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)