History of Hardcore Listening Session

Raver, researcher and radio host Holly Dicker presents a History of Hardcore listening session following the loud, distorted and f*cking hostile beat of her 2025 book Dance or Die: A History of Hardcore.

Kicking off in an industrial estate in outer Frankfurt in 1989 with the first world-razing piece of techno – and only record everyone accepts as the the genesis of hardcore – join Holly on this dark positive route through the key records that soundtracked three generations of outsider youth to lose themselves in the dark and find each other.

Hear bedroom-produced breakbeats from New York's outerboroughs inspire Dutch gabbers to take it up a notch, to the rage and riot of Detroit transforming into happy, bouncy and evil dance music over nearly forty years of sonic reinvention and f*cking up the system. What is hardcore? But what does it actually sound like, back then and today? Let's find out!