life affirming music 2
on Doormouse, DOEKORO, Status: Expunged, and Masayoshi Takanaka
hello dear reader, it’s been 5 months. i hope you are warm and have found some type of peace of mind since we last saw each other. i’ve been busy listening and relistening and reading and relistening again. i love this music and maybe you won’t like it but you will at least know why i do.
the actual worst part about learning is how you realize how you were wrong. dear reader, i’ve become that annoying person who will say callout if someone mislabels music. and i am guilty of this transgression. that is partly why this took me so long, i kept correcting myself and wanted to expand more and more. i’ll likely have more to say about electronic music than i will about film at this point. again i will say: don’t go to grad school. anyhow, here’s more life-affirming music.
“I WILL END YOU MACHINE” - DOEKORO!
this dude is great. i say this with no ironic pretension as i believe DOEKORO! (like many producers) makes music that he enjoys for his own sake. Dapplegrim is a masterpiece of an album in being big yet cohesive. across nearly 52 minutes, DOEKORO paints an audio tapestry of critical breaks, ambient noise, and melancholic melodies. it’s impressive how much was put into an album like this, i can feel its weight precisely. Dapplegrim is not simply a compilation of bangers, the project is intentional. the bookended track titles of “月光” and “日光” (translating to “moonlight” and “sunlight” respectively), the expanded ambient track “As I die, I feel distorted”, even an imposed symbolism from the titles extends the project’s life with each listen. however, the dissonant sounds make me wish for a more comprehensive sound arrangement because a jack of all trades can only do so much.
i had the most fun with “I WILL END YOU MACHINE”. it opens muffled, quiet, serene even like most ambient DNB songs. then it gradually builds itself by introducing more beat breaks until it reaches its middle transition point. any chillness to be found is skewed as it blossoms into a harder style known as drill and bass for the rest of the track. my takeaway from “I WILL END YOU MACHINE” is that it’s an exercise in building the drop. the pivotal moment of any song from any genre where so much effort goes into patience. slowly crafting trust with the listener as they anticipate the satisfaction of the drop. DOEKORO succeeds at this twice when sampling the angel Gabriel from Ultrakill. with all of that said, DOEKORO is but a person. after a 12th relisten, i caught what sounded like an awkward moment in gain transitioning. truly inconsequential, and i’d even believe it if i were told it was on purpose. however, it shows that there is a human behind the curtains, not a machine. the imperfection of a moment like that makes my heart grow closer to Dapplegrim because i think its imperfection highlights what is so appealing about hardcore electronic music, it’s grimy and muddled whilst it is built on a machine that technically makes perfect sounds. it takes a lot of effort to make these drum machines sound as they do, and i appreciate DOEKORO for his work.
a lot of music in this space feels apathetic, in that the primary focus is to sound like something, to fulfill a manufactured stereotype of a music genre (i.e. breakcore, DNB, jungle). “Breakcore is just an easy term that gets people's attention,” DOEKORO says. “I feel like it's become more of a term that people use to describe a type of energy or feeling people get from that type of music.” thousands have said it already so i’ll say it again: breakcore is dead, and those trying to revive it with the shallow corpse of unoriginal ambient jungle is doing significant damage to music categorizing and spreading misinformation to millions about what the genre is about. i have realized that DOEKORO doesn’t make breakcore, i’d argue he leans more towards drill n bass, ambient noise, and gabber. however, like many great artists, he takes from influences. “I kind of just mangle everything I like and all the artists that I listen to together and shove it into a blender.”
“Lost Without You” - Status: Expunged
there is an interesting story about Status: Expunged and someone stealing her name. Status: Expunged was formerly known as “breakcore girl” until someone stole her name and made duplicates of other people’s music and boosted their social media (fronted by a sexually appealing model) to likely make a lucrative profit. this is a summary of a trivial story but again points to the dangerous position electronic music has. a person can steal a song, claim it as a remake, make some splash with paid marketing, and suddenly vanish after being called out for their predatory behavior. producers like hkmori whose music was remade felt indifferent to the affair since it didn’t hurt them much in any meaningful way. the copycat was ripping people off in this niche, technically challenging music space because they wanted to make a quick buck and pray on the trending popularity of the breakcore revival. the copycat Breakcore Girl is a telling example of the importance of community and holding space for discussion. because shit like that is bad and can misconstrue folks who are finding this type of electronic music for the first time. now back to the music.
