Past, present and future sounds of London
Jim Ottewill on the evolution and preservation of club culture
Jim Ottewill is a freelance music journalist who has written for the likes of Mixmag, FACT and Resident Advisor. His first book, Out of Space - How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture is a hedonistic hike through the electronic music scene from the 1990s to today, via the clubs, festivals, pirate radio stations and sound systems that helped it flourish and grow.
We spoke to Jim about what makes London’s club scene unique, how the culture has shifted and morphed in recent years; and how these vital spaces might survive and even thrive in the years to come.
If you want more, Jim is hosting a panel discussion on rave culture in London at a free event in a secret Peckham venue on Thursday 10th November 2022. You can register for tickets here.
And if you scroll to the end of this issue you find out how you can win a copy of the book, courtesy of us.
What was the initial idea behind this book and what made you want to take on such a massive subject?
Well I’ve been a music journalist for about 15 years. I was living in Hackney around 2015 and that was around the time when there was this storm around nightlife coming under threat. Fabric was probably the biggest story but other venues were shutting as well like Cable and Madame Jojo’s.
These issues came closer to home when it hit this pub in Hackney called the Joiners Arms. We used to go there for a good session but it came under threat from property developers. For my mates in the queer scene especially it was a very important place, so a campaign group was set up and I guess that started this impetus to fight back.
I ended up doing a piece for MixMag about it and writing about the other spaces that queer nights were operating in, places like Dalston Superstore and nights like Pussy Palace. Writing that piece got all these cogs whirring about the state of nightlife and the cultural view of it, the value that’s attached to it and ultimately who controls nightlife.
It felt like nightlife was getting squeezed out of the centre of the city and into other areas, which is interesting particularly around London because it’s such a sprawling place compared other cities in the UK. But being from Manchester and having spent time in Sheffield and Liverpool and Glasgow, it seemed to me that maybe nightlife was facing these problems in other parts of the country as well, in terms of where it was being forced to live because the authorities weren’t treating it with the kind of gravitas that it deserved.
We spoke to Mark Davyd from the Music Venue Trust a few months ago, and he was saying that they were pretty well prepared when COVID hit because the nightlife industry was already in crisis before the pandemic came along. He talked about how they did the first real analysis of clubs and venues closing in 2015 and found that over a third of the venues in London had disappeared in the space of seven years. And no one was doing anything about it!
Absolutely. There’s some interesting research from the architects OMA, who I spoke to for the book. They had been tasked with coming up with a new idea around Ministry of Sound and how to add more value to what a nightclub could offer. They did that in 2015 and they coined the term ’Disconecropolis’ to describe how London’s nightlife was just dying.
Their point was that a club is only open for a miniscule percentage of the week and the building is lying dormant for the rest of the time, so how could more value be squeezed out of it. For example, if a club night fails you could still use that space for talks, lectures, drop-ins, have a cafe, make it a co-working space…
Today you can see how that model of ’extra value’ outside of the dance floor is something that other spaces are looking to, because ultimately it’s a business and it’s got to make ends meet.
Even thought he book is subtitled How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture, it isn’t a purely backwards-looking book is it? You’re very much looking to the future as well and connecting that to what’s come before.
I was very keen for it not to be an exercise in nostalgia, because I think there’s enough books written by middle-aged white guys about their glory days of raves. But then I bit off more than I could chew with the timeline, mainly because I didn’t give myself one! Of course I got to the middle of the thing and realised I was battling with the entire history of popular music and that was ridiculous.
The book starts with a chapter on the movement of populations in places like Glasgow and Manchester and Liverpool, and the industries that brought people there, like Manchester’s cotton, Glasgow’s shipbuilding and Liverpool being a major port. Through that I look at how a ’work hard, play hard’ mentality permeates through these northern cities; that sense of release at the weekend.
Then I talk a bit about the squat parties and the free parties of 90s, but really the book is very much locked on the future and trying to make sure it’s relevant, because these conversations are still ongoing. You can see that right now in the ebb and flow of nightlife around London and what’s happening with places like Printworks and the new venue, The Beam, that’s come out of that, and what the future might hold for them. It’s in a constant state of flux.
That’s what’s interesting to me, so I wanted to make sure the book wasn't framed as ‘these were the glory days when it was all magical and it’s all been shit since then’.
As you were writing the book did you discover much about what makes London club culture and nightlife distinct from other UK cities?
London’s quite hard to grapple with because it’s so sprawling geographically and the kind of music that’s come out the city is so connected to the diversity of the population. The book does talks about specific pockets, like Soho for example. I spoke with Norman Jay who talked about the importance of clubs like Crackers, which was a very important space for the soul heads. People like Terry Farley and Fabio and Grooverider all cut their teeth in that kind of space and it’s incredible how those lunchtime sessions had such an influence on 80s club culture and the Shake ’N’ Fingerpop parties that that really made Norman Jay’s name.
But at the heart of it is that sense of diversity and that feeling that a lot of scenes were born out of that mix. I tried to look at that in terms of the relation to the sound systems and the importance of clubs like Heaven and how out of Heaven came more breakbeat styles from Fabio and Grooverider, and how that morphed into Jungle and Drum & Bass and Rinse FM.
