Celebraving is more than mere revival: Bugged Out! at Drumsheds
Plus Nicolás Jaar, Slimzee, Holly Macve, Institute and Dean Wareham
(Picture by Lucy Hogg. Thanks Lucy!)
Celebraving is more than mere revival: Bugged Out! at Drumsheds
Clubbing, as we all know, is a young people’s game. Except, increasingly, it isn’t. In the UK at least, where I spent last weekend, the generation who went to raves in the late 80s is now in their 50s, while people of and around my age - 46 - have grown up with electronic music in the air. Quite what young people think of this, I don’t know; probably not much. But it seems to me vaguely fantastic that older people still want to get together and dance to electronic music rather than slouch off into a world of crown green bowls and complaining about mortgages.
Often, though, when I go to clubs - an infrequent phenomenon but not entirely unknown - the night is entirely geared to young people, especially in Barcelona, where I live. The timings, with clubs opening after midnight and closing at about 6am, doesn’t exactly lend itself to getting up to take your child to an 8am football match. And it becomes a vicious circle: older people in Barcelona don’t tend to go out, so clubs don’t accommodate them, so older people in Barcelona don’t go out.
The UK - and London in particular - is more open to older clubbers. And the club I went to on Saturday, Bugged Out!’s 30th anniversary at Drumsheds, seems to have entirely solved the ageing customer equation. The club ran from midday to 2230h, just in time to get home, pay the babysitter and go to bed at a reasonable enough hour to function as a human being the following day. And the organisation at the venue - a vast, converted Ikea in North London - was spectacular, an entirely unsexy characteristic that I appreciate ever more over time.
The information sent with the ticket read like the rule book to a minor parlour game but it all worked. We cleared security in about 10 minutes; the queue for the bar was never longer than five minutes and there was ample free water, together with cups and lids. Getting the 12,000-strong crowd out of the venue at 2230h and into taxis, Ubers and one nearby train station, over a busy road, took about 20 minutes with nothing in the way of a problem, as far as I could see. The venue itself was still recognisably the Ikea it was a year ago - you enter via a largely unchanged car park, for example - and perhaps lacked a certain romance. But I will take that time and again if it means a) that things work and b) you actually have room to dance, even when the headline act comes on.
The day’s music, too, had the fine line between nostalgia, energy and innovation perfectly traced. I should be quite clear: Bugged Out! is an innovative promoter and has been for 30 years; it caters for old and young people, as does Drumsheds. The crowd at Bugged Out! was probably dominated by people in their 30s and above. But there were many young people there (including, rather fantastically, celebrity trainspotter Francis Bourgeois.
Most importantly, the DJs and live acts who performed at Bugged Out! - headed by Orbital, Hot Chip, A Trak, Basement Jaxx and a French House threesome of Falcon, Etienne de Crécy and Boombass - are not empty heritage acts. They have all released new music in the last year and continue to contribute to the evolution of electronic sound. The Bugged Out! rave was certainly no tired, Back to 92 revival night for an ageing audience that can’t remember any better.
At the same time, the five acts mentioned all have long roots in electronic music, back to the 90s / early 2000s. There is vital musical history there, in other words, while Bugged Out! itself was celebrating its 30th birthday and you also have a crowd that wants something other than relentless new music. So what do you call this clubbing mix? It’s not a “normal” club night for electronic music, with its unyielding focus on the new. But it’s not a revival night either.
The name that occurred to me was “celebraving”, a portmanteau of “celebration” and “raving”. (That it almost shares a name with a chocolate box selection that packages eight of your favourite chocolates in clever new shapes is a happy coincidence.) What the five acts in the main room have mastered is wrapping up old music with touches of new, in delightfully innovative shapes.
The French House trifecta of Falcon, de Crécy and Boombass, for example, rolled out a lot of the French Touch classics - there was a lot of Daft Punk, Stardust, Together and the rest - but they did so by weaving together segments in post-Ableton combinations that ensured you were never more than a minute away from an intriguing musical contrast, a little like Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 if its focus extended to the entire French scene. A lot of this music was 20+ years old; but you couldn’t have really heard it that way 20 years ago, mixed on two turntables, which meant the trio’s work carried a potent modern edge among the nostalgia.
Basement Jaxx did largely the same. The London duo did spin some newer tracks, including Skepta’s box-fresh Can’t Play Myself (A Tribute To Amy), but the highlights of their set were the older numbers - Red Alert, Where’s Your Head At etc. - which the duo never lefty idly in the mix to do their work. That they ended their brief set with 10 minutes of pumped up drum & bass-ery and a brass band version of Bohemian Rhapsody that brought the house down suggests active musical minds, rather than retirement home residents.
A-Trak, technically the best DJ of all of them, pulled off a similarly fidgety mix (in a good way) applying his skills for mixing, matching, splicing and deconstructing to a set that relied heavily on the past. His own remix of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Heads Will Roll was probably the highlight, as befits a DJ who came to house music in the late 2000s, but his artful battering of Basement Jaxx’s classic Flylife will remain long in my memory, the perfect midpoint between the DJ letting us enjoy the record’s own considerable charms and ratcheting up the intensity.
Among the live acts, Hot Chip played music that backed right up to the present day, including their 2023 yunè pinku collaboration Fire Of mercy and a slightly so / so take on Nothing Compares To You that was more notable for its intent that its actual performance. Topping the night, Orbital rolled out their typically excellent live set, mixing up the reliable - but still stunning - classics like Satan with a number of songs taken from their new album Optical Delusion. They’ve been on tour recently playing their classic debut album in full, which is a show I would love to see. But this, very much, wasn’t that.
