One of the things I've always loved about hardcore techno is the use of movie samples.
You can hear a strange voice, a line of dialogue, a scream or a piece of atmosphere buried in a track and wonder:
"Where the hell did that come from?"
Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes it's something you've seen a hundred times. And sometimes you end up going down a rabbit hole trying to find a film you've never even heard of. That's exactly what I've been doing with a series of videos for the HCBX YouTube channel.
The idea is pretty simple. I've been taking clips from films and splicing them together with the hardcore tracks that sampled them, so you can hear the original scene and then hear how that piece of audio ended up being used in the track.
It's something I've always found fascinating about electronic music. A producer can take a few seconds of dialogue from a film, drop it into a track, manipulate it, chop it up or simply let it play over the top of the music — and suddenly that little piece of dialogue becomes part of hardcore history.
A lot of the samples I've found come from horror films, which probably isn't much of a surprise.
Hardcore, gabber and terror have always had a fascination with the darker side of film, and there is certainly no shortage of material to work with. The videos feature samples from films including The Shining, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Children of the Corn II, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Blair Witch Project and The Exorcist III, alongside plenty of other horror films.
But it isn't just horror.
I've also found samples from science fiction, action films, cult movies and some fairly unexpected places. Blade Runner, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange, The Punisher, Natural Born Killers, and Legend all make appearances.
There are even television shows and some much more obscure films thrown into the mix.
The Fun Is In Finding The Source
Some samples are immediately recognisable.
If you've seen A Clockwork Orange or The Exorcist enough times, you might hear a particular line in a hardcore track and know exactly where it came from.
Others aren't quite so obvious.
I've come across films while researching these videos that I'd never even heard of before (The film Mikey for example, sampled in Neophyte's track of the same name....). In some cases, finding the original source of a sample has been almost as interesting as listening to the track itself.
You start with a few seconds of audio from a record you've known for years, search for the quote, track down the film, find the scene and suddenly you've got a completely different appreciation of the sample.
It's basically a bit of hardcore sample archaeology.
Putting The Film And The Track Together
Rather than simply talking about the samples, I wanted to actually show the connection.
So the videos mix the original movie footage together with the hardcore track that used the sample. You get to hear the dialogue in its original setting and then hear how the producer used it within the track.
Sometimes the sample is used exactly how it is. Other times the original dialogue can be almost unrecognisable once it's been chopped up, distorted, repeated or buried underneath the music.
That's one of the things I really like about sampling. The same piece of audio can have a completely different effect depending on what you put around it.
A Few Of The Samples I've Dug Into
Across the videos there are plenty of examples, including:
DOA – You're Dead using The Shining
Hammer Damage – The Demons using From Dusk Till Dawn
Mutoid – Necronomicon using Evil Dead: Army of Darkness
Two Terrorists – The Fly using The Fly
Strychnine – Sacrifice using Children of the Corn 2
DJ Freak – Off Planetary Interference using The Outer Limits
DJ Yves – Leprechaun using Leprechaun
I've embedded the 4 videos I've done (so far) throughout the article, so click away!
What's Next?
The more I get into this, the more obvious it becomes that there are loads more to find.
Hardcore has been borrowing from films for decades, and there are countless samples that I've either never identified or haven't even come across yet. So I'm going to keep digging. Nothing beats that feeling of watching a movie and a line that you heard in an old DOA track pops up. Love it!
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