Hardcore Breaks

Hardcore breaks is a British electronic dance style that revived the sound of early 1990s breakbeat hardcore for the 2000s: sped-up sampled funk breakbeats — above all the Amen break — chopped and layered over sub-bass, rave stabs, pitched-up vocal fragments and hands-in-the-air piano lines at roughly 140–150 BPM. Where the original rave sound had splintered into jungle, drum and bass and happy hardcore, producers centered on *Luna-C*'s #Kniteforce# label and its KFA imprint from 2001 onward reconstructed the pre-split hardcore template with modern production, sustaining a small, committed scene of labels, vinyl releases and old-skool events.