Dutch hardcore scene visualized

UPDATE: There’s a new version of this visualization, check out version 2.

Yordi got in touch with us some time ago to see if were interested in a visualization of the Dutch hardcore scene. At the very least it sounded original, not something I can remember seeing before. So I quickly told him we were interested for sure. The end result is pretty cool, thanks for sharing Yordi! And I’ll let you do the rest of the talking…

Background
“The Dutch hardcore scene is dead”, is a statement I hear a lot while visiting shows around the country.

Since this is quite a subjective thing to conclude, I began wondering if there was possible way to find out what’s going on right now based on facts and figures. This resulted in a little research project I did on the current ‘hardcore climate’ in the Netherlands: all the bands who are currently active in the hardcore scene* structured, analyzed and visualized. The conclusion? It’s hard for me – as a twenty two year old kid – to say if the overall scene based on the number of active bands (slightly more than eighty) is alive or dead in comparison to ten years ago or something. But it’s fun to see that there are big regional and local differences; hardcore bands cluster and merge and that’s something which shows the map very well. For example: there are things happening in Friesland, as well in the Tilburg-area and in Brabant in general. Amsterdam still got some (golden oldies) punk bands around and Nijmegen produces some fine punk(rock).

On the other side; I didn’t find any bands based in Drenthe during my investigation, and the amount of hc-acts in (the southern parts of) Limburg was disappointingly low, especially in comparison to what the MOC-scene used to be.

Anyway, the data visualization gives an insight in what bands are currently active, connected to the city (or region) they’re active in. Is the scene dead? Conclude for yourself. I am just the nerd who’s bringing the facts, figures and some incidental mosh!

*During the research I found out that it’s quite hard to define a proper definition of ‘hardcore’. That’s why I included some bands who are not really playing hardcore (in the veins of Cro-Mags) but can’t be excluded of the list. For example; The Real Danger is obviously not playing hardcore, but they are a necessary addition to the Dutch ‘scene’.

About the viz
The geolocation of a certain band is based on their ‘hometown’ as specified in their bio. The size of the bubble – to indicate the ‘importance’ of a certain band – depends on a little math thingy I did: it’s the sum of the years of existence, the amount of released demos/7”/ep’s/full lenghts plus eventually an qualitative correction. Note that I don’t have a degree in ‘hardcoremathics’ or something, so if a bubble isn’t big enough, well, fine. I probably forgot some bands, if you think a band who’s not in this viz should be included, let me know!

Sources: SWNK, 3voor12, MusicFrom, Friesland Pop, Punx.nl, invididual band sites.
Fullscreen: Fullscreen version of the map.
Download data: the ‘raw data’ sheet (XLS file) and the ‘clean sheet’ in PDF-format, since I got some requests from bookers for a summarized view of the data.

Visualization made by Yordi Dam.

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