Alfresco Disco's Rave of the Decade Part 2
Posted on: 2016-10-03
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Bristol-based bash aficionados return to the '90s for their latest party.
Last month, Avon and Somerset police released a set of guidelines to the public, outlining the signs of an illegal rave and how to recognise one. Symptoms include ‘large groups of young people gathering in rural locations’, ‘chatter on social media about raves’ and ‘interest in remote, rural sites, particularly by groups/people you wouldn’t expect to see’.
The ridiculous publication represents a distant ripple from the much-maligned Public Disorder Act of 1994, which came as a direct result of the sunrise parties of 1989’s second summer of love, which drew hordes of dancers to warehouses, aircraft hangars and other secret locations up and down the M25.
Agents of elegy to this inflammatory era, the Bristol-based Alfresco Disco, who have steadily accrued a reputation for throwing the best legal ‘illegal raves’ around, on Saturday offered up their latest slice of 90s nostalgia: Rave of the Decade Part 2.
The party owed much of its anticipation to the success of Part 1, which saw Alfresco take over the Weston Super Mare pier last May. Thus the rumour mill was rife amongst the crowd, which accrued behind Cabot Circus, as to where the buses for which they waited would take them. All was revealed after about half an hour up the M5, when the convoy pulled off at signs for Easter Compton Farm. We were having a barn dance.
Or the ‘90s equivalent thereof. The activity is split between two huge warehouses, each to be helmed by a slew of stellar selectors, a closely-guarded secret up until this day. Arriving mid-way through Dirtytalk’s berth on the main stage, there is copious space for outlandish busting - handy when they are spitting fire like Paul Johnson’s ‘Get Get Down’ and a Dawin remix of Kelis’ Milkshake. Light-hearted and jovial, the set caters to the mid-afternoon mood very nicely.
After an interim from the ever-on-point Alfresco DJs comes a set from a man without whom much of this wouldn’t be possible. It was the Chicago house pioneers who brought dance music and rave culture to the South of England (via the Haçienda) in the late ‘80s, and, in ‘Move Your Body’, Marshall Jefferson stamped a record which would act as an epochal blue-print for the movement. To hear it spun by the man himself, and in such authentic surroundings, is a privilege.
Never straying too far from this bygone era, Jefferson picks out other Chicago classics like ‘A Deeper Love’ by Clivilles and Cole, and Seduction’s ‘You’re My One And Only True Love’. Echoing vocals and 808s abound throughout as the sun begins to abandon the hangars.
It is dark when Luke Solomon takes over proceedings, which suits the slightly chillier stylings of the man renowned as one of the most underrated names in house, before Bristol-local DJ Die fittingly closed in the second room. Completing the trans-Atlantic ‘special relationship’ enjoyed by fledgling house music, these disk jockeys also complete a bill which has felt perfectly balanced as a paean to it.
The equal helpings of smiles and snores on the Bristol-bound return buses readily attest to Alfresco Disco’s ability to throw a party. The Rave of the Decade is one which will be remembered for decades to come.
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An ardent Geordie minus the accent, Sam seemingly strove to get as far away from the Toon as possible, as soon as university beckoned. Three undergraduate years at UoB were more than ample time for Bristol (as it inevitably does) to get under his skin, and so here he remains: reporting, as Assistant Editor, on the cultural happenings which so infatuated him with the city. Catch him at sam@365bristol.com.
