Thunderdome III – Various Artists – Released 1993 Arcade/ ID&T
Thunderdome III is the third in a long-running series of gabber compilations based around the ID&T gabber events of the same name. It’s a double disc compilation which includes tracks from Lenny Dee, Ramirez, Technohead, Force Mass Motion and, somewhat surprisingly, Moby.
Teenage Headbangin’
Gabber! Man I used to love gabber.
Seriously, as a young teenager gabber was the bollocks. It was fast and hard and aggressive, all of the things I wanted to be. I mean look at that dog on the cover, he’s not fuckin’ around is he? He’ll bite your ass as soon as look at yeh!
Thunderdome III served as my first introduction to the genre and I was hooked instantly. It’s fair to say gabber burned bright in my hormone-addled brain for about a year then fizzled out quite soon after.
There’s not much you can do with gabber that hasn’t been done a million times before and about a year after this came out, I’d moved on, becoming far more excited by jungle and experimental techno.
I’m not entirely sure of the exact release, it was sometime in 1993, so I’m doing it now because, you see, the original Mad Max was released 45 years ago today. Then there was Mad Max 2 which was even better and both of those are two of all time my favourite movies.
Of course, then came Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which was a bit shit really, but it does have the word Thunderdome in it at least – so here we are.
Bit of a stretch, I’ll admit, but I need to do this album sooner or later because it certainly had an impact on my growing up.
Now, am I going to do my usual thing where I go through every single one of the tracks and write about them? Am I fuck!
I’m not about to listen intently to 36 tracks of vintage gabber so I can discuss the nuance and thematic structure and finer points of the production process, not when most of this compilation can be summed up in three words, “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”
So instead, I’m going to look at some of the highlights and explain why these tracks stand out.
Admittedly some of my picks are purely nostalgia based, others though, they’re influential in other ways.
In fact, this compilation just so happens to include what I consider to be one of the greatest techno tracks of all time.
No seriously, I’m not kidding.
You want to understand why then let’s quit dawdling and get into it…
Not Shit, Energy!
The compilation begins with Riot Squad – Nonshlen Tustokken (Ode To Vortex).
We get some random weird Dutch guy screaming nonsensical Dutch Gibberish (technically Dutch and Gibberish are the same language, just different dialects) plus we get loops of thrash metal and the “as far back as I can remember” sample from Goodfellas.
This was my first ever introduction to gabber and I loved it.
Google has no idea how to translate Nonshlen Tustokken from Dutch to English so I had to dig deeper, unearthing some fascinating hidden history.
Apparently shlens were a type of thick, heavily embroidered footwear which the noblemen and wealthy merchants of 17th century Amsterdam wore under their clogs.
Such finery was far beyond the reach of the underclasses, however, who instead would instead wear two pairs of long woollen stockings under their wooden clogs. The great tulip crash and the economic hardship that followed brought these divisions to boiling point and class riots were not uncommon in the streets of old Amsterdam.
It was during this unrest that the phrase nonshlen tustokken emerged as a rallying cry for the poor. Of course, if you call someone in Holland a “two stocking” these days it’s considered an insult, since you’re basically saying they’re of low class.
No wonder the gabbers were so keen to adopt the phrase, as they revel in their low class “two-stocking” music and its working class origins.
Then again maybe I just made all that shit up, but the laws of cognitive dissonance means you must continue to believe my ridiculous lies and buy my new nonshen two stocking NFTs with little pictures of tulips on them.
Seriously, I haven’t a fucking clue what nonshlen two stocken means.
No idea what a brizen hizen is either, some sort of squishy waffle thing I’m guessing.
Oddly enough there’s also shout-outs to Damon Wild who, while doing a quick bit of research, I learned actually has a track on the flipside of this original release, sharing double billing with Riot Squad for some reason.
How bizarre.
Fuck me… this sure is gabbery innit?
I’m still getting nostalgia ripples listening back to this but mainly because I know what’s coming next….
Now, I don’t give a fuck what you all think. I love this track. It’s so cheesy and ridiculous but it’s also a whole lot of fun. And I’d still prefer to listen to this than most of the tech house wank on Beatport or the horrendous algorithmic deep house drivel I’m forced to endure at the gym.
Musically, I mean, is there much to talk about musically?
It’s essentially a bog-standard gabber beat with sample of Speedy Gonzalez on loop over the top played at ridiculously high speed, cuz that’s how Speedy rolls.
There’s a few synth sounds and extra percussion bits for good measure, but that’s pretty much it.
Still, I fucking love this one. It’s pure rave silliness and I miss that, dance music is so fucking up itself these days, we need more hijinks and high bpm bouncing nutters.
Track three, At War by Leathernecks.
Now we get another Dutchman who’s clearly sexually frustrated and wants us all to be aware of that fact.
It’s an issue with Dutchmen, hence all the red light districts and the reason Van Gough chopped his ear off. They’re a very repressed people.
I mean sure, on the surface they all seem pretty laid back bordering on frosty, but that’s all just deeply suppressed frustration. Scratch below the surface and you’ll soon realise that inside every Dutchman is a relentless internal monologue screaming;
“Fuck you, fuck them, fuck your mother, fuck your sister, fuck your father, fuck your family, fuck them aaaaawl…”
Yeah, you’re right random Dutch weirdo… fuck those guys!
