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NEW RAVE from Sunday London Times

“New rave is about absurdity, comedy and randomness,” Slocombe says. “Everyone commenting on it is getting a bit overconcerned about the rave element and forgetting about the newness. But this is the beginning of a new way of looking at pop culture.” He believes that culture needs a shake-up, and that new rave, with all its potty styling and weird music, might just be the thing to do it. “There is so much rigid conformity to culture. We will look back at the fake smiles of celebrities on magazine covers in 10 years’ time and think, ‘God, they looked weird.’ Music and fashion are pillars of British culture. And they’re up for grabs again.” It is not difficult to spot the similarities between the end of the 1980s, when old rave emerged, and the current socioeconomic climate. It’s all there: the demonisation of teenagers; the imminent end of a political era; a trenchant fear of global collapse. If the Great British youth knows how to do one thing, it is how to throw a good party at a time of tension and fear. If it is going down, it is going down smiling, in neon, with one unholy racket playing behind it. In east London, a succession of collapsible parties — All You Can Eat, Anti-Social, Teens of Thailand, Young Turks, Boom Box — have given the scene its magnetic new playgrounds. Some play rave records. Some don’t. But the spirit remains the same. The !Wowow! art gatherings in New Cross have became a thing of legend, and Stone has emerged as the enigmatic, Warhol-ish figurehead for it all, with Mundane his acid Nico. “What I love about these people is that they have followed their dreams,” says Ben Reardon, the editor of i-D magazine. “They have made something happen. They squatted, had no money, sometimes didn’t eat, but all with the purpose of making art, making clothes, making parties — and they have done it all off their own backs.” “There is something tangible and spontaneous going on here,” says Alex Needham, of NME. “We haven’t had that for a long time. Club culture had got so tied up with the superannuation of everything — superclubs, superstar DJs — it needed to let a new generation take over. It isn’t about neatly packaged nightclub spaces any more. And everyone looks brilliant.” What is happening in east London has parallels with what happened in the East Village of New York in the 1980s — a youthful convergence of art, club, fashion and music people collecting under an outré (and cheap) umbrella. “It is about a magpie approach to creative theft,” Slocombe says. “A £400 coat is not going to make you look stylish any more. The new-rave ethos is about going to some weird shop in Finsbury Park where they sell 1980s sportswear. Everyone wants to look more Day-Glo and loonified than the next person.” But can new rave survive the transition into the mainstream? After all, once a scene goes overground, the people who started it often lose interest. “It isn’t about owning it and fencing it off,” Slocombe says. “It’s about steering what is essentially the next wave. It hasn’t reached mass uniformity yet.” Needham agrees: “You’ve yet to get a hit record from Klaxons. But the time feels totally right for it.” Reardon sums it up, saying: “Leigh Bowery and Rachel Auburn were laughed at in the 1980s for trying something new, and now they are heralded as icons of an era. Why not herald the people we have now and their scene while it’s happening? We shouldn’t have to wait for things to be over before we celebrate them.” Grab your glowsticks before it’s too late. . NICKY LONDON COLUMN