MUTANT DANCE

A HTV Documentary that aired on 02/06/1997 documenting the UK based Mutant Dance Party Collective and Bristol Free Party Crew gearing up for a free party they realized on 14/09/1996.

Introduction to Mutant Dance in their own words;

"MUTANT DANCE is a Bristol based collaboration of party people and artists specializing in UV performance and decor. Founded in 1991, Mutant Dance have been involved in the renowned Bristol party scene since the early days of Acid House parties. Now taking that vibe all over England and Europe we bring our free party roots to clubs and festivals wherever we go. We also put on regular free parties in the South West of England.
(Note to PC Netplod: We are making all this up, we know nothing about illegal warehouse raves or anything else for that matter.)
The Mutants have performed extensively in the UK and Europe, appearing at Glastonbury, Ashton Court Festival, Tribal Gathering, Megadog (Lizard), Trance Buddha (Amsterdam), Munich, Out There (Normandy), most major UK clubs and festivals, and various free parties throughout Europe.
enter Mutant Dance can add a unique live element to any club environment or party. With our mix of freaky costumes and boundless energy we guarantee to liven up any event. Our UV performers, costumed dancers, or outrageous environments, provide an extra dimension of scene setting and sensory stimulation. Mutate and survive..."

MUTANTE DANCE @ Stonehenge UK 20/03/1999  (source)

From: "Chelfyn Baxter" chelfyn@harmony.force9.net
To:
Subject: They let us in!!!!!
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 19:47:43 -0000

I thought it might interest you that Bristol ravers Mutant Dance staged a
free party at Stonehenge last Saturday night/Sunday morning for the equinox.
We set up a Fluoro geodesic dome behind the visitors centre, lit with UV and
partied all night 'til the druids arrived. Come sunrise they let not only
the druids, but 150 or so assorted free party people into the circle for an
hour. Even the solitary copper was chilled.....

Report of a party goer on a busted Mutant Dance party near Stonehenge on 18/06/1999. - http://www.urban75.com/Rave/stonehenge2.html

RAVE PARTY IN IRAN

This was uploaded on YouTube today.. I had to share!
Kudos to whoever threw this rave party.

Keep it underground and rave on people of Iran!

THE POUMTCHAK PATTERN

Correspondences Between
Rhythm, Sound, and Movement
in Electronic Dance Music
PhD Thesis by Hans T Zeiner-Henriksen

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

Brilliant thesis, I love it!

GRAB IT HERE (HTML)

   

EQUINOX: RAVE NEW WORLD

EQUINOX examines the rave experience from the technological point of view; the music, the lighting, the new video technology and the neuroscience of ecstasy, the drug that is an integral part of the rave scene. A technological view of the rave scene. Looks at American research on the longterm effects of ecstasy (MDMA) on the brain neurotransmitter serotonin. Dr Charles Grob of UCLA studies its use in therapy. Alexander Shulgin, the `father of ecstasy' creates psychoactive drugs in his garden-shed lab. Charts the evolution of rave and its technology. Moves from 3000 teenagers in an aircraft hangar in Kent, via an Orbital show in Amsterdam to 1000 techno-hippies in the Nevada desert. Examines the science and technology of the rave experience, considering the effects of the music, the lighting, new video technology and the neuroscience of the drug ecstasy. Features Dr. Charles Grob of UCLA, Alexander Shulgin, a pharmacologist, and ambient techno musicians the Future Sound of London.

UK TEKNIVAL TRIAL AND THE LICENSING ACT 2003

History is made at night : We reported last year on the police operation to close the UK Teknival at Dale Aerodrome in Pemrokeshire (Wales). 

The court case arising from this ended in November 2010, with ten people pleading guilty to charges of holding an event without a suitable licence. They were given Community Service Orders, with nine sentenced to carry out 100 unpaid work and the other 160 hours. Charges were dropped against six other people who pleaded not guilty. Continue reading here...

posted with a 6 month delay ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

  

 Image borrowed from Schnews

RAVING MADNESS
"AS UK TEKNIVAL ‘RAVE SIX’ FACE COURT ACTION AFTER BUST..."

 Weekly Schnews Issue 727

DANCECULT 2 (1) 2011

The new Dancecult issue has been out for a while but so have I. Been off the world for personal reasons, mainly trying to get off ketamine for good. One of the few addictive psychedelics around and I was a 'believer'. But I faced my problem, took care of it and my life is getting back on track. Whoop-dee-fuckin-do.. My last post was Nov 6, 2010 (ouch).. so I am once again very lucky to have my best friend covering my back, even here.

