Britain | The new ravers

Repetitive beats

Rave music is back—but the underground has gone mainstream

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

AS PASSAGES in Britain’s statute books go, Section 63 (1)(b) of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act is one of the odder ones. It gives police officers the power to remove people from events at which music “wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” is being played. The phrase was a draconian attempt to define and derail the illegal raves that first appeared in 1988 in post-industrial parts of London and Manchester, where house music from Detroit and Chicago collided with ecstasy pills from the Netherlands. DJs had started playing frenetic, electronic music at illegal bacchanalia in wastelands and derelict warehouses, culminating in the 25,000-strong crowd at the Castlemorton Common Festival in May 1992. Moral panic, a heavy-handed police crackdown and ultimately the 1994 law followed: British rave, it seemed, was over.

In fact, it was merely chilling. In recent years three trends, in music, venues, and clubbing culture, have merged to revive it.

First, the music is back. The early-1990s raves died out, but they left a legacy: established radio stations began to air tracks by DJs and other underground artists. The artist “Judge Jules” personified the shift: at the start of the 1990s he was defending illicit raves before the police (hence his name); by the end of the decade he had a weekly slot on BBC Radio 1, Britain’s largest popular-music station. After a lull in the 2000s, when clubs and festivals turned back to guitar-playing bands, the jockeys and their synthesisers are once more in the ascendant. In June this year, for example, the album charts were topped by Disclosure, two brothers (aged 19 and 22) whose work evokes late-1980s ravers’ favourites.

Second, uninhabited buildings and fields throb to the once-vilified beats. Clive Martin, who writes for Vice, a culture magazine, explains that cash-strapped young Britons are rejecting the commercialisation of live music—tickets sold out months in advance, compulsory wristbands and pricey drinks—by organising spontaneous, hedonistic events reminiscent of the early 1990s. The habit grew out of “afterparties”: instead of staying out all night, clubbers consume their music (and poisons) at home or in other informal venues. Licences are rarely involved, drugs sometimes are—but the parties are small, self-regulating affairs compared with the raves of yore. “It’s raving, but more controlled,” says Greg Sawyer of Defected, an electronic label that hosts clubbing events.

Punters still enjoy the thrill. At the door of a boarded-up shop in east London a burly bouncer demands a password (sent to guests by text-message hours in advance, along with the address of the venue), seemingly unaware that the word is scrawled on a poster behind him. A dingy flight of stairs leads to a crowded basement where graffiti and wiring vein the walls, algorithmic neon shapes wheel and dart to thumping music, and a smoky fug of sweat and marijuana hangs in the air. Some people (the older ones) look the worse for wear, but the atmosphere is not threatening. “It’s really ravey!” yells the DJ proudly, a can of cheap lager in one hand.

But so, increasingly, are licensed music events—the third trend. Nowadays even large, commercial clubs like Fabric and the Ministry of Sound put underground DJs (rather than conventional bands) on stage. Social-media sites enable promoters to convene impromptu gigs. The rise of music festivals has further institutionalised the party-in-a-field. And some of the veterans of British rave’s heyday are leading the way. “Sasha”, for example, who started his career playing to hallucinogenic dance crowds in late-1980s Manchester, is now one of Britain’s most successful DJs at 43.

So raving is back, but in a calmer, more mainstream form. “The original rave culture was about defying the system; you don’t get that so much today,” says Mr Sawyer. The mass illegality and tabloid hysteria are gone; as a result, the authorities look more kindly on requests to hold events. In 2012 the government lifted restrictions on certain forms of spontaneous live entertainment. In some urban areas, councils actively welcome informal music performances—knowing that in their wake will follow the cafés, bars and yuppie flats that regenerate a place.

From the Teddy Boys to the Sex Pistols, British popular music history is full of examples of edgy outsiders who horrified the establishment, then, not much later, dominated it. Rave, it seems, has taken its place in that pantheon.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Repetitive beats"

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