REVIEWS: HARDKISS - 1991 (LP)
"I came into this story to praise Hardkiss, sure, but I also intended to bury it. But after listening to the new Hardkiss Music album that Robbie & Gavin conceived before Scott’s death – it’s called 1991 – I realized that this isn’t the end. The album isn’t a tribute, or not purely so. It isn’t remixes of old music. It isn’t a closer. In a slightly different configuration, after more than a decade in oblivion, Hardkiss really is back again."
Terry Matthew - 5 Magazine Chicago 2014
"(They) pick up where they left off and make a modern dance classic."
Kris Needs - datatransmission.co.uk 2014
"Hardkiss revisit the clean lines and heart-quickening house rhythms of dance music's imperial phase, when purity and love ruled above all else."
Aiden Vaiziri - San Francsico Chronicle 2014
PRESS: ABOUT HARDKISS
"Culled from the singles and unreleased catalog of San Francsico's Hardkiss - the royal family of American experimental electronic pop music - Delusions puts forth a soundtrack for MIDI sex in outer space."
Scott Taves - Wired Magazine 1995
"As DJs, as producers, a label and now as remixers, Hardkiss are slicing a swathe through House music's world consciousness with a sound and a style that combines the dreamiest of psychedelia with the tightest and funkiest of breaks."
Dom Phillips - Mixmag Magazine 1994
"... two hours of blissed out, tripped out, drugged out, soul wrenching, uplifting, mindbending music."
Lily Moayeri - URB Magazine 1995
"Gatecrashing styles and catapulting electronic music into the stratosphere, Grandeur is crucial listening."
Aidin Vaziri - Option Magazine 1995
"Hardkiss music defies musical barriers, time and space with off-the-teabags loved-out majesty and manages to suspend the listener in a bottomless pool of fragrant intoxicants and rabbit aphrodisiac heart rhythms."
Kris Needs - Melody Maker 1995
"This just screams acid - and subsequently screams boring just as loud ... PFHT, I wouldn't even want to danse (sic) to them."
Sasha I Nyktos - US Rocker 1995 (one weenie - for songs apparently NOT directly by Hardkiss)
WORDS: BY HARDKISS
"It's hard for people to understand just what Hardkiss is. Yesterday we were trying to explain it to someone and I just caught myself thinking that if I was in their shoes I wouldn't understand what the fuck we were talking about."
Gavin Hardkiss - Urb Magazine 1994
"In the unassuming bay-side village of San Francisco, which is, well beknownst to its populace, the seat of a pacifistic revolution, dwell the secret seedy tribe "hardkiss." Not much is truly known about these bi-lingual, tri-sexual, amphibious, ambidextrous scumbags, but they are said to be spending their increasingly-numbered days deeply immersed in bizarre purification rites involving twisted sex, arcane drugs, experimental techologies and their very own top-secret music, which no outsiders have heard. Tapped phones, intercepted faxes and overheard whispers have confirmed that the group (apparently led Jonestown-stylee by a crazed set of male fraternal triplets) is indeed dangerously obsessed with the creation of some sort of surrealistic soundtrack for sex and prayer. "
Scott Hardkiss - Haight Ashbury 1994
"I like to communicate, and that's what music is - communication. A lot of people stick to a little musical niche because they like to be part of a group, a family. I just like the whole world. The whole world is my family."
Robbie Hardkiss - Bay Gaurdian 1997
"This summer - the summer of '93 - will be seen in history as the point when the Rave - the music and culture - dipped deep into the soul of America. With the veterans weathered by too many nights to remember and hardened by experience, we may have forgotten the rush, the push, the thrill, the first time our minds were blown at a Rave. Keep in mind that all over the States, tens of thousands of people will be touched for the very first time."
Gavin Hardkiss - Urb Magazine 1993
"I mean these machines are cool tools, they have a lot of bells and whistles and lights on them, and it's pretty exciting. But Marvin Gaye was making crazy synthesizer music on Motown. I don't think that this is something brand new or futuristic, it's a developing thing. It's not one place or one race of people. It's not rock versus techno. When you get right down to it, it's like, I know people want a story, to put it all into perspective. But if people would just open their ears, I think they'd get the entire story."
Scott Hardkiss - Spin Magazine 1996
"We'll never be able to create that instant vibe, that flow that comes from a musician - directly from the head and soul and out through an instrument. At least until we learn how to work a sampler really fast."
Robbie Hardkiss - Bay Gaurdian 1996
"There's a lot of stuff now that people who think they don't like techno or house or hip hop or electronic music would really get into. People are either gonna start investigating for themselves or we're gonna have to come after them. They can make it easy or they can make it hard, but we're coming."
Scott Hardkiss - Option Magazine 1996
"Then your mom thinks your just a druggie, they don't understand how deep the whole thing runs. But that's the way it's always been. Acid Rock right? But you know what? The kids are gonna be alright. The kids are always alright. Calm down people.
Robbie Hardkiss - Austin Chronicle 2001