rave
Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhemFriday, 04 July 2025
MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown rings. He looks peaky.“Why?” I enquire. Sweat nodules down my face, my body, everywhere. So saline-intense it leaves powdery... Read more... |
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club OrthodonticsFriday, 13 June 2025
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which I ended up putting on promotional badges: “BASS CULTURE IS FOLK CULTURE”. It referred to the way riffs, refrains... Read more... |
Fat Dog, Chalk, Brighton review - a frenetic techno-rock juggernautSaturday, 15 February 2025
Ro first saw Fat Dog, before anyone had heard of them, at the Windmill in Brixton in front of a crowd of about 25 people. Their manic energy blew her head off. Vanessa and Al K first caught Fat Dog at the Rockaway Beach Weekender in Bognor Regis... Read more... |
Album: ALT BLK ERA - Rave ImmortalSaturday, 25 January 2025
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic... Read more... |
Moby, O2 review - ebullient night of rave'n'rock'n'Johnny CashFriday, 20 September 2024
Sometimes a gig suddenly and completely elevates. Such is the case tonight when Moby, on his first UK tour in 12 years, plays “Extreme Ways”, his 2002 anthem for hedonism and its desperate consequences. What has been an adequately entertaining night... Read more... |
Album: Jamie xx - In WavesThursday, 19 September 2024
There’s been a lot of early 90s rave aesthetics in popular culture lately, but an awful lot of it has been at the level of signifiers. Fila, Stüssy, Air Max 90s, smiley faces, sirens, rewinds, crowd noises, hop in a Ford Cortina, tribes coming... Read more... |
Album: Floating Points - CascadeFriday, 13 September 2024
I made a terrible mistake when I first got this LP: I played it on my laptop speakers. That’s not the straight up foolishness you might think, mind – after downloading something for review I’ll often play it quietly in the background while I catch... Read more... |
We Out Here Festival 2024 review - generations of weirdness and wonderSunday, 25 August 2024
I won’t give it loads about the atmosphere and attendees at We Out Here – suffice to say that in its fifth edition, it has maintained all the strengths I mentioned last year, with the added benefit of slicker-operating infrastructure having ironed... Read more... |
Stowaway Festival, Buckinghamshire review - old ravers and their kids get on oneWednesday, 21 August 2024
The UK festival scene has been going through a bit of a difficult time in the last couple of years, with a number of events closing down due to financial problems. This has obviously hit the “boutique” end of the marketing hardest, with several... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2024: A Sunlit Epic of Music, Madness, Chaos and CultureThursday, 04 July 2024
SUNDAY 30th June 2024It’s late. But not really. Not by the standards of this place. Photographer Finetime and I are in Block9 in the South-East Corner. The so-called “naughty corner”. We take turns juggernauting quomble off a pinecone. Finetime’s... Read more... |
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopperMonday, 13 May 2024
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok, 1989), boasts a whopping guitar riff. Keys-player Adam Mole, his ushanka cap’s ear-covers flapping, leaps onto his seat, waves his synth aloft. Frontmen... Read more... |
Album: Justice - HyperdramaSaturday, 27 April 2024
Justice are a couple of super-suave rock star analogues. Leathers and aviators, yes, but with a very Parisian insouciance. Their music is the same. It has a rocker-friendly je-ne-sais-quoi, but air-brushed with the glitzy sci-fi futurism one might... Read more... |
- 1 of 10
- ››
