Hardcore Dance

This is what happens when music is demolished in a liquidizer and spat back at us in great squelching, synthesized globs: welcome to the frenetic mash 'n' mosh of hardcore dance. Scooter pumps adrenalin into Supertramp's "The Logical Song", Gammer (DJ Matt Lee) remixes a Bryan Adams melody to within an inch of its life on "Heaven", and Starzoom's "Billie Jean" is Jacko on helium and nitro.

If your heart rate matches the BPM, you're doing something right . . . in Next Steps.

Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) takes drum and bass to superfast extremes on "Come on My Selector", adding jazzy, bass-driven finesse to the mix while he's at it; Hyper on Experience (a double act composed of Alex Banks and Danny Demierre) show their mastery of breakbeat hardcore on "Assention"; and Dune offer up a vintage (remixed) slab of happy hardcore with "Hardcore Vibes".

Only the truly hardcore will make it beyond here . . . to Deep Cuts.

You're sweating euphoric buckets and you've hit that plateau of transcendental perfection, which is exactly where you want to be when the extended mix of Scott Brown and Ultrabeat's "Elysium (I Go Crazy)" kicks in. Now you can dance your way towards universal harmony with Raf's original mix of "We've Got to Live Together", and then permit Styles & Breeze to finish you off.

The hardcore movement is responsible for some of the most energizing, uplifting, and — quite frankly — outrageous club sounds ever spun. Seriously, where else can the sweet trill of choirboy Aled Jones co-exist in harmony with a knuckle-scraping drum and bass backwash (check out Shitmat's "Dis Dancehall Ting Is Batter Than That T.V. Ting Tony")? And where else does it make perfect sense to accelerate the breezy, exotic rhythms of salsa so that the source is mangled out of all recognition? (Robert Natus, Arkus P., and remixer Paffendorf have your answer.)