The Guardian dedicates massive article to Thunderdome: “Hardcore isn’t for everybody”
The most iconic hardcore event Thunderdome took place last weekend and the internet is filled with pictures, stories and memories about the party. Even the newspaper The Guardian dedicated an article to Thunderdome: “The Dutch rave with the world’s fastest, hardest music.”
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The British newspaper The Guardian has just published a big story about Thunderdome, the latest edition and the whole evolution of the historic hardcore brand. In a massive article, the author introduces the Thunderdome world to the ordinary The Guardian reader. Holly Dicker, the author, describes the stereotype yet authentic gabber and the world surrounding them, without the usual weird view from outside, but in an appreciative kind of way. Of course mentioning the gabber museum and “the gabber uniform”: Nikes and multicoloured Australian-brand jackets, Wizard tattoos and undercuts.
“Hardcore is one of the most liberated and liberating genres in dance music, encompassing a vast range of speeds, styles, and emotions. It creates euphoria from the extremities and isn’t for everybody – which is why those that are in it, are in all the way.”
Readers can learn about the history of Thunderdome in a nutshell: beginning with the start of hardcore in a commercial way in the 1990s, with the very first edition in 1992 and the following fast rise of gabber in the Netherlands. “Until overexposure and commercial exploitation caused the scene to crash and go back underground”, with negative media as a reason for it. Sensationalism of stories focused on “drugs, football-related hooliganism, and incidents of racially motivated violence” have left the hardcore scene scarred, tells the author, but “the work of contemporary scholars, researchers and visual artists about gabber history is going some way to remove the stigma.”
Dicker also lets reader know about Thunderdome 2019, the biggest edition ever: “The scene’s current torchbearers, including Angerfist and Miss K8, play amid a spectacle of lasers and fire, ending in a sweaty closing set from “Grandpa” Drokz as pillars of flame shoot skywards from the front of the stage”. She had also visited Dano, Buzz Fuzz and Gizmo’s set at the Thundergods area: “It was crammed with hits from their own vault, plus fun hardcore versions of pop songs such as Message In a Bottle by the Police and Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild.”
Furthermore, she mentions a topic which also many artists, like Da Mouth Of Madness, addressing in this year’s Thunderdome Magazine: the need of uniting the past, present and future of hardcore to keep the Thunderdome brand alive. “It is one of the few living relics from the heyday of rave, charged with the difficult task of staying grounded in the present while simultaneously preserving the past.”
“Tonight we’re paying homage to the most significant youth culture movement in the Netherlands, gabber”
The author ends the article with some “classic Thunderdome tracks”, like DJ Dano’s ‘Welcome to the Thunderdome.’ The article “Thunderdome: the Dutch rave with the world’s fastest, hardest music” by Holly Dicker got published on 30th October 2019 on The Guardian. Read the full article on their official website.
Footage taken from Facebook page Thunderdome
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