A history of radical club culture

#1

Would love to learn more about the history of radical club culture in you part of the world. What have been the venues, promoters, scenes, genres and other elements that have influenced how you think about club culture today?

#2

Hereā€™s a good documentary on the RoXY, arguably the most radical club in the history of Amsterdam:




#3

The scene in Stockholm.

Sweden had really strict laws, all bars closed at 1am, and you needed a license to dance in groups over something like 5 people. 1990 an illegal club, or what we call svartklubb (black club), started by a group of libertarians/neo-liberals called Tritnaha, which got really big, and because of it the closing hours changed to 3 am. Among the people running this club was Johan Norberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Norberg and Mats Hinze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mats_Hinze. It got closed down in 1993, and is now a mosque.

One of the people behind this club moved on and started a club called Docklands in 1995. A club that was strictly ā€œraveā€, and opened at 10 pm and closed at 10 am ā€“ they could do this because they didnā€™t serve any alcohol. Legally, they housed 600 people, but this was something they broke a lot, think the biggest I attended was probably 1000 people. And as the club broke a couple of laws, the club got raided several times, and thus appeared a lot in the news because of it, which led to quite a big hype. At one time, one of the left wing party leaders visited the club to hang with the cool kids, which was kinda ironic as the guy behind it was a libertarian.

The place itself had three floors; the main floor with the entrance and dance floor, second floor which was sort of a balcony looking over the dance floor, here you could find some couches and stuff. The smallest floor was the third which was just a chill out area. The place had been a shipyard before, so everything was made of metal and cement, and had a heavy industrial feeling over it.

Most of the big Swedish techno producers and DJs, Adam Beyer, Cari Lekebusch, Joel Mull, Thomas Krome, Jesper DahlbƤck, played there a couple of times a year. The genres that ruled the floor were techno and psy-trance.

Personally, my first time at Docklands was in early 1999. Thomas Krome and Mijk van Dijk were playing.

A news report about one of the raids.

From the last party in 2002.

Really shitty tune, but the video was shoot at Docklands.

#4

The hacienda. Manchester

#5
#6

Iā€™m originally from Italy. The European scene of raves and Teknivals of the '90s shaped my electronic music culture, at least in part.

ā€œTekno - Il respiro del mostroā€ is a good video documentary about this scene, with a focus on Italian tribes and crews.

English subs:

Spanish subs:

#7

Might reply in more detail later about labels and nights that have been influential for me personally, but for now I recommended some books on this kind of thing in another post.

Energy Flash particularly is really interesting for comparing different approaches and discussing how scenes are changed by musical & technological circumstance & things that are affecting the crowds like different drug habits & general social / political / material conditions. Particularly interesting on the need for scenes to have a populist element and make incursions into the territory of mass culture to be most effective (& also argues that a populist bent defines a lot of the best dance music).

Grime I think is a really interesting case (as a fan but relative outsider). Itā€™s been linked with social movement stuff recently (thinking mainly of #grime4corbyn & responses to Grenfell & Windrush disgraces in this country). It canā€™t help but be radical in that it represents the experience & viewpoints of working class ppl, immigrant communities, POC and all manner of ppl who are misrepresented & slandered in mainstream press & culture.

But at the same time a lot of it isnā€™t v ā€˜wokeā€™ on gender, sexuality etc., and there are a lot of neoliberal themes that are there in almost all culture made in the present historical moment. Itā€™s also got a bit of a flirtation with the major labels as markers of having ā€˜made itā€™, with a subsequent dilution, bastardisation or abandoning of the sound. Although it seems to go in cycles. The current approach is v DIY, but seems to tend more to individuals self publishing more than having independent labels or crews with a particular vision & quality control (this seems to be worse in the MC scene than for producers). I think this means a lot of stuff gets lost in the whirlwind of constant social media premieres etc. & the scene isnā€™t as connected as it cld be. Apparently it isnā€™t having as much impact on the road as it used to, the youth energy seems mostly to be in UK drill or hip-hop.

So I think there are a lot of lessons there in terms of challenges for any potential sonically or politically radical scene emerging in the current climate, particularly ones that want to make an impression on the mainstream in some way.

#8

Those are some very good points made. My ā€œproblemā€ is that Iā€™ve started going out in such a time and place, that radical club culture means or has the notions of the cultural / social alternative, in being as you said woke, but on the other hand, talking with others older than me and working in a specific place, radical club culture are for them punk and the start of electronic, where these two were seen as radical because of the sound and have been connected (so strongly) with radical culture/social ideas only in retrospective.

On top of that:
[https://norient.com/blog/ex-yu-electronic-music/] I highly recommend this, as it is a nice intro to 5 bigger compilations, and it goes from weirdo disco to highly noisy EBM.

Second is a lil documentary on what was called FV Disko, a club under student dorms in Ljubljana in the 80s and was the only place that was truly DIY, alternative music coupled with performance, art and theatre that the politics knew of but ignored.

I havenā€™t seen this yet, but it shows the most famous electronic club, Ambasada Gavioli which was closed for good just this year. Itā€™s a legend because of the special architecture and because people from Austria & Italy came to party, kinda a little hedonistic heaven for weekends, but the program was quite repetitive in the end years.

#9

On that note ā€œ24 hours party people ā€œ is a must see

#10

A good article on Berghain.

#11

Great read! Have been a fan of texan elecro for too long and minto is the homie.

In the late 00s there were the last vestiges of a vital DIY loft dance scene here in Brooklyn but now itā€™s all gone clubs.

#12

Oh, and if we talking about scenesā€¦letā€™s be sure to mention big daddy eno gets his place:

https://www.wired.com/2008/06/scenius-or-comm/

martin clark did a solid piece back in 2011 on the fracturing post-dubstep scene:

working on a piece on this rn so sure will have more to share at some point:)

#13

I agree this is a good (*) article on Berghain, which is not obvious - so many superficial articles about that club.

(*) except where it claims that itā€™s possible for ā€œclubbers to speak to each other on the dance floor without shoutingā€ā€¦but maybe itā€™s just me!

#14

I donā€™t know I also have the memory of talking to my friend on the dance floor without shouting too much and yet the music seemed at the perfect volume