I really enjoyed this Tales from a Disappearing City interview with Jerome Hill discussing squat parties, record shops and techno" ...
The blurb by Controlled Weirdness says:
This is the second part of my two-part conversation with Jerome Hill, a DJ and producer renowned for his exceptional skills behind the turntables. Since his first gig in 1990, Jerome has been mixing and scratching a wide variety of sounds, always bringing a selection guaranteed to energize any party.
In this episode, we discuss several key topics, including:
Club UK: A nightclub in Wandsworth, London, active in the early to mid-1990s, where Jerome was introduced to the harder sounds of techno through DJs like Jeff Mills, Laurent Garnier, and Carl Cox.
Jerome’s early days as a DJ at squat parties in the 1990s, performing for sound systems such as Jiba and Chiba City.
Dragon Disc, a record shop in Camden, where Jerome worked as manager and buyer.
The so-called "wonky techno" sound, which was showcased both in the shop and at parties like Ugly Funk.
Collaborating with Rob Stowe as Groove Asylum, creating music and performing live sets at techno parties.
Launching a diverse range of record labels spanning multiple genres, including:
Don't for unconventional party techno.
Super Rhythm Trax for acid, bleeps, and house grooves.
Hornsey Hardcore for rave-infused beats.
Fat Hop for cut-up, hip-hop-inspired mash-ups.
We also touch on Jerome's philosophy of championing music that some DJs might shy away from. Throughout the conversation, Jerome reflects on his journey in the music scene, from the early rave days to his current roles as a label owner and DJ.
As ever if you appreciate the podcast then please subscribe to the channel and like the videos. This really helps spread the tales and stories to new audiences and will help us grow and expand.
Hosted from a South London tower block by Neil Keating aka Controlled Weirdness. Tales from a Disappearing City is a chance for Neil to tell some untold subcultural stories from past and present, joined by friends from his lifelong journey through subterranean London. Neil is a veteran producer and DJ and has been at the front line of all aspects of club and sound system culture since the mid 80’s when he first began to go to nightclubs, gigs, and illegal parties. His musical CV includes playing everywhere from plush clubs to dirty warehouses as well as mixing tunes on a variety of iconic London pirate radio stations. He has released music on numerous underground record labels and was responsible for promoting and playing at a series of legendary early raves in the USA at the start of the 90’s. He still DJ's in the UK and throughout Europe and beyond and has an eclectic and seriously deep collection of music built up over time that reflects an appreciation of all elements of the London groove. Neil currently runs Presence Unknown, a vinyl and digital label dedicated to releasing music influenced by his love of Electro, Acid House and Rave. He also does a monthly show on Threads radio where his aim as always is to play you some amazing music that you have never heard before.
Gosh
it’s 2017 already, big up the people doing the TAA this year!
As my
contribution I thought I’d make a zine about me and TAA...
EDIT
well now it's 2021 and TAA is 20 years old woop wopp I tried to make this into a zine and failed
EDIT
2025 what have I been doing with my LIFE, the people need this online right now
TAA VERY MUCH
I
first got involved with Temporary Autonomous Art in 2001 when I
turned up at the old Smithfields club in East London (a long-term empty
building I'd always wanted to squat) and saw a strange assortment of beautiful people making weird art … some were my friends hehehe. A
had drilled lots of circular holes in a bar table. I remember looking
at that and thinking errrr...For
his graduation show he made a room you couldn't enter!
TAA LONDON
Overall,
I thought the whole thing was great and really enjoyed the way
creativity was being unleashed from the free party scene (ie the squatters doing massive tekno parties every Saturday night all over
London taking time out to do a free cultural event). Sure,
I loved the parties and found them really inspiring pockets of
freedom, but yes I could also agree they were quite nihilistic and I did
sometimes wonder what all these interesting people were doing
wrecking their heads every weekend (and also why I needed to do that
too). So it was cool to see an open access art event with minimal
curation, where everyone could put up stuff and also anyone could
stumble in of the street if they dared and have a look around.
