Hard house

It's house and it's hard. This pleasingly straightforward subgenre has never taken itself too seriously

Hard house as a genre emerged in the mid 1990s, primarily from London gay clubs initially, before spreading further afield. But, to tread into uncharacteristically philosophical territory, what exactly distinguishes hard house the genre from other house music which happens to be hard? The best way to explain is probably to look back at what came before the term was coined.

The early '90s was one of the most exciting eras in history for electronic music, with new scenes popping up left, right and centre. Unsurprisingly, producers were already making harder versions of house sounds before the term developed in London. Some of the ghetto house released on labels like Dance Mania could certainly be considered a harder take on house music, such as Traxmen & Eric Martin's decidedly un-PC Hit It From The Back(1994). In a similar era, hardcore was kicking off in Europe, as we've previously explored on these pages. A track like LA Style's proto-hardcore banger James Brown Is Dead (1991) could easily be classed as 'hard house' in a sense, but not quite what's usually meant by the term. Still, the seeds of the sound are visible from the early '90s.

Our story now leads us to London club night Trade,...