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.

UKTEKLOL

In 2025, all the clips seem to be gone - it was a cyclist normie with a go pro unexpectedly hitting a party on the Downs near Brighton in the morning :)

310514

Guardian - Illegal raves: social media messages bring in a new generation of partygoers

Fairly shit Guardian article:

It's after midnight in a repossessed college building in east London. Hundreds of ravers in their early 20s shuffle in front of a wall of speakers, cutting shapes to heavy drum 'n' bass as an MC raps. Upstairs, a queue snakes away from a small table, where a man is selling balloons for a pound. A girl buys one and bounces back to the dancefloor, sucking on its nitrous oxide – laughing gas – before passing it to her friend. For the next 36 hours, the narrow road outside is clogged with vans, cars and taxis arriving and departing. About 1,000-1,500 people come and go until a pipe is broken, the floor floods, and the Valentine's Squatters Fancy-Dress Ball comes to an abrupt end.

Yes, illegal raves – those secret warehouse parties so synonymous with baggy jeans and luminous whistles – are back.

Oscar, 35, runs a cleaning company. Nick, 24, works as a marketing consultant in the defence industry, having recently left a multinational investment bank. Both are part of a new school of rave promoters who use Facebook rather than flyers to organise their free parties. Crews are popping up all over the country. Some of those Oscar works with, he tells me, learned the trade from their parents, first-wave rave promoters.

Facebook pages used by Nick and Oscar's crew have about 10,000 users. Nick handles the lineups – assessing Soundcloud samples sent in by those wanting to play the parties – and writes the online promotional text. Facebook replies are a reliable gauge for how many beers or balloons of nitrous oxide they need to buy to sell to the punters. "Are we over 2,000 [RSVPs] yet?" he asks Oscar as they plan another Project X free party. "I invited 300 more earlier today."

Scores of other crews operate in the city, with the new rave economy built on failed mortgages. Parties often take place in properties on which the banks have foreclosed, and that lie derelict. Perfect homes in which to set up quickly, party, and leave. "Everyone wants to get in on the rave scene lately," agrees Oscar. "Looking at how relaxed the police are about it, I sense there's something coming round. Another law banning squatting, maybe."


 Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris for The Guardian. Frantzesco Kangaris for The Guardian
Just as before, an air of moral threat hangs over the rave scene. In December, a teenager was stabbed and a police officer injured at Oscar's Santa Stomp party in Wapping, with local politicians calling for the party sites to be secured against "troublemakers". Even then, social media played its part. "[The teenager] recovered well and we caught the little bastard who did it, but it cast a black cloud over our parties," says Oscar. How was the culprit caught? "I had 2,500 people here, so we got on the net and we found a picture of him. We took it to the hospital and the kid recognised him, so the cops took it over from there."

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I first talk to Oscar and Nick while they're in the process of stepping up their business by investing in their own soundsystem. We drive to a garage in Croydon packed with another crew's gear, where the pair shop around for two new "scoops" (speakers) and an amp. "We're a network – we know each other all over the country. In a couple of weeks we've got someone down from Nottingham playing our party," Oscar says. It's international, too. "We're doing France in March."

No one's in this to get rich. "I've put more money in than I got out," Oscar says. It cost him about £7,000 to put together a new rig – 8,000-watt speakers, Technics turntables, CDJ consoles, mixers, lasers and lights and a rack of festival-grade amps – and that's before you start adding up the runaround money he needs for fuel, maintenance and to pay squatters for location tips. He keeps in touch with groups of drifters who scout London for suitable buildings (known as "goers"). They get in as homeless residents, inform the police of their new abode, and Oscar starts planning a party in the building that is notionally their home. Once the rigs are in place, a voicemail is recorded on a phone number revealing the location. The phone number is listed on their Facebook pages. Then the doors open. By the time the case against the original squatters comes to court and bailiffs are appointed to evict, it can be weeks since the building served its purpose as a party venue.

Like Oscar and Nick, most promoters have day jobs and are in the scene because they're ravers. Their only reliable source of income from parties is from door fees and selling balloons of nitrous oxide. Given that popular DJs need to be paid at least a token sum and that security companies charge £10 an hour for every bouncer, there's little profit to be made.

The raves are called "free parties" not because they don't charge for tickets, but because they're free from restrictions. Nobody worries about smoking or taking drugs. "We let you do whatever you want," says Nick. "Security only throws out those who act aggressively. You'll get checked for glass and weapons. Otherwise, you're totally free."