The
www.randomartists.org website has lots of good stuff on it and an
archive with photos of all the events up to 2007 at least. Random
Artists was originally a useful anonymous multi-use moniker for
people who were associated with Headfuk, Hekate and Pitchless sound
systems. It has since become a sprawling empire of underground talent!
Back
in 2001, the next month the Liquid Spiral Collective did a party/exhibition in south London and invited us along. Suddenly, we were
recognized artists! D drew all over a wall and fell asleep
on K, the pen still in his hand as he slumped to the ground. We
really meant it! Actually all I can really recall of this event is
that it was supposed to be alcohol free, which made for quite a good
atmosphere apart from the occasional radge person moaning about their
human rights being restricted after walking round the whole building
twice looking for a bar. In 2021 this sort of dickhead would have totally
been moaning about masks and freedom.
An
unstoppable art juggernaut was now in motion. TAA 2 had to happen.
Somehow our squat ended up being the venue locators. We were living
in Clapton at that time and Hackney was our whole world, so we didn't
look around that far. Me and V found a building
set back from the main road near the cemetery in Stoke Newington,
which was empty on the first floor with a car mechanics underneath.Crash
bang one night and we fell through the door into an empty artist
atelier. Perfect! Things came together really well, we went down to
New Covent Garden market and skipped a shitload of veggies for food,
then people turned up and put up their art. There was sculpture,
photographs, painting, a really good mix.
We
experienced a bit of the tension inherent in putting on an event
which wasn't a party when we kicked people out at midnight but it was
really important for TAA not to be a party, to be something else
since we could go to a wicked party every weekend, so that wasn't a
problem or a need to be fulfilled. One drunk guy got really aggro and
was chucked out, but came back the next time in a suit and a mask,
this was accepted as fair play and he was let back in. The three days
of the exhibition flew by, then we tatted down and all went out to a festival in the park. When I came back, my key didn't work in
the door any more and it really was all over.Right then a guy turned up saying “Is this where the art event is
happening? Am I too late?”
Then
came TAA 3, in Clapton Square, in dilapidated Council buildings
I'd wanted to squat for a while, since I used to cycle past them
twice a day. We'd planned it from the nursery in Leyton where some of
Headfuk were living, but as the time to crack got closer I got itchy feet, so I bought a truck and moved to Europe. Thus I
missed the next few TAAs, first back at Smithfields again (and you
know last time I went past in 2012 the building was STILL fucking
empty), then Commercial Street, Flowers East and Hampstead.
Next,
in summer 2003, some Random Artists made it out to Czech Republic
where I was then living. It was mainly people from Hekate and
Headfuk, combining art exhibitions in CZ and Poland with doing
teknivals. We put on a wicked art event at squat Milada in Prague
(now sadly evicted) with a night of electronic music. The electricity
came from a streetlight so the music only came on when it got dark. There
was also an excellent short film night. E made some intricate
stuff out of the crap in Milada's garden and as an intense art action
I managed to drop this really heavy bit of scrapmetal which he'd put
on a pedestal directly onto my foot.
I
thought I'd visit the next TAA back in London, which ended up taking
place in October 2003. I turned up at the venue in Goswell Road,
Farringdon, to find everyone really stressed since the original venue
in Aldgate had been evicted literally just as people started putting
stuff up on the walls! Despite teething problems like having no leccy
or water in the new place, everything got sorted out superfast and I
think in many ways it was the ideal TAA building - central so people
could stumble across it, an office block which meant lots of rooms
for installations etc, lots of floors (maybe eight?) so the art could
expand ever upwards and outwards rhizomatically, a big basement for a
party (although i think we didn't party it since we had grief from
snooty neighbours - they called noise abatement at midnight not
because we were making noise but because we wouldn't let them in
since we had just closed the building, the bastards!).
Again
I can't really remember that much apart from Czech friends being
there and J's band playing. M had kittens, that must
have been really stressful moving around twice in one week. I put my A0 photocopied BW sheets of kunst in a toilets which flooded so I don't think anyone saw them. Oh yeah
and there was a bit of kinetic sculpture which featured ping pong
balls being popped out of a wooden vagina.