We thought this one one was cool as fuck back in the day.
Whereas I’m listening back now thinking… jesus! We used to go around the “hood” blasting this shit on our crappy stereos, nosy aul biddies gawping at us disapprovingly, “fuck them aaaawwwwwwlll!!!”
…I’m sick of this one already…
Still, it’s better than all those insipid deep house saxamaphones they torture me with in the gym.
Ah, now this more like it! Time for some Technohead.
Technohead consisted of Michael Wells and Lee Newman, known for various seminal rave classics including John and Julie’s Circles, Pure by GTO and the bleep anthem, Tricky Disco, one of the earliest Warp releases.
As Technohead, they’re best known for the 1995 hit, I Wanna Be A Hippy, which, if you remember that one first time around, is now probably going to be stuck in your head all day.
Newman would unfortunately die from cancer that year, but not before witnessing the huge success of ‘Hippy which even broke the UK top ten.
That’s something of a rarity in the world of gabber, to say the least, proof, if ever it’s needed, that this world is crazy and anything’s possible.
Beyond the cheese, though, Technohead made some absolute bangers and The Passion is one of their absolute best.
The version found on Thunderdome III is a harder remix of the old skool classic, sped up and with a more saturated bottom end as well as someone (probably some Dutch guy) shouting “techno heaaaaaad” loudly because there’s a legally mandated minimum of screaming Dutch guys on all gabber compilations.
But, because it’s my blog and nobody can tell me otherwise, I’m gonna share the original version that DJs like Carl Cox used to hammer out back in the day because it’s such a pristine example of peak 90s techno.
It’s melodic and uplifting but never cheesy and it’s got that hard edge and driving rhythm that snaps together to make it such a timeless classic. Here it is… fucking banger!
So far we’ve gone though the album sequentially, as these were the ones we would play in regular rotation.
From here on though we tended to skip through, unless it was a tape of course, and then you just had to suffer on rather than waste your batteries by pressing fast forward.
Cue an endless cascade of poorly deployed Mentasmic hoovers and samples of fellas saying “motherfucker!” on loop over hard drums because, well… they’re big gangly Dutch guys with no hair and therefore tougher and more hardcore than you.
But here in our gleaming 21st century technological utopia we don’t have to worry about the precious resource of batteries anymore so let’s skip ahead to track 9 and another masterpiece…
Thousand by Moby is so named because it hits the bonkers max speed of one thousand BPM, gaining Moby entrance into the Guinness book of records (no really.)
It starts off slow and then progressively gets faster and faster and faster, oh yeaaaaaaghhhhhh!!!
What a fucking banger.
It makes sense to have this track here too, this tune influenced the genre more than most gabberinos would care to admit, while also blowing them all out of the water by singlehandedly winning the BPM wars.
Besides, he does kinda look the part. Very easy to imagine Moby’s shiny head lost in a legion of twitchy gabbas, so here we are… ooh yeaaaaaghhhh!!!
The next track samples what I believe is Pierce Brosnan in the Lawnmower Man, which is probably the best thing about the track. And if you’ve seen that movie then you’ll understand why we’re skipping ahead to track 11, which isn’t much better now that I’m listening back but it’s important for historical purposes.
So we’re onto track 11, Mr Dabolina. By Frankfurt Terror Corp
Keep in mind this was the early 90s, when you could find a terror corp operating in pretty much any major central European capital. Frankfurt had one, Rotterdam had at least one. In fact I’m fairly sure they operated an expansive network of them, all run via a series of Rotterdam Terror Holding Companies.
Course we also tried starting our own terror corp in my hometown back in the 90s but just couldn’t get the funding…
In any event, this was the track that introduced me to my main man, Mister Bob Dobolina.
It’s essentially the “Mr. Dobalina, Mr. Bob Dobalina” sample on repeat while a gabber beat batters your brain.
Still, it’s better than that overly diluted Robin S remix they play all the time in the gym.
I’m going to admit to you all that I heard this gabber track way before I heard Mistadobalina by Del tha Funky Homosapien, which is a damn sight funkier than this, I must say.
But this is the one that started my journey of Dobalineage, tracing Bob’s ancestry from gabber to hiphop and eventually all the way back to the Monkees.
And it’s all thanks to the tireless work of those marvellous shiny-headed men and their multitudinous terror corporations.
From here on in there’s lots of cheese… ok let me rephrase that, stuff that, even by the standards of what we’ve heard so far, stands out as pure cheese, so we’re going to skip all of that until just before the end of disc one where we get another interesting one, Senseless (Zekt) – External
Fuck a duck! This one’s hard innit?
It’s every bit as technologically primitive as some of the other tracks on here, if not quite as crass, but overall I love the intensity.
There’s sinister burbling acid and thundering drums before we’re bombarded with an aggressive needle scratch sound on repeat.
Granted it doesn’t quite hold up by today’s production standards but imagine what it must have sounded like blasting out of a massive sound rig back in the day.
