‘Sex, sex and drugs’

On Sunday, a group of alternative hardcore and techno based bands played at Frankie’s Inner City in Toledo.

“Repeat after me: Sex and drugs. Sex, sex and drugs,” sang Hyper Crush, an electronica group from Denver, Colorado consisting of two male emcees and a female emcee. They danced and sang to heavy beats, equipped with sun glasses and a laser-light glove to move the crowd like a rave party.

The crowd at Frankie’s repeated the words back like the second line of a haiku poem: seven syllables and three words. “Sex and drugs. Sex, sex and drugs.”

Before Hyper Crush, Queens Club and Let’s Get It played with Breathe Carolina headlining the show. Breathe Carolina is an electronic-based group from Denver as well.

For one of Breathe Carolina’s singers, David Schmitt, techno shows are supposed to be a feel-good, stress-free experience.

“It’s about giving [them] another outlet,” Schmitt said between sets. “Right now, the hardcore scene is huge. [Hardcore] is about beating up kids. We want to put on a dancy show. People don’t have to beat each other up.”

In the past few years, techno groups like The Secret Handshake, The Medic Droid, Attack Attack! and Asking Alexandria have been blowing up and getting major hits on the Internet and MySpace.com.

“With computers and the internet, you can do anything you want to do,” Schmitt said.

Breathe Carolina has released one EP and two full length albums. Their first album, “It’s Classy, Not Classic” (2008) was made by Schmitt and Breathe Carolina’s screamer, Kyle Even using the GarageBand program. Their second album, “Hello Fascination” (2009) included more hardcore influenced instrumentation due to the better studio they were able to record in.

“We were able to bring that aspect in easier with the studio,” Schmitt said.

“We’re talking about our next album,” he said. “It’s super club, balls to the wall techno. We want to keep it poppy and hardcore.”

Before Breathe Carolina, Schmitt and Even were playing in hardcore bands. Without any music samples or beats, Schmitt recorded singing onto a track and asked Even to scream on it. The guys moved in together and the quintessential scream techno hybrid was created.

“It was kind of an accident,” Schmitt said.

The theme of sex and drugs does not stray far from Hyper Crush; Breathe Carolina also gratifies the crowd by singing about dance parties, alcohol drugs and sex.

In their single “The Birds and the Bees” from their EP “Gossip,” they sing, “I swear to God I won’t stop until you’re shaking. And let me slide into you, please baby.”

They have a habit of combining the image of God with either drugs or sex. In “Lovely” from “It’s Classy, Not Classic,” they sing, “Oh God can you save me, now? Enough Valium to fill this room,” and “Scenery is nothing more than poetry; hotter than two lovers cumming next to me.”

“I want [people] to feel free from everything,” Schmitt said. “Nothings too deep. We don’t think about the meaning, it’s all straight forward. It’s just like feel good, happy, fun and energetic. Just come and dance, don’t stress.”

Despite the rise of techno near the end of the first decade of the 2000s, Breathe Carolina is one of the more innovational groups with their clash between two “scene-based” genres. Especially on their first album, a lot of the vocalization was expounded by Auto-Tune, but the trend of altered voicing is undeniable. After Auto-Tune, Garage Band and primarily Mac-made techno beats, the finished product is a fusion of synth-tronic rhythms with heavy hardcore rock drum patterns.

It was impossible for the crowd to resist movement when Breathe Carolina began their performance. From the back wall they hung a set of blinding white lights to infiltrate the retinas of approximately one hundred dancing people. Something special is happening when a group of young men and women get together and suspend concern for their lives to stand before a portable rave house.

The set consists of a drummer, a keytarist and Schmitt and Even roving around with microphone in hand. For their partying nature, Breathe Carolina is a band that keeps good rapport with the fans, encouraging dancing, moving and jumping at safe pace. With a full basement downstairs at Frankie’s, it’s a wonder that the floor hasn’t caved in yet.