A Shocking Expose Into the Dark Heart of Donk
The presence of subtitles might have you believe that the crew had travelled to a distant, undiscovered provincial outpost of the UK which had been cut off from the mainland for the past 100 years, rather than a three hour car journey to the suburbs of Manchester.
The documentary begins well enough but by the second episode it becomes clear that we're going to find out less about donk and more about Bolton's social problems. Rather than any objective analysis of the music's origins we're treated to random violence on a Scarborough high street, gratuitous shots of urban decay and insinuations of homophobia.
Most frustratingly, donk is presented as an entirely new phenomenon when in reality the phrase and the music have existed together for years alongside their siblings who form a plethora of subgenres: Scouse house, pumping house and bouncy house all of which have had a stranglehold in the North West for years.
The donk tag itself simply refers to one of the key sounds used in the music, a layered synthetic pulse that is triggered between the first and second beat of the bar to create a pulsating syncopated rhythm with the kick drum. In fact the donk sound has long been a staple of trance and hard house with similar music scenes existing in Holland, Russia, Poland and beyond.
We can only imagine that VBS.TV's next episode will discover that somewhere north of Bolton lies a country called Scotland, where a new kind of music called happy hardcore is popular and the people have even funnier accents.
Nevertheless, 'Donk' does make for an entertaining piece of film but a documentary which is touted as ‘A Shocking Expose Into the Dark Heart of Donk' comes across more like ‘Public School Boys Discover Rave Music and Laugh At Stupid Northerners'.
Watch the documentary below and let us know what you think.
