Make ‘Em Mokum Crazy

(Mokum/Roadrunner)
by Joshua Brown

Gabba, a new development in dance music coming out of Holland, is sweeping over continents like a hurricane of laughing gas. The swirling nitrous clouds are kept in motion by a continuous flurry of hyperactive beats and raucous bass charged with sexual virulence. Like most of Europe’s dance songs, the lyrics are in accent-free English, style being the only clue to country of origin. Gabba’s dark side, as documented by Mokum on last year’s Battlegrounds collection and named “hardcore cyberpunk,” has given way to a brighter sound known as “popcore,” which plays like a colorful, freakish carnival sideshow. The show opens with one of the many mixes of the Technohead anthem “I Wanna Be a Hippy,” which has earned its #1 slot on the dance charts in many European countries with its endearing Chipmunks-on-acid singsong appeal. “I Wanna Be e a Hippy” shows up again as the Ilsa Gold Mix, in addition to the polka insanity of “Happy Birthday” and Technohead’s other remix-happy track, “Headsex.” Milk Bar‘s “Friday Night Can Kill Ya” has such an infecting melody that you’d swear you’d heard it a thousand times before, although chances are you haven’t. A couple dancehall classics are appropriately sped up and deranged, like Back 2 Bass with “I Wanna Be With You (cause I love you, baby…),” and Search & Destroy‘s sampling of Hardrive’s “Deep Inside.” Other players on this comp include DJ X-Play, Party Animals, Soap, and Wild Child. Popcore’s unselfconscious psychosis has much more in common with Jim Carrey than Anthony Perkins, and Make ‘Em Mokum Crazy is wonderfully tweaked and wildly pure.