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What is hardcore? It means many things to many people, and they're all correct. It's best described as a feeling, an attitude, a way of life. This diehard anthology tracks the outsiders and outcasts who banded together to party, in protest, over more than 30 years of obnoxious rebellion, in ecstasy and escape, as a nighttime community more family than family, who need this hard, loud, fast/slow, aggressive, noisy, occasionally silly, kick drum or breakbeat-driven dance music, to connect with people, to survive the world, and to get through the week. Full of colourful anecdotes from artists, promoters and fans, Dance or Die is the first critical study of hardcore as a radical clubbing community and enduring phuture rave movement.
Holly Dicker is a club culture journalist, independent radio broadcaster and author of Dance or Die: A History of Hardcore, the first critical study of hardcore as a music, subculture and way of life – from German techno, British rave and Dutch gabber of the 90s, to the post-pandemic harder styles revival that has defined 2020s clubbing worldwide. With bylines in the Wire, the Guardian, Mixmag, Electronic Beats, DJ Mag and Resident Advisor, where she was a former staff writer, she is an authority on Rotterdam music heritage and global hard dance scenes. In addition to writing and moderating live talks and panel discussions about nightlife, she is the curator of the Google Arts & Culture multimedia exhibition, A Brief History of Gabber, and producer of the OPEN Rotterdam TV documentary, Rotterdam Rave Culture: 30 Years of Heritage, with filmmaker Dennis van Rijswijk. Holly has been a Rotterdammer since 2015 and a raver since 2005.
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