So anyway our beloved Graham St John (tag GMAN) notified me on Wed, Mar 23, 2011 7:02 AM that a new issue of Dancecult has spawned! Currently Mon, Jun 6 2011 11:10 AM and I am finally going through my mailbox to bring news late. 

So.. Dancecult, tell me more!

Dancecult: Focus and Scope (excerpt from About page @dj.dancecult.net)
Dancecult is a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal for the study of electronic dance music culture (EDMC). A platform for interdisciplinary scholarship on the shifting terrain of EDMCs worldwide, the journal houses research exploring the sites, technologies, sounds and cultures of electronic music in historical and contemporary perspectives. Playing host to studies of emergent forms of electronic music production, performance, distribution, and reception, as a portal for cutting-edge research on the relation between bodies, technologies, and cyberspace, as a medium through which the cultural politics of dance is critically investigated, and as a venue for innovative multimedia projects, Dancecult is the forum for research on EDMCs.

From dancehall to raving, club cultures to sound systems, disco to techno, breakbeat to psytrance, hip hop to dubstep, IDM to noisecore, nortec to bloghouse, global EDMCs are a shifting spectrum of scenes, genres, and aesthetics. What is the role of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion and spirituality in these formations? How have technologies, mind alterants, and popular culture conditioned this proliferation, and how has electronic music filtered into cinema, literature and everyday life? How does existing critical theory enable understanding of EDMCs, and how might the latter challenge the assumptions of our inherited heuristics? What is the role of the DJ in diverse genres, scenes, subcultures, and/or neotribes? As the journal of the international EDMC research network, Dancecult welcomes submissions from scholars addressing these and related inquiries across all disciplines.

Dancecult is published twice a year.

Check out the amazing Dancecult: Electronic dance music cultures bibliography with an endless feed of 'must read' material. Books, articles, theses and more for you to discover.

For some reason I never posted the earlier issues, which I regret as a big GMAN fanboy. In deep shame.. behold the first and second issue of the Dancecult journal.


Vol 1, No 1 (2009)

Cover: DJ ShoCkRaVeR at Out of System free party, Italy, July 2008.
Photo: Alex Canazei.

Vol 1, No 2 (2010)
Cover: Symbiosis 2009. Photo: Pascal Querner.










 And last but not least.. Volume 2 Number 1

Classic copy/paste action pending.. pending.. copying.. pasting.. and that should do it. Enjoy!

DANCECULT | Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
==================
Volume 2 * Number 1 * 2011
==================
http://dj.dancecult.net/


Dancecult returns with two themes: the dystopian and remix aesthetics of
Detroit and a special From the Floor section on the Love Parade.

CONTENTS - DANCECULT 2(1)

## Feature Articles ##

Disco's Revenge: House Music's Nomadic Memory
-- Hillegonda C. Rietveld

Hooked on an Affect: Detroit Techno and Dystopian Digital Culture
-- Richard Pope

Maintaining "Synk" in Detroit: Two Case Studies in the Remix Aesthetic
-- Carleton S. Gholz

Festival Fever and International DJs: The Changing Shape of DJ Culture in
Sydney's Commercial Electronic Dance Music Scene
-- Ed Montano

## From the Floor ##

Nomads in Sound vol. 1
-- Anna Gavanas

# Special Section on the Love Parade #

Where is Duisburg? An LP Postscript HTML
-- Sean Nye, Ronald Hitzler

Party, Love and Profit: The Rhythms of the Love Parade (Interview with
Wolfgang Sterneck)
-- Graham St John

Pathological Crowds: Affect and Danger in Responses to the Love Parade
Disaster at Duisburg
-- Luis-Manuel Garcia

## Reviews ##

Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification
(Anthony Kwame Harrison) PDF
-- Rebecca Bodenheimer

The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Graham St John)
-- Rupert Till

Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound (Tara Rodgers)
-- Anna Gavanas

Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Graham St John)
-- Philip Ronald Kirby

Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Steve Goodman)
-- tobias c. van Veen

Music World: Donk (Dir. Andy Capper)
-- Philip Ronald Kirby

Speaking in Code (Dir. Amy Grill)
-- tobias c. van Veen


Edition 2.1 is not only a new edition of Dancecult, but a redesigned look. Congratulations to all the volunteers in our new editorial and production team (along with our authors and reviewers) for getting this over the line. Special mention to tobias c. van Veen as our new Managing Editor who is to be congratulated for his dedication to managing this edition, overseeing the redesign of the PDF articles and the transition to our new server. Further accolades to Reviews Editor Karenza Moore; Art Director Cato Pulleyblank who designed our great new logo and transformed our look in Indesign; our Copyeditors Catherine Baker and Katrina Loughrey who poured over the Old Testament; Production Director Gary Powell and Production Assistants Ed Montano, Luis-Manuel Garcia and Botond Vitos; and not least OJS wrestler and Operations Assistant Neal Thomas. Extra thank you to Luis-Manuel Garcia for the German to English translation.

