Dj Balli

The human pyramid is a distinctive feature of the Italian gabber scene. Some of its initiates, known locally as "Hardcore Warriors", started to rise up shoulders upon shoulders, deltoid upon deltoid, until the strongest of the group touched the ceiling of the club. This CD explores the human pyramid ritual from an audio-ethnological point of view, from the yearly Herndon Monument Climb, where first year Marines storm a 21-foot-high obelisk at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, to the castells, the human towers built traditionally in Catalonia, to Dahi Handi in India, where young men make a human pyramid and attempt to break a pot of dahi (yoghurt) hanging above them, to the dangerous extreme Japanese sport called Bo-Taoshi, to another Italian form of gabber pyramid out of the 18th century Venetian tradition called Forze D'Ercole, to motorbike pyramids by The Royal Signals Motorcycle Display Team (White Helmets), to circus horse pyramids in China, and finally to the skeletal remains of the first human pyramid in Ancient Egypt.