Freeparty Photobooks

There's a few photobooks out now about the squat rave scene, which I think is great! Here and in no particular order I'll review the ones I have... I like the way all these books focus on different facets of parties, and none are made as I would make them. Sonique Village is like an art book, handbound and is full of memories. Out of Order is pretty bleak, but reminds me of the power of a full-on London multi-rigger. No System tempts me to go travelling. Paname reminds me of the time I nearly went to a catacomb rave at Xmas then we lunched it and everyone got arrested and harrassed by French cops. 3672 shows the power of the French scene as it was, and I guess Overground does too.

[Pic gone 2025]

NO SYSTEM Vinca Petersen (Steidl)

Vinca travelled around with various teknotypes in the mid-1990s. A lot of these snaps feel like holiday fotos and she's really good at capturing the freedom of being in a convoy of trucks drifting around Europe. Good times.

There's a fotodisplay from the book and more stuff on her website. You can buy it from her for a tenner or for £250 on amazon!!!

3672 - La Free Story

A French book, quite glossy made by some people associated with Paris sisdem Trouble Fete, a journalist and a professional photographer. Lots of flyers. I can't vouch for the texts, I haven't got round to reading them but the fotos are excellent quality and weird stylistically. There's no speakers, no people dancing, just lots of people asleep and/or wearing baggy trousers. But, as a document of a scene which had lots of people asleep or muntering horizontally, it does convey the feeling of being at a rave in the morning with a lot of done in people.

It was available here for free but the author got it taken down.

No System, que l'on doit à Vinca Petersen, fut le premier recueil iconographique sur une tribu de "traveller" (Total Resistance). Wilfrid Estève, photographe ayant sévit au côté de T. Colombié (Technomades - la piste électronique, Stock) a eu la bonne idée de conserver sur pellicules une partie des soirées et festivals auxquels il a assisté en France. L'esprit libre et contestataire de ce mouvement musical nous est restitué par le texte emprunt d'ethnologie de Sarah de Haro. Cet ouvrage participe d'une meilleure compréhension d'un phénomène dont les médias n'ont traité que les dérives (consommation de produits psychotropes, nuisances diverses etc.). Il est à noter qu'il se fait l'écho du travail de réduction des risques mené, entre autres, par Médecins du Monde ; Techno + etc.

[No foto]

SONiQUE VILLAGE by C. Van Bezouw (Self-published)

Christel made this nook in edition of 500, i think. The feel with this one is a group of friends growing up, going to parties then putting them on themselves (which is what it is, it's ZMK family). There's a lot of atmospheric fotos at parties and doodles suggesting the altered states and weird thoughts that the quicksilvermix of sound and drug can pull out of nowhere. I like it. [The title is French but it's Dutch, but there's no text]

Overground by Tomski and bze (editions alternatives)

Met the two people who made this when they stopped at our squat in Robodam. It's a strange mix of counterculture wiht lots of fotos of protests, peircings, parties, porn and so on. The texts in French are pretty impenetrable, lots of slang i guess.

[No foto 2025]

Paname san dessus dessous! by Frotte Canard (Colours Zoo)

A book documenting the Saoulaterre people who do parties in the catacombs under Paris.

Brand new book devoted to the underground Paris and its legendary life of the Catacombes. Made by the FC, a crew of graffiti artists and musicians, "Paname Sans Dessus, Dessous", with none censorship, is a hallucinating dive into this world always and still alive, according to their motto "DONT STOP ACTIONZZZZ ".

OUT OF ORDER by M.Macindoe (Tangent)

Molly's book documenting seven years of the London squat party scene. I went to a lot of these parties but remember them rather differently. These fotos present quite a dark, macho image of squatparties. That was certainly part of it but we had a lot of fun too. Guardian

[Tottenham NYE rave 1997/1998]

Whose hardcore continuum?

Over the last ten years, the music journalist Simon Reynolds has developed the concept of the hardcore continuum ('nuum' for short) to describe a scene which began with rave and progressed through various styles including drum n bass, jungle and 'ardkore through to dubstep and grime, then to 2step to funky in the present day. He draws out connections between genres in terms of labels, dubplates producers, pirate radio stations and places. But he's missing out as much as he leaves in.

I'm more concerned with underground music than following fads, and despite dabbling in therory, Reynolds seems to ignore the fact that capitalism consistently recuperates any challenges to its hegemony. Thus labels and people sell out, pirate radio stations become mainstream to develop an audience, free parties become recommodified as commercial festivals like Lowlands or Glade or Bangface. Just because pirate stations like Rinse used to play drum n bass and now play garage, or certain artists have developed in the same direction, doesn't mean that garage is in any way hardcore.

Whilst I like some of the ideas behind the nuum I'm not sure how relevant it is to me, since I'm more interested in dark fucked up sounds and sonic experimentation (the real progression of hardcore, surely). The last time the nuum got me going was dubstep and I don't think there's anything hardcore about funky.

To be fair, Reynolds did say in 2009:

It's even not the only dance continuum I'm interested in as a listener or as a writer, for instance I've written a lot about another music called hardcore, the gabba tradition, European four to the floor kick drum pounding terror techno, I'm a big fan and defender of that

... but then he hasn't mentioned it much lately. At a 'Critical Beats' talk in 2012, he even seemed rather dismissive of gabba, possibly because he has lost touch with its offshoots through living in New York and listening to shit like Burial.

Yet as we all know, one offshoot of rave, the faster hectic strand hardened into gabba which then itself influenced many forms, such as happy hardcore, french tekno, speedcore and breakcore. Various subgenres have splintered off and sometimes form into valid scenes themselves eg flashcore.

Where does that leave us now? Well, we are in the future. You tell me. Having gone through explosion then death, whatever breakcore now means nowadays still throws up a shitload of good stuff, since experimentation and sonic deviance is explicitly welcomed by its broad parameters. Wrong Music pioneered a return to weirdness and now bassline (Kanji Kinetic, Figure, Warlock) is getting people raving on the dancefloor again.

Personally, what I'm hoping for would be just as dubstep bass infected dnb basslines, we'll end up with a fast return to the darkside, with massive basslines anchored on 220 bpm beats.

At the Critical Beats talk the heroes seemed to be Zomby and Burial. I'd prefer to sit down and talk about Venetian Snares, Enduser, Shitmat, La Peste, No Name and Mouse. Vsnares is on mu-ziq records, Enduser is on the consistently interesting AdNoiseam (among other labels) but these names didn't get mentioned once.



That's a bit weird, since these people really are maintaining some sort of hardcore continuum (although that name's taken already). For example, VSnares frequently drops in references to allsorts of stuff in his tunes (commercial drum n bass in 'Fuck Toronto Jungle' and 'A Lot of Drugs',' punk in 'Abomination Street', rave in 'Husikam Rave Dojo' and 'Calvin Kleining', gabba all through the Winnipeg album and so on).

Reynolds is correct to identify how a scene develops in reflexively self-referential style, which can be almost impenetrable to outsiders who don't know the heritage of the scene. But he is wrong to track continua as they mainstream and become commercialised. It's personal choice I suppose, but surely it's much more interesting to stay underground.

Flint Michigan wrote in the initial manifesto for Datacide magazine that it was:

A communication tool of the trans-european Undo*round, it is intended to give the a deserved coverage to those who do things, not for the kudos, prestige and cash it might bring in but for the buzz of inter-activity and mutual respect

There is an underground quietly bubbling away, partying at the weekend, communicating through zines like this one, creating music of all sorts with a seriously anti-capitalist and anti-commercial attitude. That's what gives me hope and what I see as the real hardcore continuum.