And that is why I want to call this celebraving rather than a revival night. (And yes I know it’s a horrible name but I can’t think of anything better for the moment.) Bugged Out! at Drumsheds - and I am talking mainly about the main room here - was a party that celebrated older music rather than simply reviving it; that acknowledged electronic music before the latest unreleased promos without being too in thrall to history; and that added nostalgic spice to the main course of forward-thinking music without drowning the new in the old.
Young people may disagree; young people may not give a toss. But it is a running theme of this newsletter that electronic music does a bad job of remembering its roots, especially those in the Black clubs of Chicago, New York and Detroit. Now this, obviously, wasn’t that: the British, French and Canadian acts I’ve been talking about are still pulls on the international club circuit, where some US pioneers are scrabbling to make a living.
But Bugged Out has always supported house and techno’s inventors - I’ve seen everyone from Juan Atkins to Cajmere DJ there - and maybe celebraving can help to bring us to a place where older DJs play to audiences who are aware - and, indeed, in favour - of their history and ready to support them as such; where the likes of K’Alexi or Roy Davis Jr., to name just two, can get the respect they so obviously deserve. Because that really would be a cause for celebration.
Some listening
Ali Sethi & Nicolás Jaar - Nazar Se
Nicolás Jaar is a producer with a finger in so many conceptual pies he could definitely conceive of the idea of a conceptual pie shop. Nazar Se is taken from his new album with Pakistani singer / songwriter Ali Sethi in which the duo transform Jaar’s 2020 album Telas into ghazals, an ancient poetic form that was taken by Sufi mystics from the Arab world to Persia and beyond. The results are largely meditative, as on the spell-weaving, speaker-caressing new single Nazar Se, but occasionally banging, as on previous single Muddat. Whatever the overall feeling of the track, though, it is tribute to a flawless collaboration that you soon stop wondering where the joins between electronica and ghazal might be found.
Slimzee, Boylan and Riko Dan - Mile End
Mile End is the first record on a new label from the epochal dubstep club promoter FWD>> (rather less romantically, it appears to be under the Sony Music umbrella), so what better to launch the boat than a bass-end heavy, trap-esque banger from old-school legends Slimzee and Riko Dan, plus young producer Boylan? The track’s real highlight, however, is the nauseous, Psycho-esque strings for full-on dance-floor nerve attacks.
Holly Macve / Lana Del Rey - Suburban House
Holly Macve’s 2021 album Not The Girl was one of those releases I couldn’t believe people didn’t love as much as I did and contained the single of the year in the devastating Daddy’s Gone. Given that Not The Girl’s influences were largely Bobbie Gentry, Carole King and Mazzy Star, Lana Del Rey was an obvious kindred spirt and so it feels appropriate to see the two collaborate on this new single, the first fruits of Macve’s new “project”, due early 2024. Suburban House is a rolling piano ballad that feels like lying in bed, all cried out, with the heating turned up high and a bowl of grapes for comfort.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Institute are allegedly “dark punk rippers”, which sounds like the kind of thing I would scrape off my shoes on a sparse patch of grass; luckily, though, on All the Time they produce a work of slightly wonky, lurch rock and roll, like Royal Trux spiking The Fall’s beer with Percodin. That the result is horribly addictive is appropriate.
Things I’ve done
Fatboy Slim’s ‘You've Come a Long Way, Baby’ at 25: Norman Cook's rock & roll opus
Fatboy Slim is not an artist I think about a lot, honestly. But I was happy to write a reflection on his second album for DJ Mag because it is a hugely important work, one of the biggest dance music albums ever, which crossed over into all kinds of places you wouldn’t expect. (Who else was shocked to see Norman Cook in the Woodstock 99 documentary?) It’s also a very well produced record, whether you like it or not, weaving together layers of samples like The Avalanches you can sniff poppers to. And that is what I tried to concentrate on in my DJ Mag piece, away from Big Beat-ery and Brighton parties. I also got to interview Camille Yarbrough, who was a dream.
Line Noise Episode 141 (Francis Mercier)
Similarly, I haven’t listened to that much music by Haitian house artist Francis Mercier, who probably strays a little too much into the tech house camp for my tastes. But I think his idea of house music as a genuinely global form - sampling Black Uhuru, Amadou & Mariam, Rachid Taha and more - is fascinating and I wanted to know what it was like growing up musically in Haiti.
On the Radio Primavera Sound Twitch this week, our big interview was with Lauren Mayberry, ahead of her Spanish dates. She is sharp as hell and obviously very intelligent, which made the interview sound a little like a very well mannered dual, in which she came out on top and we all left happy.
And talking of Twitch, just this morning Johann and I had the opportunity to talk to indie legend - but really - Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500 and Luna (and more). We asked him about Luna and Galaxie 500’s growing legacies, the art of a good cover, Low, Spotify payouts (and why they might not be that bad), being in a band with your partner, Barbie and more. He is a lovely person, with an astounding accent and now I have to do a book swap with him. You can listen on Soundcloud, or watch the interview (for a limited time) via our Twitch (it’s around nine minutes in.) Talking of which: why not tune into our Twitch? Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings from 11am to 1pm CET?
Like new music? Hate thinking? Then this playlist is FOR YOU. It’s called the newest and the bestest, which you may think is a terrible name but so is celebraving and that didn’t stop me earlier, did it?