Then
the virus started spreading in even more directions. Bristol did a
TAA, so did Manchester. Later on so did Sheffield and Edinburgh, as
did Brighton, which I'll get onto below. I was still living in Europe
so I missed these. I didn't go to the next London one near Old Street
(2007) which ended being a weird lockdown situation for a few days
with security posted on the street trying to stop people getting in.
Some
Random Artists went back to CZ in 2007 but I didn't end up joining
them because I was living in the Netherlands by then. I do remember there
was at some stage a full-on handbags fight about whether the walls
should be painted white or not. For me it was always more about
making art to fit the environment, plus a dirty warehouse is way more
interesting than a white cube. But yeah if you came from a fine art
background it must I guess be really liberating to make your own
gallery space. Anyhoo I just enjoyed putting up my photographs
exactly where I felt like putting them, whether that was on the stairs or outside
the building.
BRIGHTON INTERLUDE
The
first Brighton TAA was 2008, Subterranean Art in a squatted warehouse
in Portslade. There's a good little short film on youtube showing the
construction of it. I liked the urban minigolf. There was a good mix
of stuff, graffiti, workshops, cabaret, kids stuff, films and also
snow in April on my last day there.
The
second Brighton TAA in 2009 was a long time in the planning and ended
up being in Moulsecoomb, which personally I thought was a shame since
we had floated the idea of clashing with the Brighton Festival Fringe
and one of the things I find amazing about TAA is the way new people
can just wander in and get involved, but being up a hill in
Moulsecoomb (in the the burbs) meant that we were mainly catering to
our friends and family. No bad thing in itself, but it also felt a
bit cliquey (and druggy) and it became apparent to me at least that
requirements such as having a place for people to park their vehicles
was becoming more of a priority than finding a fat central venue for
an exhibition. We could've squatted the old post office on Ship
Street but for some reason everyone ought it was too ontop, it was
then squatted and lasted over a year, which is insane in Brighton
squat terms. It's now (2021) a poncey restaurant. The TAA went off ok although we did have a full-on riot with the local kids.
The
third Brighton one in 2010 was in Shoreham and got illegally evicted
on the Thursday before it was supposed to begin, which was
unintentionally hilarious and showed the low capacity of the crew.
TAA by this point was inevitably being tugged in different
directions. Some people went down more of a fine art route doing
exhibitions under other names on the back of TAA, others dumped whole
cans of paint down stairwells (which you could say is even finer
art). Some people took the experimental music nights onto another
level, other people hung out by their vehicles all weekend.
CHIN STROKING
There
was an idea at some stage to do a TAA festival which encountered
quite a lot of debate since some people felt the ethos of TAA could
not be shoehorned into the requirements of a commercial festival. In
the end, the sheer logistics of putting on a festival meant that the
idea went on the backburner and then later fed into other projects
instead.
Personally
I’m much happier with the TAA brand staying associated with
squatted events, since so much of the meaning of it is tied up with
shortterm transformation of space. Maybe now that is changing for the
people still organising it because it is so much harder to squat in
England. That’s a shame but good that stuff still happens. Actually
I feel bad I never organised an event in the Netherlands, that would
have been awesome, although now it’s the same problem, it would be
hard to squat a big building for an art event where I am (in 2017).
BACK TO LONDON TAAs
Anyway,
to get back to the London chronology after quite a long break (3
years maybe) we did another TAA in London in 2009 (? I think). At
meetings beforehand I was pushing again for less partying and more
info, soooooo (be careful what you wish for) I ended up in a little
sideroom doing an infoshop (on holiday from my normal infoshop
activities). It actually went really well: I had some great
conversations and shifted most of the stock on donation.
