Hard Dance is an umbrella term more referring to Hard House and Hard Trance, both characterised by fast tempos between 145-155 BPM.

Hard House, bears little resemblance to the House genre from which it takes it’s name, and in sound is more akin to mid 90’s hardcore, featuring sampled stab and bass sounds and the ubiquitous Roland Alpha Juno II “hoover” noise (popularized by tracks such as Human Resource’s “Dominator”) , and largely making use of sampled vocal acapellas. Clubs such as Trade at London’s Turnmills along with DJ’s such as Tony De Vit (“The Dawn” & “I Don’t Care”) , BK & Fergie (“Hoovers & Horns”) and labels such as Tidy Trax and Nukleuz helped popularize this bouncy energetic style.

Later developments of Hard House have seen more techno influenced styles evolve, championed by artists such as Nick Sentience and Paul Glazby’s Vicious Circle Records and club nights. While elements from other genres such as Electro have crept in to further distill the sound.

Hard Trance features many of the standard trance elements in combination with darker and often more acidic sounds, and often makes use of cutting High Pass filters. The German Hardstyle club sound could also be grouped into this sub-genre, characterised by very hard or distorted kick drums and off-beat filter enveloped basses with processed male vocals and shrill harsh synthesiser lead sounds. Notable Hardstyle DJ’s are Blutonium Boy and Lady Dana.

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UK Hard Trance takes many of its elements from both European Hard Trance (such as acts like Alphazone) and UK Hard House, It’s beats and bass predominantly from the latter, while it’s musical content is a mix of both. Featuring uplifting trance melodies, acid and often hoover sounds it’s proponents include London legend Phil Reynolds, Steve Blake and Technikal.