squat parties (work in progress)

i first started going to squat parties when i moved to london to study. i guess i already had a vague yearning towards alternative culture since i knew about cooltan, which unfortunately got evicted just before i got there in september 1995.

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 deptford urban free festival, where i heard zebedee DJing for the first time on a rig called something like avinit army, plus one on clapham common where the revolutionary dub warriors played. then there was hackney homeless in clissold park, whre i took mushrooms for the first time. it ended up in a riot... aaand that was the excuse for that not to happen again

above is the nme report thanks to historyismadeatnight, which also links to a film about the fest



i picked up some advance party flyers at the festies and of course once actually living in london had a lot of places to explore. back in those days i thought nothing of clubbing thursday through sunday (without drugs even!) and i remember being given a vox populi flyer at the end of megatripolis. i didn't go and then they headed off to europe. spiral tribe were already gone. but not to worry, i found the infoline for an immersion party in manor house or somewhere in north london and headed up to a bingo hall and a party which blew my head off.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaa-Vj85Pdo

another early rave was a NYE bash on the corner of well street / mare street in an old cinema which is later became an iceland supermarket. we walked there from highbury and islington tube, not knowing london very well!  i think my first rave was in farringdon, or maybe that was later than the NYE party...

the farringdon party (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 and we sat in a corner as all these crusties (which in 6 months would be us) just kind of stood around and chatted. i don't remember anyone dancing and i couldn't process the music, it was just a wall of noise.

systems around at that time were mainline, virus, oops, insanity, jiba. 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 semilegal immersion venture under kingsX station) acid trance was just getting going and that was great for a while before it stagnated. i remember when drum n bass was controversial (like there being a dnb room at hellraiser WTF!?!) but that soon started to feature. parties that stand out for me were: the hackney wick mashups - dace road, carpenters road ... one was a benefit for curley's family, since he had just died. i remember turning up late on acid, then taking K and forgetting i was on acid and spiral tribe's 'goign all the way' eviscerating my body.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zCVvxChFs

the (unsound)cinema in wood green was pretty awesome for a few weeks - we turned up fucked after pride with little flashing wands (acid again - it doesn't get much better than seeing the pet shop boys sing 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 who were being evicted. dan hekate talks about it in this resonance radio show:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvLLtMOLY8I

 my fave memory is someone playing this wicked anticore track:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wai_ZEcUay4

 come to think of it there were K-related religious experiences galore at that time. molly's book documents a lot of the places, even if i remember them slightly differently. and of course we were travelling out to europe for teknival - for a few summers that was what summer meant. systems like metek, dstorm, lego, furious, foxtanz, total resistance, sound conspiracy, samovar, damage control all twatting out amazing music through electrical storms. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuxDiYqGqLs

 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; slovtek; poltek; the list goes on.. and there were english festies like tolworth and the travellers field at glastonbury (RiP) and some great quarry raves in wales. by this time, there were newer systems like headfuk and hekate. and panik. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RDm65exZ6s

whilst i was living i europe i carried on raving, going to parties in and around prague from people like cirkus alien and vosa, but of course it's not the same without your drug buddies and a scene which you are part of. by the time i ended up in NL i preferred hibernation. nowadays its hard to find a good party, they still exist of course. the kids are no doubt doing it different now but i still (2013) try to make NFA and pokora parties.

you might stop the party

you might stop the party 

god i need to relax.

sam's up there blagging her heart out to the copper saying it's her fault she wanted me to drive and i'm thinking christ i hope they dont find the pills stuffed down my shoe. the breathalyser came back positive - no real surprise there, i'm fucken pissed, can't hardly stand up, nearly fell over when the copper asked me to breathe into it, but the whole fucken point is that the pigs cleared us out the building and told us to fuck off.

