Celsius – Down For The Count

Back in the early 00s, one of the most exciting trends in hardcore was towards darkcore - generally the slower, darker side of things. And "Y4" on this EP is I think one of the standout tunes from that time.

Like many of Celsius's tunes, there's a lovely balance of dark atmosphere and strong melody. Packed full of lovely sinister melodies and some epic dark strings in the middle - with some nicely chopped breaks and a heavy-but-clean distorted 909.

The rest of the EP is quite different though - the two tracks on the B side have a similar feel to "Y4", but much faster. And then there's "Down For The Count", which is something else entirely - a slower, almost industrial breakbeat track, with a few broken gabber kicks and a big chunk of the vocals from "Public Enemy No 1". Although I'm sure most DJs mixed this into slower hardcore - it also works well as a sort of half-speed breakcore track. In fact it's quite close to the industrial breaks of artists like Electromeca.

All of Celsius's releases are worth a look really, but this one stands out for me. Mostly for "Y4".