“Lost Without You” hits so well, the reverb of the chopping is like the crunch on a perfect piece of toast. it munches and rides high and low across a delightfully reticent piano that keeps my ears in step with the squash and stretch of the beats. i’ve written before that breakcore has a “purist” tradition of convention regarding definition, and like discovering that your favorite fruit has immense health benefits, i feel immense joy that Status: Expunged is undoubtedly real breakcore. browsing Expunged’s Reddit profile, they cite Venetian Snares’ Cavalcade of Glee & Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms and Acrnym’s (surprisingly foreshadowing) “Kate Says Aye” as some favorites, giving them the credibility of someone who appreciates the “classics.” not that liking older breakcore artists makes someone inherently better, it’s more that it is useful for my understanding. breakcore is wide and people do it in many different ways.
i like Status: Expunged because their sound feels animated, i feel like i am in a Hanna-Barbera shitpost of a cartoon, equal parts fluid with a consistently gratifying stutter seldom seen. on their TikTok, there is a stripped-down version of “Lost Without You” so you can see the cacophony of drum breaks happening on the track. all the different samples have been chopped and screwed wonderfully, it’s beautiful, to be honest.
furthermore, Status: Expunged is an independent artist from Canada. meaning that they probably have a day job to keep the lights on and they probably have pressing matters to attend to. often the realities of art in the face of capitalism are blissfully absent in most conversations around electronic music. it would be fair to say that producers have found lucrative ways to survive if they are just smaller indie acts. so i wonder how one can have time to develop a hyper-technical and highly unlistened sub-genre (breakcore/drill n bass) of the already under-listened genre (drum and bass) while still paying your rent. this is a question i put out to all artists who have dabbled in breakcore: how do you pay your rent if you aren’t Doormouse who owns many gyms?
even still, after dealing with their online presence essentially stripped from them, and garnering support from the greater breakcore community, Status: Expunged persists in being a beacon to say “Breakcore is NOT dead.” and it will never be what it was before, but folks are still keeping the culture alive.
i’ll get into it more in-depth later but i can’t stand analog breakcore/hardcore music, specifically the “golden” era. it is so bound to being off-putting by design to spite what was in vogue to begin with. but that was during the 1990s to mid-2000s, i am grateful to say it is 2024 and the pretentious seriousness of electronic music has been replaced with a 50-ton swarm of music being released daily to the point that not many have the time to care that much. breakcore is a language that constantly expands with new vocabulary to express itself, and i’m fortunate to be able to witness how it’ll evolve next.
as written on his Discogs profile, Dan Martin aka Doormouse is the “Kingpin of the Addict and Distort labels and the godfather of Midwest hardcore. Doormouse is probably known best for his brilliant use of obscure and strange samples.” to put it more simply, this is the best oldest breakcore producer i know right now. i am addicted to this man’s energy. i keep saying breakcore is a genre defined by characteristics, especially for stuff that’s drill n bass/hardcore and not breakcore. Doormouse is capital B breakcore by genre conventions and by the fucking vibes. he is so goddamn entrenched in what is the history of electronic hardcore music, his discography falls into two categories: early releases from the late 1990s to early 2010s, and his revival era that started in 2019.
i will not lie to you dear reader, Doormouse in the first era falls into the space of breakcore i can’t stand it. this sound feels slow and dated. the beat breaks feel stuttered like the machine they can’t handle the complexity but in a BAD way. more thoughtful people have described how breakcore and hardcore music are antithetical to mainstream and whose original European politics are staunchly anti-fascist. in the translation to the United States, that sentiment may have been altered but that raw gurdly sound remains, and i find no pleasure in it at all. maybe if i was taking acid and sweating with my best friends at a sold-out warehouse rave could i have a great time, but i don’t want to be high or go to a warehouse rave.
there could be the argument that i need to properly appreciate the origins of the musical genre so i can see it all since it is so niche. upon writing that sentence i realize that i’m like Tyler the Creator fans who started listening to him after Flower Boy (2017) and dismissing his previous discography (my favorite of his is Cherry Bomb). what does it say about me that i find utter dissatisfaction with the music i have dedicated a good amount of thought to write about? it says that i rather look for something better to write about (occam's razor).
however, there is an energy i can understand from this antiquated period of Doormouse’s career. this tangible weirdo angst is so real when listening to “Bacon”, a humorous conversation between Doormouse and a fast food worker about the availability of a new “bacon lover’s sandwich.” the absurdity of the exchange captures the essence of the perverted nonsense that breakcore tends to attract. Doormouse tells the woman on the phone, in excruciating detail, about the TV ad he saw during an episode of MacGyver and how he would like to apply for a job but also wants to be paid in bacon. the whole track is analogous to a skit on an album and it’s an effective device for translating the aesthetic aspirations of Doormouse: being weird, silly, and a lil annoying in good faith.
transitioning to the present, we have Millions Of Dead Wrestlers (2019) and Breakcore (2023) showcasing the logical evolution of these aspirations. the title track “Millions Of Dead Wrestlers” begins with “My nipples…” and crescendos into a rendition of the Youtuber JonTron’s original theme, DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win”, Haddaway’s “What Is Love”, Desiigner’s “Panda”, and a few other songs i can’t identify. did i fail to mention that Ric Flair quotes are sprinkled throughout the track? the easier way to describe the track is a noisy, obnoxious shitpost of a song that only a degenerate memelord would enjoy. i’m gonna take the harder path of saying it is a galvanizing anthem for a person to find thematic relevance in a genre chockful of punks who slap an anime sample on a song and call it a day. what better way to one-up this new generation than to triple down on the screwball nature of being chronically online? i’ll also point out that the track does not ever stop once it starts. the fun thing about breakcore is that the part where you go crazy (i.e. the beat drop) is usually the entire song because the whole thing is crazy. the frenzy of beats and modulations and noise make it an incredible place to just let off steam in the most nonverbal way possible.