i know i'm pissed so i tells 'em and they dont care they're all moody at being up so late past their beddybyes and then they start waving their penis-substitutes about and growling so i says ok ok i'll drive the van but i'm pissed alright and they don't care and then we go fifty metres down the road and this fresh-faced traffic cop pulls me over and tells me he had reason to believe im driving under the influence.

christ he ain't half right there, i'm a pharmaceutical guinea pig - like the t-shirt says, testing in progress. if i'm selling pills i gotta take a couple to be a good advert and if i'm pilling i'll have a drink too. why not? i know my limits. someone shoved a tab down my throat and if i get offered k i'll do it, why not, it's no crime. these stupid wankers are the dangerous ones stopping parties and turfing out all these young aggressive moody drugged up punks with nothing to do except a bit of good old-fashioned english vandalism. i can hear them now doing a bus stop. the cop looks round a little nervous and holds onto his radio for support. sam is really bending his ear, he looks worn out and then i see some hoodies turn the corner up ahead.

tension mounts, neck hairs prickle. someone throws a bottle. the glass smashes beautifully on the rain smeared tarmac. just like we're in the movies. the cop bricks it. properly shits himself. to be honest, i would too, it's all about the numbers. so he's back in his car and his mate's reversing fucking fast and that just gets the boys excited so they're chucking bottles, rocks, anything which lifts and sam's got her arms around me laughing and kissing my neck. phew. we started a mini-riot.

i guess the drink drive charge gets dropped then. what next? the punks drift past us aimlessly and sam chews on her favourite thumb. there's another party but it's in acton and we're in hackney wick and not really in a state to get there. i've had enough rozzers for a week already and sam don't drive. crapper turns up and shoots the shit for a bit. he offers to drive but he's off his head too. he says he's not. but he is. he leans against the car and gabbles happily, the streetlights bathing him in a warm amber glow. maybe these pills are alright. i sell a couple to the bored punters still milling about and then i think why not a bit of music, so we crank up the speakers and play an old headfuk mixtape. that wibbles evryone out and i sit on top of the car, a little bit cold but enjoying the weirdness of this saturday.

someone says mainline are gonna turn back on, but i doubt it, they wouldn't risk their rig after a noise abatement. and if they did, we'd hear them anyway. this whole area is one dead wasteland. i wonder who complained about the noise. maybe the pigs made it up. i came up here in the day once, strange to see all these normal people walking past raved up warehouses and burnt out factories. i guess some of them are still functioning. it's a little bit sad all this decline and fall, but the tekno makes the desolation special. i feel a bit emotional. must be the pills.

they're beautiful in their own way all these roads - carpenters, roach, dace. they'll get developed soon, they have to, hackney is on the up, maybe a railway line will pass though here or yuppie conversions will regenerate the area. and in some ways that's good, it gives new life to a dead zone although i don't see why rich people should just come in and 'civilise' an area when most council housing is falling down.

shit i seem to be getting more lucid again, that ain't good. i gobble a few more grinners and wonder where sam's got to. she comes back with dom, he's in a bit of a state. no surprise there. seems like some cunt's nicked his jacket and dom can't remember where he lost it. he always does this. but then this big skinhead comes over and gives him the jacket back, says he saw him drop it round the corner a minute ago. dom's pretty screwed by this information and it makes me laugh watching the gears in his brain slowly turning. sam's all stoked to see people being nice to each other and she stands there giving me the wink until i get the hint and give the big bastard some gurners. now he's smiling too. everyone's happy except me, im thinking about profit margins although i know the uncomfortable truth is i've boshed too many myself to care. it's gonna be one of those weekends, if only we could get home. i wanna be in my nice warm bed, all cosy and snuggled up to sam.