The
building was in Hackney Wick, which personally I thought was quite far out of
town although to be fair the Wick (which used to be rave central and
now is post-Olympic) was at that point in time a place where lots of
young arty types were living in warehouse conversion type things, so
maybe it was a good place for it. Anyhoo, it was a large warehouse
(exprinters) with office space and a yard, and we crammed in lots of
art, including P's head outside. There were various workshops
(such as blacksmithing, self-defence and drawing). Pitchless did a
cool sound installation. There was a pirate paddling pool, where you
could drift over to the computer and illegally copy music! I sat in
it for a good half hour happily chatting away and soaking my feet
before realising my camera was in a sidepocket and underwater. After
a good dry-out, it took bleached out photos for a while but it
survived somehow!! I then showed some of the weird fotos at a later
TAA :)
At
the end, just when I was pushing a shopping trolley full up of the
remaining infoshop stuff plus stacks of tatted papers left over from
when the place was a printers towards my car, I got a call from my
dad saying my grandad had died. We were pretty close and I still
remember the sudden switch from post TAA euphoria to private grief.
And then I was driving home for the funeral instead of going home.
Grief
works in weird ways and I think this was one factor amongst others
stopping me going to the TAA the next year in Tottenham. But then I
was back doing info again with W the next year for the one off
Hackney Road in 2011. This was really great, although it was fucking
cold in the warehouse (which by the way in an upcoming area of London
had been empty for year and still had a DJ setlist on the wall from
when it was squatpartied several years before!?). Loads of people
came down and I found it really sociable.
I
did a presentation of my academic work feeding back how mainstream
media discourses were being used to criminalise squatting. It looked
like no-one was coming until the sofas and chairs filled up at the
last minute. I was a bit nervous to do this in case people thought it
was meaningless or stupid, but actually people totally got it and
made superinteresting comments. I started working academically
to try to work out why squatting was being criminalised and how to
stop it, for me it’s really important then to get the research back
out of the academic sphere and discuss it with fellow squatters, who
of course have a pretty shrewd idea of what is going on since they
are the beautiful people in this stupid fucking society based on
greed and property. We
discussed mainstream media reports on squatting and how they
stereotype squatters as the dangerous, criminal, foreign other which
must be repressed. I had some slides and showed an unexpected
renaissance foto of the Scumtek party which ended up in a riot.
HOME
Everyone
was getting no younger and there was talk of this 2011 being the last TAA,
but here we are in 2017 and TAA is still happening, that’s fucking
amazing! EDIT
2021 lol scream if you wanna go faster EDIT 2025 make it stop
And
since the theme of this particular exhibition is the concept of HOME
let me say that TAA has been a real inspiration for me, a place, an
idea, a freespace which has really affected who I am and how I see
the world. It’s really amazing that a bunch of people can come
together and in a short time period invade a building, fix the
toilets and leccy, promote the event, fill it with crazy good art and
hold it down for week, then clear up and go home. This sort of
self-organised DiY stuff gives me so much energy, when everything
else is so crap and normal and expensive. Just like squatting a
house, just like putting on a squat rave, I am in a space where I can
breathe and feel free.
Imagine
not having the opportunity to do that.
I’m
also really looking forward to TAA2047 (edit 2057) which will be all of us
sneaking into a nice warm building in the ruins of London and sitting
around knitting and gossiping about the good old days.
It’s
gonna be awesome, I can’t wait!
EDIT
2021 my views on squatting have not changed much, I still think it's
as important as ever to occupy and resist. I need to feel free and
when we did a squatted homeless shelter in Brighton in early 2020 I
felt alive again for the first time in a while. I'm lucky to be
housed nowadays but my heart is still in squats, it's when I feel
alive and free. Props to groups likes ASS, Bike Wars, NLSN and Pokora
for keeping the dream alive, it's hard nowadays.
As
for TAA? Well it just keeps on going...
EDIT 2025 ... i am now old and reduced to writing long tracts on the internet that no-one reads haha oh but we used to have fun..
This is an ongoing draft, first started here, about squat parties in London. Memories are hazy, but it's important to shape the future by recalling the past. These squat parties had an immense impact on me and how I see the world. I hope everyone gets to experience that sort of freedom in their lives at least at one point. Yes drugs were involved, but the locations, the music, the camaraderie were also important. Plus it's good to dance. Nowadays (2025) that's mostly in my kitchen.
