53: Holly Dicker will be the last hardcore raver standing

We all know that hardcore will never die – but do we really
know what hardcore is? As a music journalist for 15 years and
raver for much longer, Holly Dicker is no stranger to documenting
dance music’s heaviest, gnarliest and speediest niches – but
in Dance or Die: A History of Hardcore, she attempts to finally
answer that big question.


From the pioneering hardware assault developed in Frankfurt and
Berlin, to London’s grubbiest squat raves, Dutch intercity gabber
rivalries and Scotland’s ‘tartan techno’ explosion, Dance or Die
is a historical map of hardcore in its many forms.


Holly dials in from – where else? – Rotterdam to talk us
through the crucial rave tales collected in her book, as well as
revealing her personal history with hardcore and offering her
thoughts on where the scene went wrong post-Covid.


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