House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 to 130 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground club culture in the 1980s, as DJs from the subculture began altering disco songs to give them a more mechanical beat and deeper basslines.
Breakbeat hardcore is a music genre of the very early 1990s that spawned from the UK rave scene. It combines four-on-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats usually sampled from hip hop. In addition to the inclusion of breakbeats, the genre also features shuffled drum machine patterns, hoover and other noises originating from new beat, acid house squelches and bleeps, and often upbeat house piano riffs and vocals.
A rave describes a dance party at a warehouse, public or private property, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 90s dance music scene when DJs played at illegal events in musical styles dominated by electronic dance music from a wide range of sub-genres, including techno, hardcore, house, dubstep, and alternative dance. Occasionally live musicians have been known to perform at raves, in addition to other types of performance artists such as go-go dancers and fire dancers. The music is amplified with a large, powerful sound reinforcement system, typically with large subwoofers to produce a deep bass sound. The music is often accompanied by laser light shows, projected coloured images, visual effects and fog machines.
The Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, North West England, which became famous during the Madchester years of the 1980s and early 1990s.
A free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement. It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one system or of many and if the party becomes a festival, it becomes a teknival. The parties can be thought of as autonomous zones where all the people present create and enforce the rules. This typically means that drugs are readily available and noise levels are usually illegally high. The word free in this context is used both to describe the entry fee and the lack of restrictions and law enforcement.
An acid house party was a type of illegal party typically staged in abandoned warehouses between 1987 and 1989. Parties played acid house and acid techno music, electronic music genres with a distinct sound from the use of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. The origin of the term acid house party is disputed coming either from the 1987 song "Acid Trax" by Phuture, or the consumption of MDMA and LSD that were common at the parties.
Sunrise/Back to the Future were English acid house promoter who became one of the most successful organisators for large scale rave parties in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Second Summer of Love was a 1980s social phenomenon in the United Kingdom which saw the rise of acid house music and unlicensed rave parties. Although primarily referring to the summer of 1988, it lasted into the summer of 1989, when electronic dance music and the prevalence of the drug MDMA fuelled an explosion in youth culture culminating in mass free parties and the era of the rave. The music of this era fused dance beats with a psychedelic, 1960s flavour, and the dance culture drew parallels with the hedonism and freedom of the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco. The smiley logo is synonymous with this period in the UK.
Junior Boy's Own is an English record label specialising in electronic dance music. Underworld, The Chemical Brothers and X-Press 2 are its most successful artists.
Helter Skelter are one of the longest running dance music promoters in the UK. They are one of the few remaining rave music brands who promote early underground styles of electronic dance music, as opposed to the more mainstream house clubs that followed during the 1990s.
Daniel "Danny" Rampling, is an English house music DJ and is widely credited as one of the original founders of the UK's rave/club scene.
Richard West, known as Mr. C, is an English house music DJ, producer and rapper. He was the resident DJ at the early acid house "RIP" nights at Clink Street, London, and later was the co-owner/co-founder of London's The End nightclub.
Tribal Gathering was a British dance music festival that between 1993 and 2004 catered for different types of dance music cultures such as drum and bass, techno and house.
Acid house is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the "squelching" sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesizer-sequencer, an innovation sometimes attributed to Chicago's DJ Pierre of Phuture or Indian session musician Charanjit Singh.
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) that is predominantly characterized by a repetitive four on the floor beat which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set. The central rhythm is often in common time (4/4), while the tempo typically varies between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). Artists may use electronic instruments such as drum machines, sequencers, and synthesizers, as well as digital audio workstations. Drum machines from the 1980s such as Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 are highly prized, and software emulations of such retro instruments are popular.
Fraser Clark, was one of the leaders of the global technogaian movement. As founder and editor of Encyclopaedia Psychedelica, he outlined his views on entheogens and nature, and was a key advocate of the outdoor rave movement, hosting regular, small, indoor festivals such as those held at his central London club, Megatripolis.
New beat is a Belgian electronic dance music genre that fused elements of new wave, hi-NRG, EBM, acid house and hip hop. It flourished in Western Europe during the late-1980s.
Centreforce also known as 88.3 Centreforce and Centreforce Radio is a former pirate radio station, now legally broadcasting to London, North West England and North Wales on DAB radio. It was instrumental during the Second Summer of Love period of acid house and rave music culture in the UK.
Shoom was a weekly all-nighter dance music event held at four nightclubs in London, England, between September 1987 and early 1990. It is widely credited with initiating the acid house movement in the UK. Shoom was founded by Danny Rampling, then an unknown DJ and record producer, and managed by his wife Jenni. It began at a 300-capacity basement gym on Southwark Street in South London. By May 1988 its growing popularity necessitated a move to the larger Raw venue on Tottenham Court Road, Central London, and a switch from Saturday to Thursday nights. Later relocations were to The Park Nightclub, Kensington and Busby's venue on Charing Cross Road.
Noise Factory were an English breakbeat hardcore and jungle group active in the early 1990s. The group is credited as being pivotal in the transition between hardcore and jungle music.
