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Music

Music World: Donk

Our film about the northern dance music phenomenon that sounds like a pitch-shifted power drill.

Donk is simultaneously the most terrifying and hilarious dance music genre to ever come out of the UK. It's like lowest common denominator happy hardcore overlaid with manic, unintelligible MCing and the "donk" sound itself – a noise that might be used to successfully drum a forced murder confession out of an innocent man. But the raves – attended by 14 year olds and people who think you're a pussy if you only do eight pills in a night – provide a much needed respite from the terminal decline of industry, unemployment, drug addiction and general depressing awfulness that dominates the area where the scene is based.

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We hung out with some aspiring 12-year-old MCs at donk's Abbey Road, a youth centre in Bolton; met premier donk DJ Greenie at his mum's house in Burnley and spent some time with The Blackout Crew – the One Direction of the scene (the only donk MCs who'd recorded a proper song when we made the film) – who swapped presenter Jaimie Hodgson's tight trousers and elf shoes for a tracksuit and Air Max's and took us to a party at Wigan Pier, donk's spiritual home.

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