Any dealing is usually done by small-fry freelancers who generally pay their way in with some of their goods. More serious drug pushers tend not to be involved – the millions of pounds generated by dealing at the 90s raves ended up attracting the attention of the police, and in turn killed the scene. The idea, says Oscar, is that "some people need to let their hair down properly. Down here we live first by the laws of the land and then by the government – there's a difference." The police seem to be fully aware of this ethos and relatively comfortable with it: at one party I go to, in Beckton, east London, police arrive only to leave after handing out flyers about the dangers of drugs.

At the first party I go to, in a warehouse in Silvertown there's no headline DJ – he's been poached by a rival outfit – and Oscar demonstrates his own unique way of dealing with fire alarms. "It's crying of thirst," he says, taking the screeching object into the bathroom to run it under a tap. The screeching stops. "There you go. A little common sense never goes amiss."

At 10, before the event has begun, there's a cry of "Old Bill!" and two plainclothes officers come in. Oscar makes an announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, the police are here to have a look. Please stay calm." They leave after five minutes, seemingly content, and sound-testing resumes. At 11, there's a power failure and both rigs go down. An engineer in wellies scrambles between the two systems and the main electric panel, finally getting it up and running until the party powers down around 7am.

"See what a little Facebook post does," Oscar says the next week, at the end of another party, handing me a beer in the back of his van. About 150 people had turned up to a food-processing plant in Stratford, on just six hours' notice, the lights silhouetting the dancers against stainless steel walls: moving shadows in purple and green. The event had a charitable cause: door fees (£5) were donated to a family who had recently suffered a death. "We need to clean up the brand a little," Oscar remarked.

Although illegal raves have been an incubator for the electronic music and dance scenes – Wiley and the Roll Deep crew reportedly debuted their acts at raves – you won't hear many artists who've made the crossover to the mainstream talking about it. Media coverage of the scene has been so toxic for so long that few will admit to a connection (even though some name artists do still appear for free at squat parties). Some overground outfits openly support the movement, among them the award-winning radio stations Freek FM (which plays house and garage) and Kool London (drum'n'bass). Tune into Freek and you can hear DJ Madness calling out the party lines for the next squat bash. But that's pretty much where it stops.

So what keeps those on the scene involved, weekend after weekend, hauling tons of equipment though warehouses, factories and institutional buildings? "It's not about the drugs or the money now," Nick says. Instead, it seems to be the excitement of being part of Britain's cultural underground. "Rigs on standby! Call the usual lines after 9pm for location. See you by the stacks," reads a note saved on his phone, ready to be broadcast every weekend.

Names have been changed at the request of the participants

NYE 2013

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]

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.

rave reports 2004=2006

some bbc reports:

 Police break up illegal city rave BBC News 19 June, 2004 

 Police in Devon broke up an illegal rave on Saturday morning. Officers were called to an empty unit at the Marsh Barton Trading Estate at Exeter where they found about 30 people and a large sound system. Rave barriers extended for Live 8 BBC News 9 June, 2005 Hundreds of people invaded Smeatharpe in 2002. Barriers will be put up for longer on an East Devon airfield amid fears people could decide to hold illegal raves to coincide with Live8. The barriers have been put up by police at Smeatharpe annually since about a thousand people invaded the site three years ago. Police said they have no specific intelligence about plans for a rave at Smeatharpe this summer. The South West is considered to be especially vulnerable to illegal raves.

 Exclusion zone around rave site BBC News 21 June, 2005

 An exclusion zone is being set up around a South West airfield to stop illegal raves. Devon and Cornwall Police have been granted powers under the public order act to arrest anyone organising unauthorised events. The zone covers a five-mile radius around the Smeatharpe aerodrome in east Devon from 23 June to 27 June. Barriers around Smeatharpe have been erected annually since 1,000 people invaded the site three years ago. Insp Norman Amey said the force had invested time and effort in preventing the airfield being used as a site for an illegal rave.

 Rave festival organisers warned BBC News 6 March 2006

Festival promoters have been warned by police they risk prosecution if they organise illegal raves over the summer. The Wiltshire, Avon and Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, Gloucestershire and Dorset police forces are pooling intelligence to target organisers. Officers believe many people will be attracted to the area for the solstice but, as the Glastonbury festival is rested, will look for other events. The public were also being encouraged to report suspicious activity to them. Police said they would liaise with English Heritage and other agencies during the solstice period to ensure the environment around Stonehenge is protected from unlawful activities. Arrests follow weekend-long rave BBC News 30 May 2006 Police have arrested eight people following an illegal rave at a common in north Cornwall. About 2,000 people descended on Davidstow Common, near Camelford, on Saturday night for the event. A police cordon remained in place around the site on Tuesday where about 50 cars were still parked. Eight people were arrested on offences including drink driving and suspected possession of Class A drugs. Four people were taken into police custody. Officers went to the common after receiving reports of a large number of vehicles driving on to it. They said an "extremely well-planned" illegal rave had been set up, including stages containing sound systems. A cordon was placed around the site to stop further vehicles and people from entering. Residents said they were worried about the safety of livestock and property. A 61-year-old Hertfordshire man and a 23-year-old man were arrested on suspicion of organising or managing unlicensed public entertainment.

