Various Artists
Happy2BHardcore
(Moonshine)
Remember how you felt those first few days after Halloween? You'd have a big bag of candy from the evening activities, and instead of pacing yourself and making it last for a month or two, you'd eat as much of it as humanly possible, sometimes even ruining meals in the process? Not only that, but after you'd put away several chocolate bars or suckers or whatever, you'd be bouncing off the walls and your parents would have to tell you to calm down about 5 times the normal amount.
Okay, remember those last feelings of being wired to the hilt on sugar and sweets and apply them to electronic music to get the equivalent of what this disc sounds like. By literal interpretation alone, the title "happy hardcore" may be a little misleading. The only thing about this disc that's hardcore is the beats-per-minute (or BPM for those of you who have already had too much candy). As it says on the cover, it's 16 continuously mixed breakbeat techno anthems, and most of the time the beat hover right about the 200 per minute range. Unless you're a rabbit, you almost need to be on something just to keep up with it for it's entire 60 minute duration.
The disc takes off with a slow build and breakout track called "Reach Out" by the aptly titled Eruption. It has pumping beats, female vocals and quick little electronic squiggles that will move you out of sheer infectious determination if nothing else. Really, there isn't a whole lot else to talk about for the rest of the disc, as although the music does change up some, it's still fairly homogenous as a whole. As mentioned above, there are a lot of pumping fast breakbeats and even a couple songs where things get a little more ragged around the edges beat-wise. Not only that, but there are plenty of dive-esque female vocals, hyper-fast piano solos, and lots of goofy samples thrown in just for yucks (after all, this is "Happy" stuff). Whether it's the super-fluffy "Forever" by DJ Hixxy and Bananaman or the more rippin' "Here We Go Again" by DJ Ham, it's all as upbeat as can be, only slowing down for a few seconds at a time to let the listener catch their breath.
Overall, it's a totally fun disc to have, even if you only listen to it once in awhile. Sure, it's cheesy most of the time, but it's also catchy-as-hell at the same time. It's one of those discs that sounds the best if you're in a good mood, but even if you're in a bad one, it will probably make you crack a smile and forget some of your problems as you try to keep up. If you can stand to listen to the whole thing from end-to-end, though, then you've definitely been eating too much candy for your own good.
Rating: 5.75