For the full list of our new team see:
http://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/journal/about/editorialTeam

Please note that we have a new Dancecult Style Guide (DSG) now available for download. Tobias and myself have worked hard on producing the new DSG. It is a major improvement on our former style guide (the Old Testament) which now includes coverage of our cross platform requirements. For those submitting material, you must download and read the DSG thoroughly before submitting any material.
http://www.dancecult.net/i/dancecult_styleguide.pdf

From the sweet spot,

Graham St John
Executive Editor

tobias c. van Veen
 Managing Editor

GENERATION EXSTACY

Generation ecstasy: into the world of techno and rave culture

 By Simon Reynolds

 

In the early nineties, rave culture exploded with the availability of cheap computers and sampling technology, causing a punk-style do-it-yourself revolution. The resulting upsurge of independent labels and home studio-based artists spawned a legion of subgenres: hardcore, trance, jungle, ambient, gabba, big beat, and many more. Today, DJs and p...  more »roducers such as Fatboy Slim, Prodigy, Goldie and The Chemical Brothers have huge followings, while mainstream artists like Madonna and Bjork have turned to rave's offspring for artistic rejuvenation. In Generation Ecstasy, Simon Reynolds takes the reader on a guided tour of this end-of-the-millenium phenomenon, telling the story of rave culture and techno music as an insider who has dosed up and blissed out. The first critical history of techno music--and the drug culture that accompanies it--Generation Ecstasy traces rave's origins in Detroit techno and Chicago house, then shows how these black American genres were transformed by British and European youth. Here is everything you ever wanted to know about the artists and the DJs who created dance culture, the fans for whom it is a way of life, and the dance club and outdoor rave scenes that brought it both fame and infamy. A celebration of rave's quest for the perfect beat and the ultimate rush, Generation Ecstasy is the definitive chronicle of rave culture and electronic dance music

--

Read it here (googlebooks)

CROSSBONES SOUNDSYSTEM

CROSSBONES SOUND SYSTEM

Hardcore label from the U.K. pushing the doomcore sound pioneered by the likes of Marc Acardipane and run by the guys from the Crossbones Sound System based in London. Releases are distributed worldwide exclusively through Phuture Rave (also owned by Crossbones). @discogs @fakebook

Doomcore in once sentence is "taking the nightmarish vibe of a squat party K-hole and putting it to music". A sludgy kick drum, extensive and imaginative horror sampling, real occult imagery and extremely lo-fi production value are the hallmarks, and make for a genuinely unsettling experience. excerpt datatransmissionIn the late '90s the Bones crew took part in many underground free parties in London squats and across the UK. They quit the scene when ketamine and crack took over the squat raves.. Must have been hard to give up something that beautiful all because people forgot it is about the music.. not the drugs. Sadly enough that is not the first time that has happen..

CROSSBONES @ Steart Beach Party

"RAVE FRONTIER" - documentary featuring the crew

Here is a quote from a fellow blogger Simon R.

"If i was living in London I'd hop along to this event, if only to check out legendary East London acieeed-crypt The Dungeons. Plus Crossbones, this phuture tekno squat-rave sound system/record label I mentioned months ago, are just about the UK's sole solitary squad of PCP-aligned doomtroopers. Opportunities to experience Mover-style gloomcore through a big system in the midst of a headstrong throng of drug-fucked darkrave zombie-warriors stomping til the crack of dawn and beyond do not come along too often these days, I would go if I were you!" source blissblog

Grab the complete BONES series here (HF) 

p.s. major thanks again to my good friend The Taxidermist to get me hooked on doomcore!

LONDON FREE PARTIES CAPTURED

Beautiful pictures taken on various locations few years ago on London free parties. They each capture a moment I can link to my own experience.. that makes them special. I know most of you out there will also be able to find a moment in your life that is similar to one of these pictures.

all pictures above by Luis

GROOVE

An underground rave in San Francisco is the meeting point for many people from different social backgrounds and beliefs. Throughout the night and the many DJ's performing in the party, they will discover love, friendship and many other emotions that will change their lives forever.

