It’s quite a feat when a fashion editorial succeeds in conveying a mood so eloquently that it makes you wish you were there. It’s highly unlikely that young ravers in Chicago, London or Ibiza at the cusp of the late 1980s and early 1990s danced to squelching acid house gems while clad in Mary Katrantzou’s digital floral trousers or Lanvin’s cobra-emblazoned ones. But “Rave New World,” shot by Doncaster-born lensman Alasdair McLellan and starring Estonian model Karmen Pedaru for the April 2012 issue of British Vogue, is so inspiring that I felt nostalgic for something I had never even experienced.
In late 2011, I stumbled upon Weekender, a low-budget British film set at the advent of the illegal rave scene in Manchester, England in 1990. Featuring likeable leads in the form of TV actors Jack O’Connell (Skins) and Henry Lloyd-Hughes (The Inbetweeners) as two mates who discover that they can make a living from their wild nights out, it blew my interest for this hedonistic period sky-high. (Just think: dancefloor anthems, drugs, tons of Umbro shirts.) It was around this time, in 1987, that the city’s Haçienda nightclub, an initiative of Factory Records and the band New Order, started playing house music tracks and hosting performances by seminal DJs such as Frankie Knuckles.
Balearic and Blissful
Though Weekender was only occasionally clever, its soundtrack was a revelation through and through. Compiled by Terry Farley, it featured music that, depending on when you were born, would either take you back to that epic era or, as in my case, prove to be a treasure trove of never-before-heard club tunes. Aside from Gat Décor’s euphoric Passion (1991) and Inner City’s Good Life (1988) and Pennies From Heaven (1991) songs that have aged surprisingly well the Balearic and blissful La Passionara (1990) by British New Wave group The Blow Monkeys has become a fast favorite. (In the movie, it accompanies a rather tense poolside party scene.)
Evoking the Second Summer of Love, a period from 1988 to 1989 when acid house and the prevalence of the drug Ecstasy ushered in the rave era in Britain, a track released in early April 2012 connects the dots between these separate worlds: the Madchester scene of nearly three decades ago that mixed alternative rock, psychedelic rock and dance music and today’s free-for-all ethos. Produced by The D.O.T., a project of The Streets’ Mike Skinner and The Music’s frontman Rob Harvey, “And a Hero is a Summer (sic) post-rave smash; all cut-up vocals and saxophones with a truly excellent vocal delivery from Rob,” according to influential BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac on her SoundCloud page. It is, in my opinion, a two-pronged tribute to Baggy, a British dance-oriented music genre that became prominent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to the post-punk indie-dance trend epitomized by The Rapture at the beginning of the 2000s.
Get sorted
They Call It Acid, a 2009 feature-length documentary directed by Gordon Mason, traces the emergence of acid house “from its musical roots in Chicago and Detroit, to the melting pots of Ibiza, London and North England” through footage shot in the 1980s. In the Spring Summer 2009 issue of AnOther Man magazine, British DJ and producer Avus, a self-confessed “acid house obsessive born eight years too late,“ shared his thoughts on the film. “I fell for the smiley joys of acid house culture in the 1990s, when there was little escape from the dictatorial door policies, button-down shirts and mechanical DJ sets of the so-called superclubs,” he wrote. “Nights spent under the spell of a thumping kick drum, warehouse parties, meeting strangers in a chill-out room or just the sunrise at a dance music festival are all givens to clubbers now, but they originated in the acid house movement and its perfect combination of music, drugs and people.” Like him, I was already around then but woefully too young to have lived through the “jacking beats, bleeps and joyous vocals” of 1990 firsthand.
“Right now, in the tumult of 2012, it’s no wonder that designers and artists are looking back to this analogue era with nostalgic hearts,” said UK Vogue contributor Kirsty Robinson in the April 2012 article “Party People.” “It had grown out of a clash of musical and fashion influences with a fusion of hip-hop and grungy hippy kids at its core.” I believe that there is no better time than the present, but I can only imagine how fun and free it must have been then. (I suddenly want a vintage Stüssy sweater.) In the meantime I’ll take a cue from Alasdair McLellan’s editorial and recreate my very own buoyant, sampler-bruised Second Summer of Love even if it’s only in my mind.
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