“Taking it all the way down the marrowbone. Hold tight.”

If any song exemplifyies the ambition and majesty of Pulp in the late 1990s, it is “This is Hardcore”. Maybe it wasn’t the best commercial decision to release a 6 1/2 minute long single 3 weeks before your new album, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time & after all these years it still sounds extraordinary and unique.

The song is propelled by a loop created from “Bolero on the Moon Rocks” by the Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra (originally recorded for the soundtrack to the German TV sci-fi series “Raumpatrouille”). It was the first, but not last, time that Pulp based a song on a loop that sampled the work of another artist.

Mark has always played the lead piano part at concerts but in the studio, just about everyone had a go at it without being able to get it right - Jarvis, Mark, Candida, producer Chris Thomas - and in the end we had to call in @anne.j_dudley to play it. Anne’s sweeping string arrangement also took the song to another level. (The outro can be heard in isolation on the “End of the Line Remix” that was recently embellished on the 2023 tour by @elysiancollectivemusic.)

Two tracks based on demos that didn’t make the cut for the LP sessions, plus not 1, 2, 3, but 4 remixes of “This is Hardcore” filled out the two original CD single releases and now appear on streaming services for the first time.

The video (now available on YouTube in Kids and Adults versions) was directed by Doug Nichol and filmed on a grand scale at Pinewood Studios. It was inspired by classic Hollywood melodrama & Busby Berkeley dance sequences, with many scenes based on images from the wonderful book “Still Life” by @diane_keaton and Marvin Heiferman.

“Now is the time of the quickening.”