SpookyVanguard64 [he/him]

  • 127 Posts
  • 66 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: July 26th, 2020

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  • For Breakcore artists to check out, Venetian Snares is probably the best one to start with. Pretty big discography and also more on the IDM side of the spectrum.

    Igorrr is another good one, especially if you’re into Rock/Metal type stuff since their music heavily fuses Metal and Breakcore. There’s also Alec Empire’s album “The Destroyer,” which is what I’ve usually seen credited as being the first Breakcore album (though from what I’ve heard, Alec has become a bit of a right-wing shithead in recent years, so probably try not to give him any money if you’re gonna listen to it).


  • I guess the simplest way to think about it is that if stuff like Jungle & DnB are Punk Rock, then Breakcore is Hardcore Punk Rock. So yeah, more abrasive, more extreme, more chaotic & experimental, faster tempos, etc.

    Breakbeat is a fairly context dependent term when it’s being used to describe musical genres tbh. It can be used as an umbrella term for any type of music that uses sampled drum breaks. I.e. Hip-Hop, Jungle, DnB, Breakcore, Big Beat, etc. are all Breakbeat genres. However, it can also be used to describe a specific sub-section of breakbeat music, usually stuff that’s more on the downtempo & midtempo side of the spectrum that doesn’t neatly fit into other genres.

    Not that familiar artists who make generic Breakbeat, but I think The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy were/are both big artists for that type of music. You could also check out The Glitch Mob’s latest album Ctrl Alt Reality, which is somewhere in between generic Breakbeat and Breakbeat Hardcore.






  • Sometime last year or earlier this year, someone in the Jungle subreddit posted a section of a 1992/93 1993 issue of some underground rave music magazine from the UK, specifically a section that contained an interview with Pascal & Sponge (who were producing Breakbeat Hardcore/Jungle songs together as Johnny Jungle at the time). The interview was pretty short and not that interesting in the grand scheme of things, but the one thing that stuck with me from it was a brief line from Pascal complaining that the Amen Break was overused lol.

    Which is pretty incredible when you consider the historical context. IIRC the first breakbeat to be sampled & used in a song was the Apache Break all the way back in 1980. By contrast, the Amen break wasn’t first used until 1986, and only 6-7 years later it had exploded in popularity to the point that some people were already starting to get tired of it. And in the 30 years since then, it’s continued to grow in popularity to the point that most casual fans of Breakbeat, old skool Hip-Hop, Jungle, DnB, Breakcore, IDM, etc. are at least somewhat familiar with it & it’s history. The Apache Break is still easily within the top 5 when it comes to most sampled breakbeats of all time, and it has nowhere near the same level of casual recognition. Even second most sampled breakbeat, the Think Break, doesn’t come close to the Amen on that front.

    Edit: Here’s the interview, and the relevant quote:

    Q: Do you prefer the music of today or the stuff that was around a year ago and what do you see as the future of rave music?

    A: I do prefer the music of today. I’m not sure about what the way ahead is though. I do think that everyone should stop using that Amen break because if anything is going to kill hardcore it will be that. People are going to get very tired of it. There are loads of breaks out there, it’s just that most people are too lazy to look and find them. Havibg [sic] said that I do think that the Amen breakbeat is the same for Hardcore as the bass drum is to House.






  • The inclusion of the “Close Encounters” samples is kinda funny tbh, 'cause the whole reason I even had them was to make a bootleg remix of Siamese Minds - Killer Instinct. I started working on that bootleg around 3-4 weeks before I started on Cyberia '94, but haven’t finished it yet. Then when working on Cyberia '94, I had completed the two sections before & after the ambient section with the Closer Encounters samples, but transitioning directly between them didn’t sound right.

    So that whole section came about just 'cause I decided to bridge those two sections by switching into something completely different for a bit. And the thing I decided to switch into is basically just a rough recreation of a section of the intro for the Killer Instinct bootleg I’m working on (minus the drums & bass), which worked surprisingly well lol.




  • Don’t have any ideas/feedback for the comm, but I figured I’d take the opportunity to talk about something I’ve had to deal with recently since I don’t know where else to talk about it:

    [TW: Surgery, open wound that's gross but not too serious]

    Had surgery on December 1st to repair a small hole in my left eardrum that I’ve had for most of my life. Surgery itself went well, and it seems like the hole in the eardrum hasn’t reopened, which is nice. It was a pretty major disruption my normal schedule though, due to temporary hearing loss & nausea, not taking my meds for a few days afterward, and not really getting any physical activity due to heavy lifting being off the table for the time being (cardio is fine, though I’ve barely done any outside of walking around at stores). Basically, it feels like my ADHD has been noticeably worse the past few weeks, though it’s been getting better as I’ve recovered.

    More recently though, I had a problem with one of the incisions from the surgery opening back up. During the surgery, the method they used meant that almost everything could be done through the ear canal, but they had to make two incisions on the outside. One on the back of my ear to get a piece of cartilage, and one on the scalp just above & behind the ear to get a bit of muscle fiber, both of which were used to help repair the eardrum. Those incisions were both sealed up with dissolve-able stitches that were supposed to last for around 5 weeks iirc. And the ones on the back of my ear are still holding up fine, but the ones on my scalp came undone.

    Not entirely sure why they came undone, though I caught a cold a couple weeks ago that’s been causing me to cough more than normal, so that’s the most likely reason. Regardless, I realized it had opened back up at the beginning of last week. Wasn’t too concerning at first 'cause it was covered by a scab, but that slowly fell out and I was basically left with a gaping wound by Christmas Eve (about 1 inch long, and about 1/8 of an inch wide & deep). Fortunately it didn’t get infected, it wasn’t really bleeding/discharging in any noticeable amount, I still have plenty of the the antibiotic ointment they gave me to put on it after the surgery, and it seems like it was starting to slowly close itself back up over the past couple days. So it honestly wasn’t that bad aside from the general grossness of it.

    I did get it checked out at an urgent care facility on Christmas Eve, and the Nurse Practitioner there gave me some oral antibiotics but said that it’d be risky to try and stitch it back up due to possible abscess build up. Today I was finally able to go back in for an appointment with the ear specialists (though not with the surgeon herself unfortunately), and they decided it was best to go ahead and stitch it back up, this time with regular stitches instead of the dissolve-able ones. Not going to declare my problems with it to be over yet, but hopefully it’ll continue to remain uninfected and heal better/faster now.

    Other than that, I’m actually doing pretty okay all things considered, just bit more tired & stressed out than usual. Also been working on my music more lately, probably mostly out of boredom tbh, but I’ve at least managed to make some pretty cool ideas. Was able to turn one of them into an almost fully complete track in under 24 hours, and a few others are half complete in a similar amount of time, which is more than I’m usually able to do lol.


  • Someone else had actually uploaded this track to YT a while back. Then about 4-5 years ago it just disappeared for some reason and no one re-uploaded it until this channel did 6 months ago (which tbf, it’s a vinyl only release from 1995, so you can basically only get it through discogs nowadays). Don’t remember how many views the original upload had, but judging by similarly old Jungle videos, I think it would probably be closer to 10k at this point if it hadn’t been taken down.