Tribal Gathering

Last updated
Tribal Gathering
Tribalg.jpg
Tribal Gathering 1995 album cover
Genre Techno, house and drum and bass
Years active1993–2004
Founded byPaul Shurey, Rob Vega

Tribal Gathering is the original British electronic dance music festival that between 1993 and 2004 catered for different types of dance music cultures such as techno, house and drum & bass. After 18 years, Tribal Gathering returns in 2023 for a two-day event to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

Contents

History

The original promoters of Universe (Paul Shurey, Rob Vega and former Bath Rugby Captain [1] Roger Spurrell, Tennant and Jill Trick) had been organising events since the heady days of 1989 when raves such as Sunrise, Raindance and Perception were in their pomp. They wanted to organise an event to bring together the different sub-cultures of the dance world and also to have a festival feel to it. The company BTY Limited launched the Universe brand which organised the following UK dance parties:

BTY Limited ceased trading in 1993 following considerable investment in trying to bring the UK dance party scene to San Francisco in partnership with Bill Graham Presents. The Universe brand was subsequently adopted by the Mean Fiddler organisation.

The first Tribal Gathering took place Friday 30 April 1993 at Lower Pertwood Farm near Warminster, Wiltshire. 25,000 attended to see acts such as Laurent Garnier, Carl Cox, Aphex Twin, DiY Sound System and Pete Tong.

In March 1994 they opened the legendary London night club 'Final Frontier', at Club UK in Wandsworth. Weekly nights ran for several years, relocating in 1997 to the Complex Club in Islington. Each week featured numerous headline djs and live acts, the likes of which had never been seen before. A proud moment for the promoters was when 'Final Frontier' was voted number 5 in Musik Magazines top 50 clubs of all time, just behind Studio 54, Dorian Gray, Paradise Garage and Limelight.

Also in 1993 the Universe - World Techno Tribe compilation CD was released in Europe on Rising High Records, on Sony Music in Japan and Moonshine Music in the USA. Compiled and mixed by Mr Oz it reached number 4 in the Gallup album charts. Subsequent CDs were later released on MMS records and FFRR.

The Criminal Justice Bill of 1994 discouraged massive outdoor raves. In 1994 Tribal Gathering moved to Munich, Germany and in cooperation with "N.A.S.A/ Hannover Nice And Safe Attitude" staged an event there.

In the UK, Tribal Gathering teamed up with the Mean Fiddler organisation to organise more legal festivals. The next event took place in May 1995, at Otmoor Park, Beckley, Oxfordshire. Headline acts included The Prodigy, Orbital and Moby.

The 1996 version of the Tribal Gathering took place in June at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire with 30,000 turning up to see sets by Underworld, Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, Black Grape, Goldie, Daft Punk and others.

In 1997, at Luton Hoo, Kraftwerk were the headliners of the festival, playing for the first time in the UK since 1992. [2] The show was a monumental success, even though there was no new material released since The Mix.

From 1994 Universe ran the infamous London club night Final Frontier at Club UK, three rooms of electronic music in varying form and style. Acid, Techno, Tribal, Trance and House. Their DJ lineups were nothing short of phenomenal, each Friday over four years resident DJ's Gayle San, Tin Tin, Mr Oz, Murf and Matt Tangent played alongside nearly every 'A' list DJ from the UK, EU and around The Globe! After 4 years at Club UK the Universe Crew moved from Wandsworth and moved to Islington and rebranded from Final Frontier to Voyager, which was held at Complex Club, which was previously the home of the AWOL Drum and Bass events.

By 1998, the Tribal Gathering name had grown into a brand. There were albums, a TV show and plans to establish events worldwide in the pipeline. However their things did not go to schedule and the 1998 event did not take place due to Universe and Mean Fiddler's legal battle over the Tribal Gathering name.

In 1999 David Vincent bought the Tribal Gathering name from Paul Shurey and Ian Jenkinson, with the aim of bringing the event back to life.

The Tribal Gathering name was revived in 2000 at the legendary Sankeys Soap club, Manchester. The weekly legendary "Tribal Sessions" club night took place at Sankeys with DJs generally playing House, Techno, Tech-house, Acid House & Breaks & Beats. Tribal Sessions djs included Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, Carl Cox, Sasha, Steve Lawler, Laurent Garnier and many others. Tribal Sessions won many awards from Mixmag best club of the year 2004. There was also 2 exhibitions in Manchester Museum of Science and Industry for the brand for providing significant culture for the city of Manchester.

In 2002 Tribal Gathering returned as a weekender at Southport Pontins to a sell-out 5,000 capacity crowd with DJs Sasha, Dave Clarke, Deep Dish, Derrick Carter, Erol Alkan amongst others performing with many rave reviews. There was a follow-up event in November 2003.

In 2003 Tribal Gathering held the first legal warehouse party for over 10 years in a "secret" Manchester location, which turned out to be a warehouse previously used as a set for the movie 24 Hour Party People, which was decorated to replicate The Haçienda nightclub. 12,000 people attended where artistes like Groove Armada, Laurent Garnier, Jeff Mills, Deep Dish appeared. The event won best event of the year 2003 with Mixmag and was voted second best party ever by Mixmag in 2004.

In 2004 Tribal Gathering held a two-day warehouse party in a Manchester City Centre in association with the Hacienda with DJs Groove Armada, Graeme Park and Mike Pickering.

