A genre of
dance music which become very popular and commercial in the UK. Characterized by big, banging riffs, and simplistic 140-160 bpm basslines. Influences for hard house are in, order of importance,
NRG,
Techno and
House. Gay club Trade is often credited with being the first to play hard house, and it is now 2nd only to
garage in terms of the number of clubs playing it regularly in
London.
Hard house changed from being a somewhat underground genre, to being the mainstream UK genre of house music. One of the most important factors in this change was the pre-eminence of hard house at several clubs in ibiza in the summer of 2000. The effect of this change has been that a lot of records have been released that although obviously hard house in terms of having harder more simplistic basslines than house, and more banging riffs, are distinct from more underground hard house. Commercial hard house is also relatively slow, regularly around 140 bpm or less.
Well that was a year ago, and my, have things changed. Hard house has become rather less popular in the UK, losing ground to techno and hard trance. Hard house is now rather shite, and as such, is losing what little popularity it has left.