Dutchtek Eemshaven

Dutch tek Eemshaven Groningen August 2000

Review from http://www.partyvibe.org/free-parties/fpreportabq.html

Little did I know on Thursday evening, that this trip to Holland would be a lost weekend involving a 1000 road miles, dykes and plenty of the Dutch greenery. Fuelled by adrenaline, we made our way to the coastal port of Dover, to catch the EuroTunnel over to Calais. A top blag resulted in our car being trained over to France for free.

Early Friday morning, and were on our way up to Amsterdam, via a maze of motorways. After 3-4 hours driving, we find a place to dump the car, and walk into the city centre. Various coffee shops entertain our needs - Global Chillage, Greenhouse Effect, and The 222. Spending the night in the city, a dodgy hostel was found for our much needed rest.

Saturday morning comes around, and we head off to meet friends at Central Station. In the afternoon, the car parking place is found again, and the journey to the north continues. A 10 mile dyke across the sea, carries a dual carriageway. We're all impressed - quite a feat of engineering! We travel across it and carry on our way to Groningen.

Getting to Groningen, petrol is needed. While wandering around the fuel stop, I start talking to a random bloke, who turns out to be from the Czech Republic ...we confirm where the party is... Emmshaven. Not too far away now.

Right at the far northern tip of Holland, we find Emmshaven. and the first thing we see is....wind turbines. Hundreds of them, all lined up along the coastline. Now to find the party. We drive around for a bit, before stopping and asking someone. They point us in the right direction....

Driving along a wind-turbined lined road, we spot activity up ahead. Cars, trucks, vans, tents and soundsystems have been put into the field next to the road. Parking up, we stumble out. It's about 8pm on Saturday evening, the sun is going down leaving the sky with red streak's. Climbing onto the man-made sea defence mounds, we have a great view of the party on one side, and the sea with the beautiful sunset on the other. People from all over Europe have travelled up to this remote area of Holland - It's a long way to drive, but well worth the journey!

A mismatch of beats form a lovely background noise, emitting from the 30+ soundsystems in attendance. Desert Storm, have come all the way from the Czech Tek with their huge trucks. They have an impressive setup with pounding techno coming from their large stack of speakers. English systems include, Technosense from Bristol/Bournemouth, who have brought with them a big marquee to house their system. Panik from London, had also brought up their system...but weren't as quite as prepared as some of the other systems...tarpaulin covered speakers! They played some good tunes, and I hung around their system for most of the night.

I didn't catch most of the other systems names, but the final list from the net includes...Plexat, AA, Teknomads, OHM, Dstruct all from Holland.... KDU, Technotice, Teknoasfuk, Kamikaze, Panik, Desert Storm all from the UK.... Tboost, TMLP, Kayhass, TTC all from France...... and Acid Drops from Italy.... loads more systems were there, but it's not easy knowing what's going on when your there!

At night, the site was a totally different place to the daytime. Standing on the sea defences, gave a great view of the flashing lights coming from all the systems. A couple of Spotlights lit up one or two of the wind turbines, making them visible for miles. As the night, turns back into morning, the sun brings warmth, and the sky becomes extremely clear.

We have to make a move, around noon. As it's a long way back to the UK. We say out goodbyes, and head back to Groningen. We stop off in Amsterdam for a few hours, before heading all the way back to Calais. My navigator passengers fall asleep on me, which results in me getting lost in Belgium. After a while we're soon back the right track to the Channel Tunnel.... few hours later and I'm sitting at home. Half a joint, and I pass out. Definitely Fear and Loathing in Holland!!

Bugs

Mushroom Hampshire

Mushroom Hampshire

24/4/99
Review taken from http://www.partyvibe.org/free-parties/fpreporti.html

We head off down the motorway from Southampton towards the venue, an abandoned tunnel which is apparently a mile and a half long. Sounds cool. Unfortunately, we see the first convoy coming back, having been hassled by the police - apparently some spanner's put the tunnel on a flyer. DOH !

