Synchronicity--yesterday I got this mix of R & S classics by Optimo. Had lots of the tunes already but they've scooped up some lost gems and the mix is great, really flashed me back to this moment before I got totally pulled into the breakbeat side of things when it was all about the Belgium/Beltram/Bolland axis. Everything was still under the umbrella of "techno," but techno didn't mean what it later came to signify, it was banging and kicking and slamming, either this dark pulsing maniacally fixated linearity ("F.U.2", "House of God") or swarming clouds of bliss-gas ("Dominator", "Acid Pandemonium").

And then today I see FACT have this 20 Best for Belgian Hardcore Techno--although the list-maker, one Warlock, calls it 20 Best: Euro, because there's some Dutch and Italian contributions to the style. There's a mix too.

A great moment in electronic music, and a sound that doubles as the fourth cornerstone of the nuum and the foundation of a whole separate branch, a different hardcore continuum (Nordcore? Eurohardcore?), the one that stormtroops off into gabber and gloomcore (plus tangents like digital hardcore and splatterbreaks and powernoise and...). Not quite as rich a sound-stream as "our" nuum, because it didn't start with quite so many resources i don't think, a narrower gene pool, so not really surprising that in the past decade it hasn't been nearly as fertile as its UK cousin. Mind you, Marc Acardipane is still persevering, I never noticed he put this out (also on eMusic) ("Crunk" on that EP is good, I always thought there was something gabba-like about Lil Jon's sound)and there was this earlier in the year.

For some reason the name "Peter Slaghuis" always makes me titter.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

also in FACT, Woebot on the new Zomby.