In July 2005, a Tribal Gathering festival was organised, in aid of the war victims in Darfur, Sudan, to take place again at Luton Hoo but it was cancelled due to the terrorist attacks that took place on 7 July in London. There has not been an event since but inside music industry sources are reporting that the Festival will return on April Bank Holiday Weekend 2023 to celebrate its 30th Anniversary.

See also

Related Research Articles

Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from EBM in Frankfurt, Germany in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and quickly spread throughout Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rave</span> Dance party

A rave is a dance party at a warehouse, club, or other public or private venue, typically featuring performances by DJs playing electronic dance music. The style is most associated with the early 1990s 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 drum and bass, dubstep, trap, break, happy hardcore, techno, hardcore, house, 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.

Goa trance is an electronic dance music style that originated in the early 1990s in the Indian state of Goa. Goa trance often has drone-like basslines, similar to the techno minimalism of 21st century psychedelic trance (psytrance). Psychedelic trance developed from Goa trance. The typically long songs built on progressive beat changes are said to put the listener in a “trance”

Tech house is a subgenre of house music that combines stylistic features of techno with house. The term tech house developed as a shorthand record store name for a category of electronic dance music that combined musical aspects of techno, such as "rugged basslines" and "steely beats", with the harmonies and grooves of progressive house. The music originally had a clean and minimal production style that was associated with techno from Detroit and the UK.

Laurent Garnier, also known as Choice, is a French electronic music producer and DJ. Garnier began DJing in Manchester during the late 1980s. He became a producer in the early 1990s and recorded several albums.

Teknivals are large free parties which take place for several days. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement. The parties often take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, beaches, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave, punk, reggae sound system and UK traveller scenes and spawned an entire subculture. Summer is the usual season for teknivals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Cox</span> British DJ

Carl Cox is a British house and techno club DJ, as well as radio DJ and record producer. He is based in Hove, Sussex, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">System 7 (band)</span> British electronic music project

System 7 are a UK-based electronic dance music band. Due to the existence of another band called System Seven they were initially billed as 777 in North America. System 7 was also the name of the current version of the Macintosh operating system at the time, although this was not the reason for the temporary name change.

Electronic dance music (EDM), also known as dance music, club music, or simply dance, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres made largely for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another. EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA.

Helter Skelter is one of the longest running dance music promoters in the UK. It is one of the few remaining rave music brands which promotes early underground styles of electronic dance music, as opposed to the more mainstream house music clubs that followed during the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fergie (DJ)</span> Musical artist

Robert Ferguson, known professionally as Fergie, is a Northern Irish DJ and electronic music artist from Larne. He has been an internationally touring DJ and a music producer for over 20 years. He presented a radio show on BBC Radio 1 for over four years while recording 13 Essential Mixes for the station. He was featured in the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll seven years in a row and currently holds the record for the highest new entry since the poll began, achieved when he was voted 8th in 2000.

Megatripolis was an underground London club-night created by Encyclopaedia Psychedelica/Evolution editor and founder of the Zippie movement Fraser Clark, partner Sionaidh Craigen, Bugsy and JJ of Dream as well as a great many others. The club combined New Age ideology with Rave culture to create a vibrant, festival-like atmosphere presenting a wide variety of cross-cultural ideas and experiences. Club nights ran regularly on Thursdays from 1993 until 1996, being the focus of much of the Zippie movement. The club and its related activities also helped to popularise ideas such as cyberculture and the Internet between those years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doof</span> Outdoor dance party

A doof or bush doof is a type of outdoor dance party generally held in a remote country area, or outside a large city in surrounding bush or rainforest. Events referred to as doofs are now held worldwide and have built from a small set of social groups to a subculture with millions of active members worldwide, considered by some as a full blown culture similar to raves or teknivals. Doofs generally have healing workshops, speakers, art, live artists and DJs playing a range of electronic music, commonly goa, house, dub techno, Techno, acid heavy sounds and psychedelic trance.

Every Picture Tells a Story were a series of all-night electronic dance music festivals held at different venues in Melbourne. In 1991 Heidi John and Richard John started a series of warehouse, rave parties. In 1993 they formed the Melbourne Underground Development (M.U.D.) crew with Phil Woodman. From 1993 to 1997 the parties were held at the Global Village in suburban, Footscray. Some 21 such parties were held until the year 2000. A one-off Every Picture Tells a Story event was held in April 2010.

Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often characterized by a repetitive four on the floor beat. 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.

Sankeys is a nightclub franchise with its first nightclub in Ancoats, Manchester, United Kingdom. The company formerly operated a nightclub in Playa d’en Bossa, Ibiza and opened a New York City venue in 2013.

Abel Polo, known by his stage name Abel el'toro, is a DJ, producer and promoter from Sydney, Australia.

Heather Lotruglio, better known as Heather Heart, is an American based Techno DJ.

Awakenings is the collective name of techno parties and festivals that have been organized in the Netherlands since 1997 by events agency Monumental Productions BV. The current Awakenings Summer Festival is one of the biggest techno events in the world. The parties sometimes have a theme that has to do with techno music, such as minimal, Detroit, schranz, Drumcode or Kne'deep.

References

  1. ↑ "Spurrell Roger". Bath Rugby Heritage. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  2. ↑ 2 Cents: Kraftwerk, Tribal Gathering (May 25, 1997). Retrieved on February 7, 2007.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.