Overground

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Overground explores the publics views of the rave subculture. Taking an interview and article from Vice magazine, and using my own images; Overground will educate further on the subculture, but this time from a different perspective.

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Youth culture is an ephemeral, nebulous, kind of unexplainable thing. Almost anything can become part of it as long as it’s young, fun and the Evening Standard doesn’t quite understand it. For much of the 20th century, the generational divide made it easy to work out what counted as youth culture, with older people looking on dumbfounded at guitar solos and impractical clothing. But in an age of climbing lifeexpectancy rates, acid house grandparents and a general sense of staying young for longer in the face of not really knowing what else to do, real youth – that is, teenagers – are becoming increasingly overlooked by both the media and brands, often in favour

of the affluent, metropolis-dwelling late 20-somethings clinging onto their younger years. All millennials and Gen Xers seem to know about teenagers is that they are the vanity generation; one defined by selfies and six packs, sexting and segways, vloggers and Instagram superstars. They’re shallow and compliant because they grew up watching The Kardashians and filling in UCAS applications while we had Top of the Pops and Proper Pills.

Look beyond Dan and Phil, Snapchat and Harry Potter fandoms and you’ll find that today’s teenagers have their own scenes, style, preferred sounds and

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micro-economies, in exactly the same way previous generation did. There are few better examples than the (relatively) new breed of urban teenagers – the kids replacing alcohol with NOS, wearing shotter bags – those little, over-the-shoulder Nike knapsacks – and bucket hats, and largely swapping clubs for parties of their own creation, illegal raves or squat parties in reclaimed or abandoned spaces. Take the visual identity: these teenagers worship at the dual altar of sportswear and streetwear, Sports Direct and Supreme, forging an alliance between skate culture and what would have once been called scally culture – a blend that was unimaginable when I was a teenager. For anyone who ever lived through a bus stop kicking for wearing a World Industries hoody, or got egged for wearing Adidas poppers by a group of vengeful emos in a Peugeot 206, the idea of combining townie clothes with skater clothes seems quite bizarre. But in today’s fractious, anything-goes youth culture, it’s become the norm. It’s as if the old tribes have finally seen the best of each other, spawning this new breed who aren’t limited by the prejudices of older generations.

As with any scene, certain looks mean certain things. “If you wanna look cool – if you wanna be the person who can walk down Brixton High Street going, ‘I went to this grime night and met that guy last night’ – you’ll probably go out wearing a North Face jacket,” says Frank, an 18-year-old from south London. For girls, the look is of course different, but retains that utilitarian, wearable edge. “There’s the whole ‘Leeds girl’ look,” says Katy, 19. “Girls that go to Leeds or Bristol [universities] look exactly the same: a little crop-top with some Air Forces and a puffa jacket.”

The look seems to be equal parts Yung Lean and “extra from the cast of Dangerous Minds”. It takes influences from a lot of different places, but all of it’s resolutely “urban”, for want of a word that makes me sound less like a middle-aged trend forecaster. The likes of Skepta, Virgil Abloh, Ian Connor and the Sad Boys crew lead the way for this inherently masculine, durable style.

The way that this tribe goes about achieving its look, too, is specific to their generation. A new online fashion economy has popped up in the last few years, an economy where rarity is the order of the day. Facebook groups like the well-known Wavey Garms, or The Basement - which Katy tells me is “a little bit more current and underground than Wavey Garms” – deal primarily in second-hand streetwear that accrues more value the harder it is to get hold of.

Forging an alliance between skate culture and what would have once been called scally culture. A blend that was unimaginable when I was a teenager.

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“What people will do is go for the most coveted item, in the style that people want the most, purely just to sell it again,” says Katy. It seems a kind of collector’s culture has emerged, a kind of swagged out version of Pokemon cards or Pogs. And the lengths people will go to are obsessive. “A couple of my friends were queuing outside Supreme [for the latest collection to launch], and this homeless guy came and sat with them, and he couldn’t believe that people were queueing for a £128 jumper. People queue for like 16 hours, sometimes on acid and stuff.”

This obsessive pursuit of getting the latest look might seem like a symptom of high street capitalism, but it’s one that has its roots in just about every other scene that preceded it. The mods and mod-revivalists looked long and hard for clothes you could only get in one or two shops in the country, as did the skins and the soul boys. The camping out and the online trading is just a very modern manifestation of an old idea.

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The places they wear this clobber out, too, have changed dramatically. In the past ten years, the enforcement of licensing laws have become a lot more stringent as Britain has transformed from a blagger’s playground, where a bit of sharp talk could get you into most places, to a quasi-American system where heavily-monitored bouncers demand a passport or driving licence. In response, teenagers have come up with their own methods of mayhem: keep it local or get creative. “It’s quite dire before you’re 18 – there’s not that much to do, especially in a city where the clubs are so under pressure from the police,” says Frank. “There were a couple of racist pubs that I can remember that were friendly, but any time we went there with black guys they were less friendly.” “We usually go out with about 15 of us, go round people’s houses – just drink, really. Listen to music. In the summer we’ll go to the common and stuff. We haven’t been bothered to go and try to get into clubs, but some of our richer friends pay the bouncers to go in,” says 16-year-old Annie.

