In the waning days of the Disco era, Larry Levan crafted a new style of dance music, which, like House music in Chicago, came to be named after the nightclub where it was most played, the Paradise Garage. Garage music may have started with disco, but over the decades, it's evolved in some surprising ways: [more inside]
posted by empath on Oct 27, 2009 - 62 comments

Canadian DJ bloke Tiga has a new album called Ciao. He's made a spoof documentary to promote it. It's really funny, even if you don't know about dance music - A bit like Nathan Barley by the ever wonderful Chris Morris. Part 1 Part 2
posted by debord on Jun 4, 2009 - 20 comments

The bastard offspring of New Age, Techno, Industrial and Acid House, trance is one of the most popular and most maligned musical genres of the 21st century. Trance can be bombastic or delicate, psychedelic or rock and roll, spacey or deep, euphoric or dark, commercial or underground, lush or funky, melodic or monotone, hard or laid back. You can try making some yourself with this toy, or go in depth with this tutorial. You can find it online, but if you want to really experience it, you need to hear it at a club.
posted by empath on Jan 16, 2008 - 184 comments

Dance music toys. Get your cheese on. Via Music Thing.
posted by nthdegx on Jan 15, 2008 - 10 comments

Satanist Rave Shut Down outside Tehran. Iran's drive to enforce Islamic morals netted revellers from Britain and Sweden after police swooped on a "satanic" concert organised over the internet. Police arrested 230 people and seized drugs, alcohol and 800 illicit CDs after raiding the event in Karaj, 12 miles west of Tehran. Those arrested included young women in skimpy and "inappropriate" clothing, officers said.
posted by domdom on Aug 6, 2007 - 58 comments

Classic UK Hardcore Breakbeat videos. John Tab, a Washington DC-area Drum and Bass DJ, has been scouring you tube for classic UK hardcore and jungle videos from the early 90s and offering them up with commentary.
posted by empath on Nov 24, 2006 - 52 comments

Raves not dead! The British subculture the government tried so hard to kill is alive and well in Cornwall and Essex.
posted by Artw on Aug 27, 2006 - 74 comments

Ballpark Blues. To make way for a new stadium and redevelopment, DC has been clearing out the underground bar and club scene in the Navy Yard area of southeast Washington. The first victim was Tracks, one of DC's first gay clubs and the epicenter of the nascent Goth scene in DC--closed in 1999 to make way for an office building. Now the rest of the neighborhood's gay clubs are being demolished to make way for the new stadium. And finally, Nation, home of Cubik(formerly Buzz), Velvet and Alchemy is closing to make way for another new office complex. DC nightlife will never be the same again.
posted by empath on Apr 5, 2006 - 19 comments

Dead ravers littered the floor. A gunman/rave kid walked into the Capitol Hill house Saturday morning during an after party for the 'Better Off Undead' rave. With a pistol grip shotgun he killed 7 men, two women, and then himself.
posted by The Jesse Helms on Mar 26, 2006 - 212 comments

Mad Mullah Rave Party Sensation. via The Religious Policeman.
posted by semmi on Feb 21, 2006 - 53 comments

Pump up the volume: Utah, 8/20/2005. A small fully permitted outdoor Drum and Bass gathering called "Versus 2" was the scene of a surreal amount of excessive force and tactics of cultural intimidation. Approximately 60 armored, helmeted and camouflaged Utah County Sheriffs officers armed with Police dogs, Tasers, MP5 submachine guns, rifles, batons and tear gas stormed the DJ booth and the dance floor. Still and video camera operators were singled out for abuse, police violence and confiscation of image recording devices. At least one video clip has made it to the net, helping spread the news globally within the Electronic Dance Music community within 24 hours. (Video Links: please use the torrents here or randomly choose one server here (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ) to help spread out the bandwidth costs.) Flashback to 6/31/2005 in the Czech Republic. Flashback to 70 years ago. More coverage: Daily Kos - Utah Indymedia - Drug Policy Alliance - Democracy Now (Audio) - more.
posted by loquacious on Aug 23, 2005 - 196 comments

Thinner/Autoplate is the real deal: a netlabel that doesn't suck. Ambient/dub/minimal house/drone/experimental sounds that'll turn your home into the chillout room of a Finnish club at 5 am. Or at least pleasantly buzz in the background while you read. Sixty-five releases, high-quality bit rates, zipped files, creative commons licence -- the site itself is very nicely done. But more importantly, the music is just freakin' good, for fans of this sort of thing of course. For a taster, try the excellent ambient dub mix (125MB) or the more beat-oriented house standard mix (95MB). The label chief explains the rationale behind giving the music away in an interview here.
posted by dydecker on Nov 25, 2004 - 20 comments

RAVE Act Passes Congress and Senate. Sensible control or a new reefer madness? Previously discussed here and here .
posted by squirrel on Jun 13, 2003 - 31 comments

The steam-powered drum machine - an astonishing extract from the journal of Charles Franklin, the founder of the London Museum of Techno. Written in 1894, Franklin describes a steam-powered drum machine and what may have been the world's first rave. "Driven by the thunderous rhythms of Hoovenaars tremendous "drum machine" the crowd - academics and dockers, architects and cobblers - were whipped into a frenzy, dancing and screaming like savages until sunrise, when the Machine finally ground to a halt with a suffering hiss."
posted by adrianhon on May 20, 2003 - 33 comments

Want to pass an unpopular bill? Then attach it to a popular bill. While we're talking about "spreading democracy" around the world maybe its time we took a good look at our own. The almost universally hated RAVE Act is back and attached to an unrelated child abduction bill.
posted by skallas on Apr 9, 2003 - 33 comments

The RAVE Act, which stands for "Reducing America's Vulnerability to Ecstasy" courtesy of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) (via LA Times)
posted by mrhappy on Aug 3, 2002 - 64 comments

The New Porn? The trend toward music subculture-specific porn sites that began with the launch of raverporn.net more than two years ago has continued with sites like suicidegirls.com (featuring goth, punk, and raver girls) and supercult.com (featuring mod and indie rock chicks). SuicideGirls has been discussed extensively on MetaTalk. What do you think about these sites? Are they porn or erotica? Are the young (mostly male) entrepreneurs who have started these sites making porn less degrading (and/or more appealing) to women OR are they just a new generation of Hugh Hefners?
posted by popvulture on May 6, 2002 - 44 comments

Beneath the Dome... and I mean London's Millennium Dome, still causing controversy nearly a year after it closed. Undercover reporters seem surprised to find there's nothing inside the big top since its contents were demolished. No problem to the Dome's detractors, though, or to the thousands of ravers heading for the Ministry of Sound New Year's Eve party at the Dome, complete with indoor and outdoor funfair! Any MeFiers going?
posted by skylar on Nov 28, 2001 - 46 comments

Everything starts with an E - it sure does, and apart from nearly suffering from some sort of visually induced fit, i enjoyed this.
posted by semper on Nov 1, 2001 - 25 comments

From the "When designers grab random images" file: Many Muslim taxi drivers in Seattle are going to refuse to pick up people from a rave tonight. The rave promoters used excerpts from the Koran on the flyer announcing the event. "We had no idea what any of it meant...It looked good on there."
posted by gluechunk on Feb 17, 2001 - 5 comments