“Sax Me Hard” from Breakcore is my favorite of Doormouse, admittedly because the crux of the song is the iconic saxophone riff from George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”. the general premise is centered around the ethereal sound of the saxophone’s spell of effortless cool that hypnotizes listeners into a majestic daze. for context, the “Careless Whisper” saxophonist Steve Gregory was the 9th person to play the riff before George Michael was satisfied with the final recording, a similar sentiment found throughout Dormouse's breaks. though i’m not the biggest sax fan, i can understand the significant passion behind the saxophonist who would be playing their heart out. it's a difficult task to match the breadth of power when playing the reed instrument, however, Doormouse remakes the riff as a chiptune melody and it synchronizes well against the millions of gabber and snare kick patterns he arranges. additionally, Kenny G makes a sampled cameo appearance to “talk to you about saxophone” and how he’s “really passionate about saxophones.” it works well! because the chiptune arrangement is played with so much passion backed by everything else, it registers so as instrumentation, my eyes water the more i think about it. in the same vein as the instrumental improvisations of bebop (Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane), “Sax Me Hard” breaks down in the latter half, bellowing out it last breathes just before Homer Simpsons ends with “knock off that racket” (sampled from s9ep3 “Lisa’s Sax”). i cannot recommend this song enough.
i’ll reiterate that hardcore electronic music has a connotation as a delirious irreverent style made on a level of mechanical complexity most music enthusiasts would dismiss to the ghettos of genre niche. granted, most semblance of community is found through online forums because the physical distance between fans is great and far. realistically, you can’t sell a casual breakcore show the way a jazz band plays at a small bar. hence why most shows are stacked with a stellar lineup since there are just a handful of recognizable names. by design, breakcore can meaningfully thrive only if it exploits the rave culture breakcore is a part of. this would require a big crowd to pump their fists and knock their heads furiously if artists and record labels would like to be sustainable through music. Doormouse was in the unique position to make a real thriving scene in Milwaukee in the early 2000s, throwing larger-than-life raves in rural barns becoming staples of his rambunctious reputation. even in his middle-aged years, there is so much exuberance and command of his medium. here’s to many more.
“BELEZA PULA” - Masayoshi Takanaka
and now for something completely different. the above image is from a 2008 concert where Masayoshi Takanaka and his band played a lights-out show. they played Takanaka’s seminal, God-inducing, ear-pleasuring, endearingly wholesome “Beleza Pula” from his 1978 album Brazilian Skies. this performance is unique as they abridge “Beleza Pula” to transition into a rendition of 1972’s “Taj Mahal” by Jorge Ben Jor. every member of the band has a moment to play a solo after Takanaka spotlights them.
“Beleza Pula” is what happens when you are standing outside on a perfect weather day and the sun is hitting you and you can see the ocean waves pull back and forth, it is the audio equivalent to sunbathing. you can hear that in the cuica, the percussion instrument played by rubbing your fingers against a stretch drum canvas. i only learned about the cuica when hearing it on the Cuphead OST. it is so nice to hear, like rubbing two perfect rocks kissing. as for the rest of the song, the best way i can put is that i feel like i am dying and ascending at the same time. even so, it’s just one of those songs that speaks for itself. the universality of music that’s sonically pleasing doesn’t need a 2400-word explainer, just listen to it.
beleza pura translates from Portugese as “pure beauty”, though the song is called “Beleza Pula” it’s likely an inside joke about Takanaka pronounced “pura” when recording the song. adding to the playful humor so palpable in Takanaka’s composition. it’s an energy that a great bandleader can helm, to conduct the band to play their best as well as put on a show of organizing to the audience. watching Takanaka at the 2008 concert reminds me of Louis Prima or Cab Calloway in how they display such showmanship when they’re on stage. these people love music, in a way that i could never but watching them in their element gets me close to that. i’m also reminded of Benny Sings (who’ve i seen 3 times live) and how he conducts his band with such charisma, a musical charisma that you could just see. you don’t have to think about it. to me that is the best type of music person, someone who can articulate their sound/identity without much premeditation, no pretension. Masayoshi Takanaka is great and you should listen to him if you want to cure your depression.
that’s all for now. thanks for reading, i hope you found something in this. send me music that would affirm life is worth living.
the second part of business: part of me was wondering if i should release these once a week rather than congested batches that take months to finish. maybe i’ll play around with the idea so can say i did something more often. i’ve asked people and they say i should start posting weekly, though i enjoy the gravity of sending out a substack to you after radio silence for months. it’s romantic no? let me know what you think, i do this for you after all (jk i do it for myself.)