Plot:

On Friday, a single e-mail blips through the Internet. The word spreads quickly through the city: the party is on. Saturday evening, two hundred people secretly converge at an abandoned San Francisco warehouse. As the sun sets the records start spinning, setting into motion a night that no one will forget. Meet David Turner, a Midwest transplant. He moved to the city with aspirations of starting his career as a writer but his hopes have stalled. After four years he finds himself writing instruction manuals for a computer company. Overworked and with little social life, David spends his time alone, his dream of being a novelist a distant memory. That night, his brother Colin Turner invites him to GROOVE. Colin has a surprise for his new girlfriend, young raver sprite Harmony Stitts, and he wants David there. David reluctantly agrees and is shocked when Colin proposes to Harmony at the party. In the ensuing celebration, they take Ecstasy and suddenly, David is thrust into the world of the San Francisco underground. In a chance encounter, David meets longtime New York raver Leyla Heydel and makes an unlikely connection. Through their budding relationship, they're reminded of a sense of possibility and freedom in their lives they had all but forgotten. But as the party rages on, Colin reveals a deep secret, one that threatens to destroy his relationship with Harmony. When the sun rises the party disappears, and the chaos of the last twelve hours changes the two brothers forever.

http://rapidshare.com/files/237333355/Groove.2000.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237338657/Groove.2000.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237343556/Groove.2000.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237348865/Groove.2000.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237354798/Groove.2000.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237360244/Groove.2000.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237365705/Groove.2000.part7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/237370670/Groove.2000.part8.rar
 

1989.. THE SUMMER OF RAVE

The Summer of 1989 saw a new type of youth rebellion transform the cultural landscape, as thousands of young people danced at illegal acid house parties in fields and aircraft hangars. Featuring interviews with rave promoters, newspaper editors, and the bands who made it big on the back of rave culture.  

The Second Summer of Love is a name given to the period in 1988-91 in Britain, during the rise of Acid House music and the euphoric explosion of unlicensed rave parties. The term generally refers to both the summers of 1988/89 when electronic dance music and the prevalence of the drug ecstasy fueled an explosion in youth culture culminating in mass free parties and the era of the rave. LSD was also widely available and popular again. The music of this era fused dance beats with a psychedelic, 1960s flavor, and the dance culture drew parallels with the hedonism and freedom of the Summer of Love in San Francisco two decades earlier. Similarities with the Sixties included fashions such as flares, Tie-dye and male long hair. The smiley logo is synonymous with this period in the UK. 

The first program in this strand, on the Summer of Love (1967), managed to annoy some who were there (superficial and glib) and some who weren't (a fuss over nothing). This episode about 1989 is also in serious danger of overstating the importance of the moment. Isn't it just a bit fatuous to compare the liberation of illegal M25-accessible raves with the fall of the Berlin Wall or the students facing the tanks in Tienanmen Square? Still, there's plenty of genuine enthusiasm from the assorted DJ's, party organizers, haggard Mancunian musicians and ravers who danced on Ecstasy as Thatcher-ism began to crumble. And if, as claimed, the rave scene killed off violent football hooliganism,it was all worthwhile.

GRAB IT HERE (right click/save as)

ADAM LATHAM'S ARCHIVE

(c) Adam Latham

BIO

Adam Latham was born and raised in London, England he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990’s. In the last ten years he has traveled extensively capturing images in over 25 countries.

Since finishing his education Adam’s focus was on the moving image. In 1989 he joined one of London’s top post-production companies and was trained in all aspects of digital editing and visual effects. He went on to start his own production company producing music videos and supplying live video installations to large-scale music events.
In Los Angeles Adam worked for various film and television post-production companies culminating with three years at visual effects studio: Rhythm and Hues which produces animation and effects for major motion pictures.

During regular trips to Asia he refined his style and focused his interest on capturing environmental portraits.

In 2000 Adam created a photography web site that is updated weekly with high quality photo presentations and now contains over 46,000 images. This project has gained a large international following, and praise from many peers.

His photographic work has been truly diverse over the years and he has donated his photographic talent and work to charities both in the US and Asia.
Adam’s talent includes his ability to make his subjects feel comfortable as well as capture uninhibited candid images that show real emotion and portray the passion for his work. This dedication has captured attention from viewers worldwide.
Adam is optimistic about the future and its opportunities ahead.