[Music to listen along with - Lochi - Serious Tangent - Smitten1 - working 2025]
I first started going to London squat parties when I moved there in 1995 to study at UCL, having just turned 18. I must have already had a vague yearning towards alternative culture since I knew about cooltan and wanted to visit, but then it was evicted. It's always easy to think there was a golden age that happened just before and I'm not really complaining because squat parties were incredible from 1996 to 2000, but it does feel a bit like in terms of squatted social centres and underground festivals at least, 1995 marked a downturn - impact of the CJA perhaps.
I was already into underground music and had been to some Exodus raves in Luton plus a few free festivals in London. There was the final Deptford Urban Free Festival, where I heard Zebedee DJing for the first time on a rig called Avinit Army, plus one on Clapham Common where the Revolutionary Dub Warriors played. And there was the last Hackney Homeless in Clissold Park, which ended up in a riot - all I really remember of that was being literally shoved out of the park by the Met and trying to stop them beating up a wheelchair user.
[Hackney Homeless festival 1994 - link working 2025]
The above image is the NME report thanks to historyismadeatnight, which also links to a film about the fest.
[Advance Party flyer - working 2025]
I picked up some Advance Party flyers at the festies, one pictured above. They were a group fighting back against the CJA. Once I was actually living in London I had a looot of places to explore, as well as going to the occasional lecture. I was going to clubs like Club UK, Shtonka and Eurobeat 2000, in fact I do recall getting the United Systems number (0181 9597525) in a chillout. Buying records at Ambient Soho meant meeting people who worked there like Chantal (Mira Calix, RiP) who took a shine to my friend Andy (and who wouldn't), Miss Pink, Aaron Liberator and Simon Freeform.
Back in those days I thought nothing of clubbing Thursday through Sunday (without drugs even! the very thought, I'm exhausted all the time nowadays, I guess I used up my energy back then). This was all before the internets and mobile phones of course, so people used to stand in the rain and flyer the clubbers leaving other parties. I remember getting flyers at the end of Megatripolis at Heaven for two different parties, one was Vox Populi [I didn't go and then they headed off to Europe] and the other one was Immersion. I really wanted to go to a Spiral Tribe party, but they had already left. I nervously called the infoline for Immersion and found myself at a squatted cinema in Turnpike Lane, where they were doing the classic nonsense of selling straws at the entry to get round licensing. I was on my own and I had never seen anything like it. I didn't know what to expect, but the quadrophonic sound was great and Gizelle played the classic Tesox track 'Go Ahead London', such a great bubbling acid line and of course a forerunner of the acid techno scene that was just about to explode.
[Tesox - 'Go Ahead London' - working 2025]
Another early rave was the 1995/1996 NYE bash on the corner of Well Street and Mare Street in Hackney in an old cinema which later became an Iceland supermarket and presumably now got gentrified into a fucking yuppy tower. I went with a buddy from school [who moved to Edinburgh and got spiralized by Sativae] - we walked there from Highbury and Islington tube, which shows that despite living in London for a few months, I did not yet know my way around London very well at all!!
Another early rave which I persuaded people I was living with to go to was in Farringdon, near Mount Pleasant....
[Flyer for LSD / Jiba party - working 2025]
The Farringdon party (flyer above) was great, the guy on the door with a pierced lip said he thought Spiral Tribe were in Germany but he wasn't sure; I went to the loos and was terrified by a toilet full of turds. Our little hippy group sat in a corner as all these crusties (which in 6 months' time would be us) just kind of stood around and chatted, whilst an absolute racket played. I don't remember anyone dancing and I just couldn't process the music at all, it was a wall of noise. There's an excellent quote from Simon Reynolds, I think it must be in his 1999 book 'Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture' where he says "one Spiral-affiliated outfit plays a set of undanceably fast, stiffly regimented, metallic beats that sounds like ball bearings rattling around in a concrete pipe". Sounds about right!