After a quick debate a picnic site is decided upon in Forestry Commission land. We set the system up with a plane circling above. It's midnight - surely the fuzz hasn't hired a plane to track us down ? The change in site obviously affects the numbers, but by two o'clock there's about a hundred people dancing, chatting and sitting by the fire. There were going to be two systems, but it all gets rolled into one. The music is well-mixed bubbly trance, until some dark drum n bass welcomes in the dawn. Everyone seems happy to be hearing decent music in the great outdoors, so there's a good vibe. It all gets a bit hazy around this point but I do remember seeing some fire breathing.

Soon afterwards, the coppers turn up citing thirty complaints from nearby residents which seems unlikely because we're in a forest. Two guys have turned up from their houses, to be fair, but they both seem more interested than pissed off at people having fun under their own steam. The fact that the party was going to be miles away from anything in tunnel before it was busted doosn't seem to be taken into consideration.We video the police videoing us and get the dbs tested for free.

The system gets packed away and the site is left just as clean as when we arrived. All in all this was a good little party. A couple extra degrees of temperature would have been nice, but they'll come. Nice one Mushroom.

Ed

Brick Lane Window Party

Brick Lane Window Party

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

3/4/99

The party was near Aldgate East in a huge blue and white office block. Loads of people are arriving as we turn up around midnight and boom-boom-boom is coming from inside, so in we go.
Oh shit, this place is huge. Over something like 10 floors, there were rooms and rooms of sound systems. I lost count of how many there were, but it was much more than the 6 promised. There was everything from Gabba to that lovely "Housey London" sound, I still don't know this is really called.

The night was spent either dancing myself silly or wandering around this huge building, constantly finding more and more new areas. Fair to say I was getting as trashed as the building was.

One thing was clear though, the event was popular, massively popular. Despite there being no advertising and the phone lines not opening 'till 10.00pm, I would say at a guess at least 5000 people turned up, maybe a lot more. The reason for the popularity is simple, no hassles. This was free land, go mad in an empty office block, have fun.

I continued my wanderings down a second staircase, through the heating plant and into a huge underground car park and a room with the most beautiful sounds.

Back up the stairs to the first floor and a small area with a PA and a guy with a CD, MD and DAT arrangement playing "home made" music of various types. This guy looked like a real thug, huge he was with deep set eyes. He seemed to know his music though and was treating the CDs with utmost care. Now I began to see the strength of the underground in London, the brilliance of the music and the two little figures held stiff against the blandness of commercialism.

More rooms later I find Doug, a friend over from the US and experiencing his first squat rave, who seems to have had an interesting time. I was worried as to how he would feel about all of this, certainly it was quite unlike anything he had experienced in the US. He seemed happy enough and we went upstairs together to yet another room I hadn't found yet on the top floor.

This room was huge. It was daylight by now (had been for some time) and the large "glass wall" windows let the light flood in to show a somewhat trashed open plan office room full of trashed people. After dancing for some time I took a break and sat down for a chill.

As we were talking some geezer, totally off his head, runs over to me, slaps me (gently) on the head and runs away. I didn't think too much of it, but a bit later he does it again to someone else. I'm watching him as he is clearly going over the top, rolling around on the floor and then running around the room. Suddenly, he runs toward me again, but slightly to my left, and smashes into one of the large glass windows which shatters. He seems OK though and goes back to his insane running around. A group of people are concerned about him however, and we talk about what to do. Some of them want to call the police and stop the party before he hurts himself. I thought we should take him downstairs to somewhere nearer ground level and where its quieter.

Before we can come to a conclusion though, he comes running from the crowd again. I see him and I can tell from his eyes, this is it. I try and grab him but fail, then run with all my speed behind him shouting "stop him, stop him", but he reaches the window and dives head first at it.

Fuck

Glass smashes as he goes out the window with a sound I will never forget, but someone catches his feet at the last minute and pulls him back in, we're 6 floors up remember. He gets up and runs again, but this time there is a lot of blood. I catch him and wrestle him to the ground and with the help of about six other people, we apply first aid.

This was serious, and I had wondered what would happen in a place like this if there was an emergency, now I was going to find out. Someone with a mobile phoned 999. The police were there in minutes, followed by the medics.

The guy was out of there very quickly and off to hospital, I doubt he would have had faster attention in a legal place. Police re-enforcements turned up but stayed outside. I was left there, covered in blood and very shaken but with a strange feeling of having just saved someones' life. I've never done that before.

It's also worth mentioning the way others reacted. A girl knew more about applying the pressure pad than I did, someone else checked carefully for glass fragments, someone else phoned the police and directed them to the scene, others helped restrain him. No-one got in the way, everyone helped. The police, it has to be said, were also wonderful, they were calm and polite and accepted help until they were able to take full control.