OLD SKOOL VIDEO ARCHIVE OF RAVES AND EVENTS
and of course his PICTURE ARCHIVE 

ELECTRONIC UNDERGROUND

CLASS OF 88

1988 was the Summer of Love in UK, when Acid House flooded the dance floors and Wayne Anthony, an illegal dance party promoter made - and lost - hundreds of thousands of dollars, took vast amounts of drugs, and put his life on the line to further the youth revolution. "Class of 88" is his account of how Acid House changed his life and the world, as he organizes the infamous Genesis raves, breaks into warehouses, gets menaced criminals, kidnapped, and threatened with murder. That may sounds like a day in the life of every club promoter you know, but Wayne tells it all with an eye for detail and a flair for telling a good story.

! Download here !

(rightclick, save as)

TRANSCENDANCE

TRANSCENDANCE - ART DE LA TEUF, ART DE LA TRANSE

Documentaire sur les free party (Île de France, février et mars 2010)

Loin d’être des parias en quête de déviance et de marginalité, les teufeurs cherchent avant tout à expérimenter un autre rapport à la musique et à leur corps, au delà des perceptions habituelles, au-delà d’un quotidien convenu. A l’occasion des raves ou des free party, ils cherchent simplement à rentrer dans un état second, une attitude pas si éloignée des cultures traditionnelles qui utilisent la violence d’un son ou d’une drogue pour entrer en transe.

By Constance Marty

THE AROMA OF A FREE FESTIVAL

"THE AROMA OF A FREE FESTIVAL"

The Free Festivals anno 1970 - 1985 

 

The olfactory senses of the nose can play a major role in stimulating memories of the past. Just sensing a smell of a yew tree takes me back to a holiday in Devon where I spent many happy hours playing, aged five, around a farm yard with the musky perfume of an ancient yew permeated the area around the hay barn.
The aroma of Free Festival was different to any other music festival with the main difference being a wholesome lack of smells related to burger vans, as most free festivals were mainly vegetarian. This lack of fast food in any quantity meant that there was a lot of communal self-catering or free food and much of this was cooked on branch wood fires. The pungent reek of home grown grass or the sweet biting smell of Afgani Black caught your sensory attention as you moved around the site between the camp fires surrounded by happy campers.

Personal hygiene amongst festival goers, if memory serves me right, was of a reasonable standard and many wore musk oil as much as a fashion habit as to disguise any body odours. The midges and mozzies got a bit much some evenings and lit joss sticks were positioned up-wind of the encampment to deter the minute but irritating creatures. The alien smell of disinfectant greeted you as you approached the toilet trench as a wash-the- hands-after bucket stood by the flapping modesty screen while the contents of the trench smelt as they naturally should but no way as bad as at some paying festivals I attended. The dead thin smoke of diesel exhaust from the stage generator mingled with the green chlorophyll scent of crushed grass around the main stage. The fusty smell of stored canvas stretched up on poles after a winter folded in a damp shed and the attractive hunger alarm bell aroma of a vegetable curry with smooth scent of a bubbling pot of brown rice.
  I might have not thought about that period, twenty-five years ago, in many months and then my nose catches a scent of wood smoke on the calm evening air and I am transported back to that time and state of mind. - Roger Hutchinson (Source: The Archive: a history of UK rock festivals)

These Free Festivals throughout the 70s and 80s were organized to keep the spirit of the counterculture alive, avoiding the rock mainstream and resisting authorities. The Free Festivals are part of the roots of our current Teknivals. Thorough the early 90s the festivals mutated into raves and travellers gatherings.

Excerpt from OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND by Helen Evans:
The other strand discernible in the early nineties was the convergence of hippie, traveller, squatting and crustie cliques in the summer free festival circuit, for example Glastonbury, Urban Free Festival, and The Hackney Homeless Festival. These witnessed some of the biggest and longest gatherings. For example the week long occupation of public land at Castle Morton in May 1992 was initiated by a nomadic sound system collective called Spiral Tribal and their festival-going followers. By the end of the week numbers had swelled to 50,000 as weekend ravers converged on Avon. These events would be a cross between a rave, a fun fair, a festival, and a pagan event. Collectives began to spring up all over the country such as Exodus, Cool Tan Arts and Rainbow Tribe. These groups would put on raves for free, or to raise money for housing, environmental or arts projects. Ecology, paganism, ancient culture and ethnicity were revived, alongside the appropriation of yuppie icons such as the mobile phone and fax machine which were used for producing sociable raves and at the same time created an atmosphere of social protest.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind is an interesting analysis of rave culture written in 1992.

RANDOM RAVE PIC

Snapshot on a spiral tribe party,

the early days rave spirit perfectly captured.