It was a scary scene, I suppose in the same way every scene is when you are outside of it. And of course there was a whole heap of drugs going on, but at the same time most people were alright and nobody died [with a couple of exceptions - an old tramp once and then the guy who jumped off the hexagon building thinking he could fly]. Systems around at that time were Mainline, Virus, Oops, Insanity, Jiba, Mayhem. They were all playing seriously good underground tekno, a language I started to understand. On rigs like Immersion and also at parties like Club Alien and Kinky Techno (a semi-legal Immersion venture under KingsX station in what had been the Serious Road Trip building) acid trance was just getting going and that was great for a while before it stagnated.
I had been listening to pirate radio, that was of course another way to find out what was happening in an era before the internet and mobile phones. Zone FM played sick DnB (DJ Freebase!) and on Energy FM Marie Chantal and Callie were playing mad acid hardcore before the genres splintered into gabba, speedcore, happy hardcore and breakcore. It's funny to remember a time when playing drum n bass was controversial, like there being mutterings about dnb in the second room at Hellraiser lol. Luckily for a time there was all sorts at parties.
The Hackney Wick mashups in what were then old Victorian warehouses before they were demolished for the Olympics in 2012 - Dace Road, Carpenters Road, Waterden Road. At a benefit for Curley's family, I remember turning up late on acid, then taking K and forgetting I was on acid and getting eviscerated by Spiral Tribe's 'Going all the way'.
[Spiral Tribe - Going All the Way - working 2025]
The (Unsound-run) cinema in Wood Green was pretty awesome for a few weeks - one time we turned up fucked after Pride on Clapham Common (free in those days!) with these little flashing wands (it doesn't get much better than seeing the Pet Shop Boys do 'Go West' as thousands sing along and the sky explodes with fireworks).
The bullring at Waterloo was pretty funny - outside, in the place where the IMAX stands now, as a benefit for the homeless people who were being evicted. My fave memory of that party is a DJ whose name I almost remember playing this wicked Anticore track below - Demoiselle Douce Innocence– Moonbreaker. It samples Moonraker and the vibes were just right. We'd met Fred and the Toulouse hardcore crew at Czechtek, and he'd given me the record :) But I just looked up on discogs who made this track and it's Jörg Buchholz, which doesn't sound very French!
[Demoiselle Douce Innocence– Moonbreaker =Anticore 3 - working 2025]
Overall, so many good memories. Some of the flyers are here. Molly's book 'Out of Order' documents a lot of the places, even if I remember them slightly differently, since there was also joy as well as macho posturing. Maybe that's because we were friends but hung out with different systems. I started DJing on Headfuk and Panik sometimes, although I honestly cannot remember that much about it :) Two weeks in a row we got noise abatement orders when I was playing in the morning, so I must have been an unlucky charm. I would be playing spiral tekno back then, which seemed to divide the crowds between those who hated it and just wanted more acid techno,and those who loved it. This pushed my sets further and further into the morning...
And of course we were travelling out to Europe for teknivals when we could - for a few summers that was what summer meant. systems like metek, dstorm, lego, furious, foxtanz, heretik, total resistance, sound conspiracy, samovar, damage control all twatting out amazing music through electrical storms. Czechtek was always great - cheap booze and amazing weather; Dutchtek tended to feature loads of gabba and speedcore; Paristek 2000 was where I made a lot of good friends before my travels had even started in earnest. A previous French one I hadn't gone because I was finishing my course, but a carload went over with my then girlfriend and she came back completely traumatised :( something about being on acid and taking a leak then the strobe putting her pissing shadow all over a mountain.
[Tolworth Teknival - 2000 - working 2025]
We started a system called Xombie and did a night at the Dungeons then most people got absorbed into Headfuk. And suddenly things got fun in the UK again with festies like Tolworth (Indymedia report) and the travellers field at glastonbury (RiP) and great quarry raves in Wales and up on the Ridgeway. And we started Temporary Autonomous Art! That's a whole other caboodle to write about.
[Gak Foxtanz - Super Keuf - FXZ2 - working 2025]
Then it was time to travel. The truck was ready to roll and we went off, with the free diesel a bonus thanks to a French rascal. There was Slovtek, Poltek, picking up hitchhikers heading back to Berlin after the Genoa protests who took us to their wagenplatz at Kopi, a FrenchTek which I finally got to on the Monday heeh... The list goes on..
