Jon Doe from CLSM explains what Hardscape is!

Ok, so like many of you, the last thing I want to hear about is yet another sub genre of the dance scene. My roots are from 91 and 92 dance music, from the hardcore rave through to the things that crossed over in those years, like C & C music factory, KLF etc.

By the mid 90's I was working in the South's biggest independent record store selling the Artful Dodger house and garage, a young lad called Craig David R&B and the occassional visit from the South's main Hardcore Djs.
A guy called Stu J owned the store and also got us all slots on the local radio station 'Max FM'. I worked alongside James Zabiela and had technical input from DJ UFO, who was pioneering amazing techno in the mid 90s.
Aside from all the future name dropping this would enable me to do on pieces like this, it also had the side effect of having a wide ranging input of all kinds of dance music and, also over the years, it showed how genres came and went.
The first wave of speed garage was the preparation for the main run which came next and the progression from the big Judge Jules wave of trance which flipped over into the hard house era.

I have always liked moving on from whatever I am doing into something else. By the end of 2001 I was so into and yet bored of Hard Trance that I just had to move on as it was becoming a personal problem in the studio:- I had got to the point of finding favourite sounds which I couldn't move away from and knew how long my open hi hat should be, so it was off to the world of Hardcore, which in comparison was a much smaller scene at the time. Everything was new and fresh!

Almost seven years on and its time to do something else. I still dabble in all the scenes I have been in before, Hardcore, Hard Dance, Breaks. That has been the catalist for for Hardscape. Often I get to play between Hard Dance and Hardcore and when the Infected Club night in Bath had events I would be the warm up Dj for the Hardcore act. So I kept a few bridging tracks around to get between 145bpm and 170 bpm. Also, when I was booked as a Hard Dance Dj in a more ravey situation I would have loved more music to be in that no-mans land.

So, after that ramble it end up like this: Hardscape is for anybody that wants it. For the Hard Dance Dj who always finds themselves at plus 6 (or 8, or 12) and for the Hardcore Djs start of their sets, or just for itself. The bpms are around 160-170 so its easy to pitch up into hardcore for a bit of a change.

Another aspect of this is a strange flipside as a producer. This is a different thing, there is nobody into it as such and no commercialisation warping the music. Nobody buys it, so there is no other reason to make the music than for the music itself AND its an open book, you can make a techno based track like the Electrux stuff or something more like Hard Trance such as what Orbit1 and Cube::Hard have done. In essence, in these early stages, Hardscape is complete freedom.

A guy called Dj Cotts from Australia did a mix just over a week ago on Youtube (search 'Cotts Hardscape' on Youtube as it really sums up the vibe) and its up to around 6000 views already.

Jon Doe

Catch CLSM's Hardscape showcase at Elation: Christmas Carnage. This Friday at The Factory!