I did an interview with Caspar Melville from SOAS who has written a book called It’s A London Thing, which charts rare groove to jungle via sample culture. He talked to me about how London makes no sense geographically. But out of that sprawling mess has emerged so much incredible culture and you can see that diversity and that geographical mix in the music as well as the nightlife.
I spoke to Geeneus from Rinse FM and he was really keen to connect certain boroughs to certain sounds. He talked about how Tower Hamlets and Bow had totally different sounds that have gone on to be global musical forces in terms of Dubstep and UK Funky. He was even quite keen to pinpoint it to certain estates. You would have certain estates where people played certain kinds of music and where certain pirates existed, that gave birth to MCs and producers who had a very distinct sounds. But even thought these estates were literally right next door to each other, there was hardly any cross-pollination. But at the same time people would take sound systems from one side of London to the other to play at each other’s events. That kind of push and pull between the geography and sounds that come out of it is what I find really fascinating and really unique about London.
There’s also that feeling that London has this infinite amount of space. I did an interview with Fred Deakin from Lemon Jelly and he talks about how in certain cities like Edinburgh for example, there isn’t anywhere else for club culture to go. It’s got to stay in certain confines where certain buildings have been built. But in London it always feels like there’s another stop on the Tube. For instance, Canning Town is where the club FOLD is now. But five or ten years ago, I would never have dreamed of going dancing in this part of London.
Do you think the emergence of digital music services and music discovery moving online has made much of a difference to how club culture is connected to specific geographies and cities?
When I was DJing in the mid-2000s we would happen upon records and those were our secret records, that no one else could have. People would ask us what they were when we played them, and we would tell them very grudgingly, but they were our secrets and our weapons. Now I guess you could say that’s gatekeeping, but at the same time it was really hard to track that stuff down. You had to really work to do it. Local record shops were really important to all that - they were the hubs around which people gathered and where you got your curation from.
So on the one hand, you could say that the algorithms and Spotify have taken some of the fun out if it. But on the other hand, I was in Sheffield last weekend for No Bounds and the proliferation of different styles was amazing. People playing niche sounds to tuned-in kids who were really knowledgeable and really into it. I was at Apricot Ballroom, this super hi-fi audio space, where they were playing jazz on a Saturday night and people were going off!
One of the people I was fortunate enough to interview for the book is the producer Toddla T. He said that, ultimately you are still a product of your environment. No matter how much you are exposed to the online stuff and the algorithms, you are still attuned to and immersed in what surrounds you. I think, especially in the wake of COVID, that sense of community is higher and people have had to realise what’s around them and that’s made people dig in a bit harder.
We’re seeing more of those audiophile ‘listening bar’ spaces opening up in London and it makes me wonder if that’s a bit of reaction to Spotify culture as well. People looking for human-curated experiences, where you’re not listening to music through a phone speaker.
Places like Spiritland and Brilliant Corners are really interesting new types of spaces… In fact maybe you can’t even call them new spaces because I guess it all goes back to David Mancuzo and The Loft, but that’s now been brought into contemporary club culture.
It’s a new type of space that borrows from the past, but maybe opens things up to a different crowd. But they are expensive and you have to ask if that’s a barrier. If club culture is all about being open and welcoming, is it prohibitively expensive to go and sit in Spiritland every Friday?
Now the book is done and you’ve spoken to all these people and done all this research, how do you feel about the future of club culture in this country and in London in particular? Are you optimistic?
Well I was very keen for the book not to be an epitaph. I wanted to showcase some of the amazing, resilient, innovative people who are part of this culture and who have sustained it.
It’s been through terrible times and it’s not been given the gravitas it deserves. That might be changing slowly now and although you can argue about the validity of Amy Lamé and the position of the Night Tsar, the fact that Sadiq Kahn put her in that position and pushed the night tube, suggests to me that he was conscious that nightlife is part of the vitality of the makeup of the city and is a very important cultural asset and a tourist attraction to a certain extent.
I spoke to Danielle from Crazy P for the book and she spoke about the resilience of club culture and how it’s like a weed that will always find its way through the cracks of the city. I think that sums it up perfectly.
Obviously COVID has battered it and some of the stats that the Night Time Industries Association have produced recently were just eye-wateringly crap. Their research suggests that, since 2019, a fifth of clubs have been lost and there are only 1,100 nightclub still alive.
But the same time, I guess the innovation in the space and the way it’s morphing and mutating, shows that it is future facing and that people do care about it.
I think we’re at an interesting point now where no one’s quite sure whether we are ‘post COVID’ or not and have a government which is flailing and failing. But, at the same time, there’s a turnover of power which will hopefully see people who’ve had authentic experiences in nightclubs come into positions of power and authority and be able to have some say.
That gives me a bit of hope and I look at Berlin and the way they’re fighting for club culture to get UNESCO world heritage status. These are all positives that show that there is a beacon of light and positivity out there...
We have one copy of Out of Space - How UK Cities Shaped Rave Culture to give away to a LiB subscriber.
To win just like this issue or leave a comment. We’ll pull one name out of the hat in about a week.
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See you on Thursday next week!