Whilst I was living in Europe I carried on raving, going to parties in and around Prague from rigs like Cirkus Alien, Komatsu, NSK and Vosa, but of course it's not quite the same when you are a visitor to a scene. By the time I ended up in NL, I preferred hibernation. There was still the desire to get out and party for NYE, and there was one good one at Villa Friekens, another time DJing VSnares in the morning in the killout at a ZMK rave in Enschede (?). But after a while even TDK and ZMK went quite silent, only surfacing every so often.
Back in the UK in 2013, it was hard to find a good party, although of course they still existed. People have met up under the stars to dance for many thousands of years - it's not a new phenomenon of course. It's what I like to think happened at stone circles. The new generation were no doubt doing it in their own way by that point now; the only London rigs I would bother with were IRD, NFA and Pokora.
Around that time there was an excellent NYE party in London - I was living in Brighton so drove up to somewhere below Brixton, got my bike out of the car and went to the prison solidarity demo at midnight which went off well since it was the first one for a while, then cycled into London for the party. I hadn't stopped to think whilst making this genious plan that central London would have just had a massive street party at midnight, and I had to carry my bike over whichever bridge I crossed to avoid all the broken glass. I eventually made it to the party which was an excellent Pokora party in a tiny former porn cinema in deepest Soho - the crew were delighting in turning away all the straight ppl at the door despite however much money they offered.
When in Brighton, I'd missed the boat for parties at Black Rock. There were still raves being organised but the infos came out after midnight and by 2am they had been busted, which seems amateur but the cops were getting better at shutting them down all the time.
[Black Rock rave 2009 - working 2025]
In 2015 (ie ten years ago in 2025!?) I wrote an update which stayed a draft, so I'll add it here...
Since a while now I'm living in the Netherlands again and it's interesting how there aren't really so many squat parties anymore. I guess more than anything that is connected to the criminalisation of squatting, although also parties feel a bit tired, there's a lot of the same old tekno getting played over and over again, so maybe people can't be bothered to go out any more and the innovation is elsewhere. Older systems are still doing parties but there are also a fair amount of legal parties, also I suppose fashion changes, but I do hope the youth are experiencing freedom in other ways.
The only really good free party style stuff I've been to lately has been in Belgium, things are happening a bit more there. We went to Antwerp to see Killabomb play a massive hall, that was fun. As club nights go, PRSPCT in Rotterdam is still pretty rocking. With residents like Thrasher and DJ Hidden, it pioneered that distinctive snare heavy drum n bass style like 10 years ago (skullstep) and they are still rocking. Indeed, you can hear much harder sounds there than at a squat party which I find weird and acts like Limewax are actually innovating and are interesting to listen to, rather than a DJ banging out free party classics. I mean, if you like Crystal Distortion records great, so do I, but why not get him to play live instead? When I did make it to a squat party here in NL, Nimatek/#23/Oerocircus/Baeng, I heard the same Crystal Distortion three different rigs. They all had DJs just phoning it in, putting on one track after another with no emotion or plan to build the evening. Perhaps it was a missed opportunity in that Jigsore were on the lineup as well but didn't make it. Then again, the last squat party I went to in London (NFA, IRD, an acid techno rig) was also pretty rubbish. When the best music is someone playing a Venetian Snares tribute mix, by it's probably better to get on the bike and go home.
My last party was.... maybe the TAA building near Old Street. That was years ago. Did enjoy dancing on the street at Brussels Pride last year. And now for an update in 2025? When I'm living in Scotland? Well I shit you not, I have reconnected with old friends from travelling times who are doing a rave soon. The only thing I'd heard before up here was a midge death Scottek off Loch Ness two years ago.
The story continues....
Thanks for the comments on the previous draft, I always enjoy anonymity but I realise I prob would have heard more stories if I'd made myself more accessible. Feel free to leave a comment or hit me up on discogs - pijnappel.
RiP Eun, he of Black Mass Plastics and many other names. Hemel Hempstead's finest. We got to know each other at squat parties I guess. He popped up all over.
