've hit our Next Steps.

B.K. (producer Been Keen) features big here — and rightly so, since he's played a key role in pumping fresh life into the hard house scene, weaving in aspects of trance and techno that set standards many copy but few can equal. Andy Farley joins him for "Systematic", which squelches through the beats like Godzilla on a caffeine high, while his Lab 4 hook-up ("Final Chapter") is pure, Mach-1 euphoria.

Can you handle the unstinting beat onslaught? Find out in Deep Cuts.

On your knees, dance-floor serfs — Lisa Pin-Up, the queen of hard house, has just entered the building: You will be whipped into willful submission when she cranks out "Slave to Your Love". Dom Sweeten, under his Defective Audio moniker, proves he has the stamina of an unstoppable android from the future on "Circular Saw" and "Execution". Relentless.

The gentle strumming of an acoustic guitar has its place — but that place is certainly not here, among our Hard Dance Essentials, where you're more likely to encounter the sound of a thousand buzz saws doing battle with a plague of electronic locusts, or the manic, hyperventilated revving of a demonically possessed muscle car, or the quake-inducing rumble of an automaton army — such is the array of mind-expanding synthesized noise served up by the leading lights of the Nukleuz stable and their hard dance contemporaries. Damned be he who cries, "Would you mind turning it down a bit?"