Pearsall presents Rampage Turbo 5
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Mixed in Edinburgh, June 2003
(65:21, 91.12 MB, 192 KBPS VBR MP3)
Style: freeform hardcore (and a bit of gabba!)
direct link to the mix:
http://www.sonicrampage.org/mixes/Turbo/Pearsall-RampageTurbo5.MP3
Tracklisting:
01. Helix – Inexternal (Xy2)
02. Dougal & Gammer – Beat the System (Raver Baby)
03. Disciples of Torak – Hypnotik Break (Bonkerz)
04. Cris E. Manic – Acid Aftermath (Raw Elements)
05. CLSM – Hardstyle (G-Core)
06. Simon Apex & Orion – Hardcore Frequency (Fade & Ethos Remix) (Subsonic Underground)
07. Scott Majestik – Acid Dreams (Uprising)
08. Lost Soul – Payback Time (Nu Energy)
09. Brisk & Ham – Serious Hardcore (Next Generation)
10. Sunrize – Infected (Madness & Mayhem)
11. Tazz & Narcotic – Khemical Pressure (Electronic)
12. Social Outcast – Freedom feat Carol Sharland (Bonkerz)
13. Outsidaz – Heart Attack (Rebirth)
14. Lo-Fi – This is Fight Music (Fuck Off)
15. Ferox – Fear(ox) (Bionic)
16. DJ Arjuna – Rough is the Texture (Cenobite)
17. Juggernaut – Got 2 B A Ruffneck (Ruffneck Classic)
Cover image taken by myself in Lisbon, August 2008
This, the fifth Rampage Turbo, was probably the hardest of them all, with the last third being full-on gabba! The first part of the mix is quite mellow (by freeform standards at least) and quite melodic, before things start moving up a notch at ‘Acid Aftermath’, and things get really hard and heavy by ‘Heart Attack’.
Gabba has always been something that I have enjoyed listening to, yet I have never really had much interest in being a gabba dj, perhaps because I enjoy it in small doses, and no more. Occassionally I will have a mania for it, listen to it for a couple days and then it subsides for a while. But it certainly does have a power and a panache that is uniquely its own.
Fifteen hundred young people are packed on the dance floor of Massive, a giant all-night techno event celebrating the New Year. There’s no one still moving whose ears are not ringing; the beats have been banging at deafening levels for the past six hours at the rate of 200 per minute and show no sign of letting up. Bodies twitch and move; eyes shut tight in deep concentration; strange smiles fill most of the faces. One kid is sprawled out with his head resting comfortably inside a giant vibrating bass cabinet.
To the uninitiated, the noise is formless and directionless, but each time the deejay switches records and pumps the techno while raising a fist in the air, the tight-knit group of flailing flesh responds with a burst of energy. The sight is surreal and somewhat frightening. The harsh sounds are complemented with bursts of colored, patterned lights provided by six Intellibeams, several grisly film loops bizarrely projected on weather balloons strung from the ceiling, bouncing laser beams, and psychedelic video projections. Multimedia run amok, the scene is one of utter abandon and pure pleasure.#
Originally invented in Rotterdam, gabba is an aural blitzkrieg of stormtrooper beats, distorted bass, death-swarm synths, and rabble-rousing, expletive-undeleted samples. Its aura is of mass rally and proto-fascistic brotherhood, its sensations are velocity, fixation and aimless belligerence. Gabba’s shaven-headed, mostly male fans grind their teeth, shake their fists in the air and jump up and down on the spot in a peculiar Dutch variant of the pogo.
Like jungle events, gabba raves create a sensory overkill that blurs pleasuredome and terrordome, using lasers, intelligent lighting, and 80K mega-bass sound-systems to create a hallucinogenic hellzone of light and noise that recalls the nocturnal, up-river battle scenes in Apocalypse Now. And even more than jungle, gabba is explicit about its militaristic fantasies. The imagery recalls heavy metal’s super-speedy, sadomasochistic sub-genres such as thrash, death-metal and grindcore; band names include Search & Destroy and Annihilator, and compilations like Battlegrounds. As well as diabolical horror-movie voices, gabba often resorts to sampling rappers, particularly those from the Def Jam rap/metal crossover era, such as Chuck D boasting “my Uzi weighs a ton”.
Gabba offers all the pleasures of war without the consequences, a Mindwar as one track by Annihilator puts it. #