It sure beats the shit out of that horrendous half-assed Haddaway remix they’re always subjecting me to in the gym.
Flipping over to disc two and we get another guilty pleasure of mine, El Gallinero by Ramirez.
Guys are always bragging about the cool stuff they have on vinyl but they never admit to the shite stuff, but I will, I’ve got this EP on vinyl, even though I know it’s utter bollocks.
It’s basically a bunch of chicken noises over a gabber beat, while a guy shouts about it loudly.
I always assumed this guy was Ramirez but, despite sounding like the name of a Spanish guy, Ramirez was actually three Italian guys and a Colombian.
Apparently they all walked into a bar once but I forget the punchline.
So there you go, there’s your fun fact of the day; Ramirez isn’t actually one guy but four guys, none of whom are called Ramirez.
Funny thing is, I actually do know a Spanish guy called Ramirez and every time I meet him those chickens start singing in my head. (Oh, here comes Ramirez…. Bukka-buck-buck-buck-buckAAAwwaaaak!)
The Thunderdome III version is remixed by Charly Lownoise and Mental Theo, who are basically the Lennon and McCartney of Dutch hardcore.
Even by gabber standards this one is totally fucking stoopid, but it still makes me giggle.
It’s sure a damn sight better than that fluffy Phil Collins cover I hear every time I arrive at the gym.
Onto the next track Fuckin’ Hostile by Lenny Dee, remixed by Disintegrator.
Ok so this one’s interesting for two reasons, first off we get samples from the song of the same name from heavy metal band Pantera, who are unlikely to ever get mentioned on this blog again so I’ll just take that opportunity now to tip my hat in their direction. 🤘
But more interesting still is the character of Lenny Dee. This guy’s nothing short of a legend and something of outlier in terms of his career trajectory. He started off as a teenage disco DJ, later getting props in the New York house scene, playing parties, producing tracks, so far so normal.
Then he went to Europe.
After playing a few raves there, instead of being spooked like many of his peers who went running home to mamma crying about the higher BPMs, Lenny dived headfirst into the hardcore and, as a result, his shit kept getting harder and harder and HARDER.
In 1991 he formed his own label, Industrial Strength Records, and on that very strength he became the granddaddy of hardcore rave, racking up a massive amount of studio credits and developing a global reputation for hard sets, hard tracks and an even harder work ethic.
He truly is a fascinating character and I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to revisit him again so taking this opportunity to give him some props.
Fuckin’ Hostile might not necessarily be the best barometer of Lenny Dee’s talents but it certainly describes my reaction to that putrid Aha cover they won’t stop playing at the gym.
From here on in it gets a bit more cheesy, with a lot of hard trance and proto-happy hardcore stuff which I’ve never been able to stomach, even when I was a dopey teenager with ridiculous flappy curtains.
So, let’s skip all that and jump ahead to track 15, VCF – Hydrochloric.
Ah yeah see, now we’re talkin’.
All those screaming Dutchmen and Italo-Colombian chickens and kings of Frankfurt and terror corps and Hellraiser samples… honestly? I’d be quite happy if I never heard any of that shit again. But this right here? I could happily listen to stuff like this all night long.
Pure undiluted acid fury this one.
But if we’re talking about acid techno, I’ve saved the best for last. We’re actually skipping backward now for the finale to track 14, Chemical Warfare by Force Mass Motion.
Force Mass Motion, aka Mike Wells, is a prolific UK producer who put out a wide variety of different styles all though the 90s, mainly on Rabbit City Records.
If you’ve been paying attention you might be wondering, didn’t you just mention him earlier? No, that was Michael Wells from Technohead, whereas this is a completely different British techno producer called Mike Wells who just happens to be on the same compilation.
Would very much be interested in hearing a collaboration between the two but so far the only evidence of collaboration seems to be a mutual “I’m not the other guy” on each other’s Discogs profiles.
Force Mass Motion’s career dates back to the acid house days and he’s still going strong, with two releases already this year on his Bandcamp.
Hardcore, trance, techno, house, breaks, you name it, he’s done it. But his true talent, if you ask me, is his mastery of the 303.
This one’s a favourite of a lot of DJs, including the great Carl Cox.
It’s also my favourite acid track of all time, edging out legends like Hardfloor, Tim and Misjah, Speedy J, Josh Wink and Richie Hawtin, to gain that prestigious title.
It’s rough, it’s raw, it’s relentless and it’s all just man and machines, just as the techno gods intended, with what I consider to be the best acid line ever put on wax.
Here Comes The Boom
You know what? It’s been fun listening back to this and not just because of nostalgia.
A lot of these tunes signposted the way forward towards more intricate flavours of techno which I enjoy to this day, while also serving as a much-needed lightning rod for my youthful aggression.
Sure, most of it is terrible but it still beats the… wait, did I make that joke already?
Actually, you know what, listening back to this has kinda given me a new business idea, which basically a network of “Hardcore Gym” franchises with a gabber-only music policy.
Picture it, a bunch of sweaty pumped up skinheads full of steroids, testosterone and gabber – what could possibly go wrong?