Brazenly audacious, the Hardcore Beats crew go straight for the jugular with Ctrl Z & Screwface’s Hardwired compilation. Beginning with Stereo:Typical, this track starts with the voice from the Pendulum album (who I suspect is Jeremy Beedle), rallying against being pigeonholed by the media, going as far as to call them “chin-stroking media fuckwits”.
As a member of the “chin-stroking media fuckwits” myself, I have to take offence at this, because I am an unashamed lover of “tear out” breakbeat. I love hoover basslines and amen breaks, and aren’t intimidated at all by the sounds, and don’t pigeonhole any group or sound.

When they’re not dissing the very people who are reviewing their CD, they’re very cleverly breaking the song down into a house number, which made me laugh out loud first time I heard it. This album takes me back to the days when DJ mixes were fun. Quick mixes, cheeky edits where they mix other tunes in the breakdowns, and full of sci-fi movie samples, it’s the converse to the boring, 3 tune an hour perfect ableton mixes that are cropping up all too often now days.

All the Hardcore Beat artists are represented – Ctrl Z and Screwface naturally, alongside Ed209, Boabinga & ID, and newcomers Equalizers, with Angel Farringdon and Broadbeatz representing the ladies. Stand outs include The Tunnel by Ctrl Z, Hell Yeah by Ed209 and Ken Mac and Screwface’s remix of Badman. Other great things about this mix are the brilliantly recombining samples to make a superb mix between Shotgun Riddim and Extravaganza Man, and the quick drop of Super Ronnie’s Squat Rave before Kung Fu Funk.

Say what you like about the ‘tear out’ sound; It might not be technically brilliant, it might borrow and steal from about 5 different genres, but it will make you grin and get up and groove. Personally I’m sick of the seriousness in music with wanker DJs self indulging their over inflated egos with long mixes and laboriously processed sounds – it’s why I moved away from dnb and got more into breaks in the first place – and this mix cd makes me glad there’s people in the world who still want to get out there and create party music to get the masses moving. And, as they say in the first track, “If you don’t like it, you can just fuck off.”