GabberGirl

Hardcore, Hens, and the Art of Setting Records on Fire

Charm Dreier, aka GabberGirl, didn’t just stumble into the rave scene in 1994—she fell into it, stared at the impossibly long songs, asked why they never ended, and immediately decided she needed to be the person controlling them. That night launched the career of GabberGirl, one of the earliest—and loudest—female hardcore DJs in the U.S., armed with vinyl, pigtails, and a stubborn refusal to tone it down.

While most people were easing into house or trance, Charm gravitated toward gabber: blisteringly fast, dark, ridiculous, and occasionally obnoxious hardcore music from the Netherlands. She describes it as a “positive release of negative energy,” which is DJ-speak for pounding beats, weird samples, and catharsis through chaos. It also made her an anomaly—clean-cut, drug-free, relentlessly cheerful—spinning the most aggressive music in the room while being underestimated at every turn.

Undeterred, Charm practiced up to six hours a day, hauled crates of records to raves for free, and eventually earned Midwest bookings, co-founded Warrior Princess Productions, which threw legendary parties like Heavy Mental, which cost $6.66 to enter, starring only hardcore DJs on the main stage, and featured beer bottles being thrown for reasons no one can fully explain. In 1996, she played the Even Furthur festival—the same one where Daft Punk made their U.S. debut—and famously set a Josh Wink record on fire mid-set, because subtlety has never been part of the hardcore ethos, or GabberGirl’s style.

By 22, she’d relocated to San Francisco, where her “cute girl playing evil music” routine confused crowds awash in bubbles and rainbows. So she did what she always did: built her own thing. Gathering all the disconnected hardcore DJs and producers in the Bay Area into one cohesive scene, she threw renegades in abandoned army bunkers as Warrior Productions. With her partner, she co-founded Technostate, an early internet radio station broadcasting hardcore and other electronic music genres live from attics, warehouses, clubs, raves, and a cross-county DJ tour that somehow included two cats. Eventually, motherhood pulled her out of the booth, and she “retired”—and assumed that chapter of her life was closed.

It wasn’t.

When Charm Dreier resurfaced in the Midwest rave scene at Even Furthur in 2018, she was promptly recognized as GabberGirl, even disguised in her “mom” clothes, and found herself booked again—this time older, wiser, and happily unconcerned with stardom. She now DJs as a hobby, while living in rural Minnesota with her husband, pet chickens, and an impressive résumé that includes carpenter, gardener, town treasurer, local entertainer, and glamorous photobooth proprietor.

Charm’s legacy isn’t just volume or speed—it’s perseverance. She helped carve space for women in a scene that didn’t make it easy, inspired countless DJs, and proved that kindness and hardcore aren’t mutually exclusive. These days she’s also self-publishing her novels, trying her hand at electronic music production, moonlighting as robotic clown DJ alter ego, and reminding everyone that Hardcore Will Never Die—it just sometimes needs to be excavated from the underground with a backhoe.