The Party

 

first published in Link

thousands upon thousands of bubbles float through the room, colliding, 

popping on the heads of extravagantly decorated dancers, gusting gently 

above them in the breeze but the men and women coiling around each other 

in time to the rhythmic thump of the beat are too preoccupied to notice 

 

some have their eyes shut others smile you take another glance around and 

the mirrored walls only serve to magnify the decadence someone brushes 

against your thigh, when you turn they are gone, you feel a breath on 

your neck, now she is whispering into your ear words you can scarcely make 

out wait did she say there is nitrous oxide in the air conditioning? 

certainly the atmosphere is heavy, pregnant with expectation, pungent with 

incense, devil weed, jasmine, other odours whose names hang insistently on 

the tip of your tongue, just out of reach 

suddenly in the corner of the room, there is a commotion animal yells of 

pleasure or of pain, possibly both

peacock feathers are waving above the heads of the crowd and more bubbles 

cascade down from the ceiling 

you push towards where the noise is loudest sweaty bodies press against you 

and light hands sweep across your back

the music is quicker now, the relentless drumming augmented with a tinkling 

melody drilling its way into your brain

a brief silence, then the thump starts again, faster than ever

dancers catch themselves standing still, shake their heads with a glimmer of

a smile rotating their hips in outrageous gyrations, arms waving

 

up ahead is a mass of limbs, it's getting difficult to pass 

reluctantly you can feel your inhibitions being shed you start to press 

a little back against these lithe athletic bodies

on the left is a massive speaker, towering above you, twice your height, 

pumping out the irresistibly funky beat out of the corner of your eye, 

just for a second, you see it oozing the moo before your brain can begin 

to process what that means, two elves have attached themselves to your 

legs and begin to pump them up and down you want to fight but it seems so 

much easier to give up, give in, then you think of the cardinal's warning 

and with a wrench wipe the smile of your face. 

the elves know they are beaten 

for now  

a trapeze artiste in a dazzling emerald jumpsuit swings down from nowhere and 

whisks you off over the dancefloor the people below reach up and you trail 

your fingers over their outstretched palms 

free 

you cannot help but smile, the music is inside you now orders seem from another 

world one that is dead and forgotten here is life, energy, dance, movement 

swinging across the room you notice the mood man standing over to one one side, 

innocuous, wires coming out of his head his face is crinkled with concentration 

sweat beads on his brow and glistens in the strobelight 

a small frown and imperceptibly the music starts to change, its getting louder,

an addictive squiggle worming up from the mix, what's so wrong with a dance anyway? 

a tribal tom tom beat thuds to your stomach you throb with the music

like a reflex

the crowd bobs rhythmically, a sea of heads connected by invisible nets

 

fishing for what?

Teknival Tolworth

1-3 September 2000

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

Not many parties happening this weekend.....maybe this is due to the all weekend Teknival planned for London. Nothing this large has been done for a while in this country - and it certainly made headline news around the capital! Unfortunately the media has painted a rather dark picture of the event. We know the truth though!

Setting off in a small convoy, along the M3, M25 and then on the A3, we arrive within an hour of driving. Tolworth, SW London is the chosen site for the gathering. As we pull off the main road, and down an industrial estate road, cars ahead of us are full of blatant party people. Parking up outside a factory, we abandon the car, and head towards the thumping basslines down the road. Climbing over a huge mound of mud, and down the other steep side, we walk into a wasteland meadow.

Rigs-a-plenty. 15 at one count. Loads of soundsytems, so many that I didn't know the names of, but I managed to catch a few .....Colossus soundsystem in one corner. Huge rig, with a large marquee and large speakers....kicking out techno - with Nightstorm keeping 'em company. AKA with another huge white marquee, with video projections on the side of the tent - heavy gabba came out of the tent for most of the night. Evolution Soundsystem next to them had live trance PA's for part of the night. Headfuk, Panik and loads of other London squat party systems were dotted around the field as well. Near the main entrance into the field, the dub 'stage' had a live band playing out the side of a truck.

Unlike the Dutch Tek, heavy techno did not dominate the site. A variety of music emits from all corners of the field....dub, gabba, trance, techno, drum & bass and old skool....something for everyone. Plenty of people turn up to fuel the party.....2000-3000 people reports the paper....probably the only thing they reported accurately! I brought my car in for comfort - not many London clubs let you bring your cars up to the dancefloor!

The night soon passes into day.... the masses came and went. The site was still rocking when we left in the morning and the Teknival came to a final close on Monday. The police tried to disperse the site as soon as they heard about it on Friday night... but lack of manpower provided to be the problem for them. The media coverage has been quite widespread - front page of the Evening Standard. The Times had a column on it. Local TV news showed pictures of Sunday daytime dancing. The papers were reporting thousands of new age travellers turning up, when really the majority of the people attending were typical ravers. The papers also tried to use the litter factor to blacken the name of the party....knowing the way free parties work, I knew the site would be clear by the time the last people had left. Proof on the TV as well. The Evening Standard also mentioned a car being set alight - I didn't see or hear anything about this...

An interesting night, in deepest darkest London....don't believe everything you read in the papers...

Bugs

Read what the media had to say about the event!....

Evening Standard newspaper article - 04/09/00
Main article - 04/09/00 - from the Times
Follow up story - 05/09/00 - also from the Times
Teknival History from the Times! - 05/09/00
ITN news - 05/09/00

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