The bloke was tripping on acid, rather too much acid.

Afterwards me and Doug went up to the roof and I became a lump of jelly. We left the party (it was around midday) and went to have a cup of tea.

There is a happy ending to the story, the person concerned made a full recovery and is still very much with us, if a little shaken by the experience, but it was an unfortunate end to what had been a really good party.

Derek

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

AA Rotterdam

6/3/99

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

The location was in the harbours of Rotterdam. It looked like an abandoned factory, with trash all over the floor, and the roof was leaking, but it breathed just the right atmosphere for the parties we want to throw. We didn't squat the building because it just was too fucked up, and we couldn't block all entrances. Glad that cops didn't show up, well they did once, but by surprise they were only interested in the building next to ours. Later it occurred that some moron (a fool from Nijmegen) had broken in... I mean, you have to be a fucking airhead AND asshole when you don't understand that this can cause us trouble. Cybx 010 wanted to throw a party in the same building as well this weekend, but of course, cops prevented this, simply because of this silly burglary.

Back to the party. We had a 3.5 kw soundsystem, with massive bassbins. It sounded like the roof was going up and down. Dj's spinning Chris, Dave, Ratski, Querin, Sed, and Sjors. We also had a 2.5 hour (!!) liveset by Groove Wreckaz. It was original, and hard, up to 200 bpm. The plan was to do a 1 hour set only, but since no DJ showed up, they where forced to go on, and on, and on .. Last but not least we had a videoprojection taken care by Cedi of Cybx 010. All this together, and the fact that the atmosphere was perfect, made this once again, a cool party. We stopped about 19:00 and at that time 40 people where still present nicely sitting around a campfire (inside the building), we kind of felt sad to stop the music, and felt like we could go on for another day. But maybe, our next party will be a 48 hour party. We want to keep a healthy network, so again, no flyers, which hopefully causes to get rid of those morons who started trashing at the infamous Voorburg-party, by AA, K9 and Plexat.

Check your heads, don't let tekno get spoiled... For some pictures and movies, check out http://user.exit.de/tekno

Henry

NYE 1998/1999 reviews

Stratford NYE ^^^^^party * report * NYE * 1999 ^^^^

Pissed up to the gills, the tekno revellers came into Stratford (East London) in a constant stream of minicabs. We got there about two, had the usual "wot ? you're telling me five quid ?" argument and then we were in. The number of systems varied from twelve to fifteen depending on who you spoke to. I saw ten, but then I couldn't see.

There appeared to be four floors, all equally huge, all containing at least two systems each side of protruding corners. The music was uniformly normal in its London free partyness -- ie crap fast techno, reasonably rough jungle, and acid tekno. No Spiral/Network/French stuff was to be heard unfortunately, although that doesn't mean there wasn't any, but then I very rarely hear any quality music in England nowadays.

The warehouse was huge but didn't have any water, which would've been ok except that ALL THE BARS ran out about nine, so we left at ten, which was a shame coz it would've been nice to stay. This was nowhere near as cool a venue as last year, Tottenham, but then Tottenham was something I'll be telling me grandchildren about ("mum - grandad's gurning again"). The people came and the people partied - the take on the door must have been huge and I hope it fell into the right hands. All in all, a pretty good one, especially judging by the size of the headache I had when I finally got home. With another party in a pub and then a party in an old nightclub last Sat, Stratford's certainly basing a firm claim for taking the crown of "tekno central 1999".

mujinga





We (Mutant Pollutant) did the United Systems party in London, one of the best free parties I've been to in years! It was in an old office block. The building was huge, with 4 levels and around 15 sound systems playing eveything from trance to reggae, there were 4 on the level we were on. There was no trouble from the coppers either, there were quite a few outside but they never tried to get in. We had our loudest system so far and caned it all night resulting in fucking up an amp, shorting out a mid range speaker and setting fire to a bassbin (there's a huge hole in the cone and it's covered in water now!) but it was worth it. We shut down about 1pm and then came the worst part, lugging all our stuff up and down stairs whilst being completely knackered. This was the first United Systems party we'd done and they seem really well organised, everything thought out in advance like separate entrances for sound systems and party goers so no one got in the way of the equipment being carried in, people on the all the doors that were open so they could shut up quick if the coppers tried to get in, we even got a little bit of money off the door and they'd never heard of us before! All in all it was an excellent party but I doubt if we'll being doing loads in London this year, after all we've got to help keep the vibe alive in this area!

P.Remix - http://www.partyvibe.org/free-parties/fpreport7.html