she's giving me a dirty look now, i hate the way she can see straight through me. could be worse though. dom grumbles off, bouncing off lamp-posts and there's more business to be had, looks like most people can be fucked to try to get to acton. i still can't be arsed, so i lock up the car and pull sam off towards this building i saw a few weeks ago. it's over by the canal and i think it's worth exploring. sure enough, the gate is hanging off its hinges and we saunter in, a little bit afraid because there's not much light, then we find the stairwell and gain our confidence as we climb. we chase each other up whooping and banging on locked metal doors. the door to the roof has a crappy padlock on it, a few kicks and we spill out into the night sky, stars hanging around us and london spreading her legs like a dirty bitch.

there's the telecom towers and tower blocks in camden. over there is probably stratford. sam thinks she sees her uni but im not convinced. she's swinging her arms about and leaning into me, singing into my eyes. we kiss and it feels great. sometimes i think i'm doing all right. we find an airconditioning vent to perch on, shielded from the wind by the lift shaft. we talk about what were gonna do in our new squat. sam has big plans for the living room. she's thinking cushions and drapes, i'm saying it all sounds very nice, but we'll see what the dumpster god provides coz i'm fucked if i'm spending money on it.

then we start talking about benny, he's this guy we know who topped himself a few weeks back. took lots of acid and they found him swinging from a rope in his room. shame really, nice guy, little bit weird, too quiet, but nice, real nice. its fucked us up more than we thought. sam cries a bit, i stroke her hair and think of things to say but don't say them. and then suddenly it's dawn. the sun just popped up and its six thirty already. i love dawn's early light. i'm staring at bleached out concrete babylon, shame we don't have no music up here. so that was it. goodbye 98. start the year as you mean to go on so they say. well, i'm already draining the last of the water on two more gurners. doubledrop is the way forwards.

we are the future.

i stand tall before london and piss onto the road below.

Waterden Road

First party Waterden Road

17.4.99
Review taken from http://www.partyvibe.org/free-parties/fpreportk.html

Back again to Hackney Wick, a mother of an industrial estate in East London. Down past an array of trucks and after the usual hassle at the door (parties in London are never free or just donation) we're in. Now, I'm quite excited about this party because in the main room is Bedlam, with live sets promised from 69db, Crystal Distortion and les Boucles Etranges, who are all making amazing records at the moment but never seem to venture across from France.

Unfortunately I was to be disappointed. There was no stuff up saying who was playing when and no-one I asked seemed to have much idea. I was hoping to hear some teknival sounds but what seemed to be going on was a sort of extended jamming session over the DJ which meant the overall music was cluttered and only good when the DJ played a good track, which wasn't often because he/she was trying to play looping repetitive stuff so stuff could be added over the top. A case of too many cooks perhaps.

Another downer was the rig which was set up in Spiral style to be as loud as possible, which in a long, thin, low-ceilinged room with a speaker stack only at the front led to quite a bad amount of distortion (although also some interesting sub bass sensations). The toilets in the corner of the room were filled to overflowing which is pretty normal, but here they were feeding a big puddle which you had to walk through to get downstairs, so the piss got spread all around the floors and the stairs were dripping.

Downstairs we had a dub system, Ooops playing crisp jungle, but I didn't stay there long, and either side of Ooops two fluoro trancey rigs. These were Aardvark and Schpank. The latter redeemed itself in the morning by setting up a huge inflatable floor of a bouncy castle type thing which filled their room. It was quite surreal to witness tanked up ravers cavorting around on this big green air cushion, covered in piss from the leaking toilets. Upstairs Mainline had a good-looking set up and played some cool distorted gabba, but were at a severe disadvantage in that their space smelt of rancid butter. The reason being that it had once been filled with huge food processing machines, and I've heard since that the building as a whole was used as an abattoir.

This was an alright party but it promised so much more, so it was a shame it didn't deliver. The atmosphere was never that good either, since it felt slightly empty and there seemed to be an air of people standing around waiting for everything to kick in. Or maybe that's just because I was in that sort of mood, it's hard to say. We left at about midday with the music lapsing into super muffled syncopated drum and bass, and got trapped in the world's most horrible car boot sale next door. And then the pub.

Ed