UK hard house

UK Hard House or simply Hard House is a style of House music that emerged in the 1990s.

Sound

Hard house is typified by a set formula of up-tempo house music compressed kick drums, signature style off-beat basslines and the use of 'hoover' type sounds. In contempt of the name it shares some parts in style with house music, but borrows elements heavily from trance music (synths and sometimes breakdown formula), and hardcore/rave music (hoover sounds, chants). Generally, hard house is part of a wider group of styles called hard dance and has little in common with the modern trance or house scenes going for a stronger storm sound.

Alex Penn

DJ Alex Penn famously edited this Wikipedia entry in protest of promoters selling the genre off in order to cash in from the Scouse House scene (which attracts the same crowd as the UK Grime scenes). This sparked off a media frenzy, which led to his image being projected on the moon. He has been hailed by many as a legend, with a statue of him dressed as Admiral Nelson being erected in Trafalger Square, which remains to this day bearing the name Nelson's Column.

History

Tony De Vit was one of the pioneers of the sound in the early 90's, playing a harder, louder, faster style of dance music. The hard house scene grew in popularity throughout the 90's with Trade and Chuff Chuff being joined by several other large club nights e.g. Sundissential, Tidy Trax, Insomniacz, Cheeky Little Monkey, Slinky, Passion and many more.Many of which have also now moved over to other types of dance music.

Hardhouse has evolved since Tony de Vit in 1995, the sound has turned more into hard nrg - not to be confused with hard 'dance' which is just a general clumsy reference to a much wider style of music...hard nrg is the main type of underground hard dance now, punctuated by harder sounds, more flowing basslines, experimental hard analogue synth riffs and genrally played at about 160bpm in comparison to the old hardhouse standard 140-150 depending on th era. Records of this genre 'harddance' the underground type tends to be recorded on vinyl and mastered at 150 bpm but played anything up to 165 when mixing, though this is the preserve of a more futurisic new wave evolved type of the original music. Generally a total shift from the original more 'handbag' roots which it started from. Notable energy producers include eufex who was producing around the time of tony de vit, Paul King (marked as the "one to watch" by Tony) and the much newer producers like Riggsy, Sparx, Pearce M, Semtex, Mark H, J Nardi and J Dwyer, Shenton,Pierce Rooney , Casper, DJ Resh (of the Lisa Pin Up all time chart) who created 'the prophecy'.# Grady G, Captain Tinrib, Minty, Karim, Ben Stevens, Marc Johnson, Gemstone, Hilze, of which most are UK hard dance artists but also now international.

Notable Hard House/NRG DJ's

Tom Harding, Paul Glazby, Paul "F1" King, Andy Farley, Marc Johnson, Superfast Oz, Ben Stevens , Justin Bourne, Dean Peters, JayPaul, Riggsy, Steve NRG, dj RESH, andriko, shenton, hilze, steve hewitt, grady g, narc, defective audio, lisa lashes, eufex, Tom Urwin, general lee, semtex, tim stokes, frank farrell, dave owens, Pierce Rooney, marc johnson, phil coogan, jp and juksey, lab 4 (the late), Andy whitby, Lisa Pin-up, BK, David Roche, Ben Lancaster, RR Fierce, Ian M

Hardhouse Music Labels

Vicious Circle