it's what UK house (in the NOrth of England) circa early 9s mutated into. . . At places like the Pier and Maximes and Bowlers they were playing post hardcore house music. British slant, so no MAW, more synth-y, faster, a little cheesier, but some of it was good. Some tracks of the time were Easy To Love by Secchi (SP), Anybody Out There By The Bass Heads, Artemesia by (IIRC Artemesia) this track was actually a bit of a taster of the shape of things to come, Electric Choc - Shock To The Beat, Direktt - 2 Fat Guitars, most of the early stuff on labels like DeConstruction - eg. K Klass Rhythm is Mystery, n so on. So the emphasis was melody, hooks and getting the dancefloor on one. . .
Slowly the music became cheesier and faster, until in had morphed into what you would probalby best describe as a variant of happy hardcore. This has been the raver sound track fro many a year up there and Bounce, or Donk really sounds like just a better produced version of a lot of the stuff that was doing the rounds at the end of the 90s. There seem to have been a bit of a mc culture in the clubs up there for years, i can remembe people on the mic in some of the clubs we would go to (not the pier IIRC). Interestingly enough unlike the London DnB scene they were never too shouty, mostly just rhyming unline the idots you get a drum n bass and garage raves who insist on shouting at the top of their lungs over every record - kinda why i got into techno and house music again . . . But that's another story.
THat's my take on it anyway having grown up going to clubs like the Pier (before it got hideously cheesy) and others in the north then moving to London but still making forays back up there (family and freinds).
I am not presenting this as the definitive guide or anything, just my observations having been going back there and the stuff I hear being pumped out of car stereos etc.
Compared to some of the stuff that I heard over the years it's not as bad as it could be. I find it quite funny. I think there's space in the world for that music as there is for Moody Man, Plastik Man, Artificial Intelligence, Benga, Rennie Pilgrem, Chopin, Gilbert and Sullivan, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane.
No time for X Factor though
At least those Donk boys are creating the stuff themselves. And it's pretty f*cking funny. .
