Five's Blog

The Genre Going Through a Mini Renaissance / 2026.02.25

 

Hardcore dance music is by no means a new thing. It has existed since the 90s (arguably earlier) and has gone through many different evolutions and splintered into countless sub genres over the years. 

 

It was sometime in the 2010s that the term "uptempo" started to pop up with an accompanying sound that is pretty unique within dance music from my perspective. Prior to this there was harder genres such as hardstyle and more similarly terrorcore but the production really left something to be desired in my opinion. The tracks from artists such as m1dy and NSD (both of which I love) push the bpm up into the 200+ range although the kicks are not that much harder than some of the classic gabber house tunes of the 90s and 2000s. 

 

Uptempo hardcore producers on the other hand tend to design kicks in such a way that embodies raw power ... to the extent that all the other elements that may make up a track are neglected or rather, overpowered by the sheer loudness of the kicks. While the producers that  are the face of the modern iteration of uptempo hardcore  (notably LIL TEXAS, Dr. Donk, GPF and Noiseflow.) are still quite niche and most likely will never break into the main stream just due to the fact that this type of music is so abrasive, they have exposed many electronic music fans to a whole new world of dance music

 

With that exposure, a massive amount of extremely creative producers putting out quality tracks have popped up online recently. I've spent the past couple months in a rabbit hole on soundcloud and other sites discovering so much new, high quality music.

 

Below I've linked a few artists that I am a fan of and I encourage you to check out if you're into this type of music. (not including the artists I mentioned before definitely check them out)

 

 

 

 

On Tattooing / 2026.02.18

I frequently get asked about my tattoos, especially my heavy blackwork (or as I like to call it, kritzel kratzel), as that style of ink still seems to be considered on the extreme side of tattooing, despite body modifications being accepted more than ever. Funnily enough, I am not a fan of more traditional tattoo styles.

 

With the explosion of the tattoo industry in the past 20ish years, there has been an influx of extremely corny work done by the most out of touch elitist artist that scoff at anything not done by a millennial at an overpriced American traditional shop located in the gentrified part of town. To me, this is antithesis of what I like about body modification. My views on this were shaped largely (but not exclusively) by the legendary German artist Little Swastika/Lily Lu. (Check out this documentary if you are interested in learning more about the guy. I find it to be a good introduction to him and his philosophy.) *note he is a very extreme [INSANE] person and I do  not personally agree with some of his views but I very much  admire his artwork and impact on tattooing as a whole.

 

Regardless, to me tattooing is ritualistic and is as much about the experience as it is getting art on your body. All of my favorite pieces I have were done rather by myself in my house or in the forest by old friends in a ritualistic setting. I will most likely be getting tattooed until I die. I don't have an end goal, I don't have any sort of long term plan for how I want to look in 20 years. All I can say is I enjoy the process of changing my body to reflect how I feel emotionally. Although I can't say why I enjoy it. It is almost a compulsion. I've always been drawn towards body modification, as a child in elementary school I remember looking through Ripley's Believe It or Not and Guinness Book of World Records books and being fascinated by the heavily modified people in them. 

 

Perhaps this sheds some light on the matter, because as stated before it is by far what I get asked about the most.