Following the moral panic around acid house and rave in 1989, promoters started mobilising to get licences for events. In 1990 they succeeded, and dance music began being hauled back into licensed clubs. Although illegal raves were still going strong up until the Criminal Justice Bill 1994 was pushed through parliament, a large clubbing scene emerged from 1990 in derelict spaces around Islington. Around 1991–1993, newer genres hardcore and jungle emerged from rave and what was once a scene that united people from all walks of life started to fragment and splinter into various different groups. This chapter looks at three of Islington’s clubs, Turnmills, Paradise Club and EC1 Club, and how they were representations of the ways in which rave split into multiple different scenes. Turnmills, the first club in Britain to obtain a 24-hour licence, and where key developments on the hardcore to jungle scene (the club’s ‘Sunday Roast’ promotion) were observed; Paradise Club, which became the epicentre of the London jungle scene, which catered to a multiracial audience of men and women from all over London and beyond, and which was also attended by a large number of Black and white gangsters; and EC1 Club, a mainly house music club attended by a highly local audience of white working-class men and women, with a large number of gangs from the South Islington estates. This chapter reveals how dance music culture had by the mid-1990s become divided along racial, spatial and class lines, in Islington at least. However, while both these clubs did of course attract people from everywhere, race, social class and ‘belonging to a gang’ were undoubtedly important markers of these club scenes in Islington during this era.

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The 1990s Islington Clubs: Turnmills, Paradise Club and EC1 Club

  • Ray Kinsella

摘要

Following the moral panic around acid house and rave in 1989, promoters started mobilising to get licences for events. In 1990 they succeeded, and dance music began being hauled back into licensed clubs. Although illegal raves were still going strong up until the Criminal Justice Bill 1994 was pushed through parliament, a large clubbing scene emerged from 1990 in derelict spaces around Islington. Around 1991–1993, newer genres hardcore and jungle emerged from rave and what was once a scene that united people from all walks of life started to fragment and splinter into various different groups. This chapter looks at three of Islington’s clubs, Turnmills, Paradise Club and EC1 Club, and how they were representations of the ways in which rave split into multiple different scenes. Turnmills, the first club in Britain to obtain a 24-hour licence, and where key developments on the hardcore to jungle scene (the club’s ‘Sunday Roast’ promotion) were observed; Paradise Club, which became the epicentre of the London jungle scene, which catered to a multiracial audience of men and women from all over London and beyond, and which was also attended by a large number of Black and white gangsters; and EC1 Club, a mainly house music club attended by a highly local audience of white working-class men and women, with a large number of gangs from the South Islington estates. This chapter reveals how dance music culture had by the mid-1990s become divided along racial, spatial and class lines, in Islington at least. However, while both these clubs did of course attract people from everywhere, race, social class and ‘belonging to a gang’ were undoubtedly important markers of these club scenes in Islington during this era.