The “get creative” part comes in the form of illegal squat parties (raves, essentially) popping up around the country. If anything crystallises the social lives of these kids, it’s these parties. The media have paid some attention, but only when trouble occurs, like at the infamous Scumtek parties, which apparently warranted dogs, truncheons and shields. The focus on what actually happens in these nights, and why people go to them, seems irrelevant when there are a few possibly drug-related deaths and a boy who lost a phone to report on. But to understand the battles, you have to understand the reasons. There’s an air of secrecy and notoriety that pervades discussion about them. Frank describes them as simply

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“fiendish”. “Generally they are pretty fucking sick nights,” says Sam, another London-based teenager. “You either meet up where the rave is, or at Victoria. Then you’ll have a few pre-lines, if somebody there is rich. There’s not a lot of drinking.”

He tells me that the music everyone is going for is jump-up, a rowdy strand of

drum’n’bass largely derided by breakbeat purists. “Most clubs won’t be playing this music,” says Sam, “so you’ll go to the rave to hear this wild new stuff.” There is a sense of mass migration: meeting up to find the night, doing the stuff you can’t do elsewhere, hearing the stuff you can’t hear elsewhere.

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“You can go on the train and tell who’s going to a rave. It’s usually glitter on the face, or the shell jacket,” says Frank. These parties are fulfilling the same function that nightclubs have for previous generations of teenagers, places of myth and lore that feel like they could erupt at any time. The appeal to a group of people who are constantly being denied catharsis is pretty obvious.

“It’s the freedom to take all the drugs you want, and not have to worry about anything – you’re removing that level of fear,” says Sam. “It’s being able to really let your hair down.”

Like any scene from about 1950 onwards, drug consumption is a big part of the parties, and simply par for the course to everyone I speak to, to the point where they seem almost jaded about it. “It only goes wrong when hallucinogens are involved,” says Frank. “There’s generally pretty good, pure MDMA around, coming in from Holland. I don’t see any problems coming from that.”

Weed, unsurprisingly, is even more common. “I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t smoke weed,” says Annie.

“Maybe one or two people.” But weed and varying forms of ecstasy have been around since their parents’ day. One substance that separates them from those that came before is nitrous oxide, and the near-total inescapability of the “crackers” at parties breaking endless canisters, sending laughing gas whistling into a balloon. Nitrous oxide, or NOS, or balloons – or “hippy crack”, if you’re a Daily Mail reader – is de rigeur at raves, seen in the same way beer is at most legal nights: just the done thing. “It’s probably the easiest drug to shot,” says Sam. “I even did it for a bit, because it’s just easy money. It’s like five pounds for the cracker, however much for the box, then you’re just handing them out.”

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The music at these parties might be predominately jump-up, with bits of jungle, house, techno and dub thrown in. But the sound that these kids really think defines their time is grime. Particularly the more recent wave – Novelist, Elf Kid, Stormzy – rather than the OGs. “Obviously grime’s a big thing – everyone seems to like grime and all that; jungle, garage and that,” says Sam. “Even in the way people dress it’s had a a huge impact. It’s a way to socially integrate. You can all say you like grime and be happy.” One part of the youth culture puzzle that seems missing here is a sense of anger at the establishment. Young people today – or least the ones I speak to, and the friends of theirs they told me about, as well as others I know – seem to represent an unusual mix of obedience, pessimism and hedonistic nihilism. I ask Sam how he’d describe his friends’ attitude to the future. “It’s like, live fast, die young, pretty much,” he replies. “I think a lot of these people don’t really see much of a future for themselves”. Frank agrees. “I think it’s quite evident that things aren’t getting better,” he tells me. “Even people that don’t read the news realise they aren’t gonna get on the property ladder, or do that well in life.” All of the people I speak to are either just finishing or continuing their time in education, totally living up to the idea of themselves being the bastard children of Blair and his “education, education, education” manifesto. Living, breathing examples of a generation that was told that college and university would be better for them than work, and that media jobs were better than manual jobs. But their optimism for the degree dream is limited.

“I think the uni vibe is dying a little bit,” says Sam. “A lot of people are thinking that they don’t wanna come out in 30 grand debt and not know what they’re doing. I think

the biggest reason [that people still apply for university] is the safety net, so a lot of people just cave in and go to uni under the pressure of not knowing what to do.” Frank, who starts at university next year, tells me, “I don’t feel it’s something I really wanna do, more like something I have to do. It’s more like fear-mongering – it’s like, what are your other options? Fucking around doing bar work? Those are your options. It’s a necessity more than anything else.”

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The lives of today’s British teenagers seem to be under a sustained attack from the generations above them: not able to go out, not able to stay in, we accuse them of being obsessed with social media, but it’s remarkable how much they’ve managed to create for themselves in the real world, considering how little society is willing to give them. These kids, who can’t go to a pub, can’t really work, can’t even get the £30-a-week EMA that my generation were given, have created something of their own, and almost nobody is applauding them for that. Instead, so many people seem to be telling them that they did it better, before them.

Some will inevitably say that it’s all incredibly shallow, that this is only really clothes and music and dancing and drugs, but that’s all youth culture has ever been. Of course, it’s the variations between these permanent facets that come to define different scenes,

the tiny little changes in the cut of trousers or the speed of the beats or the mood that the drugs put you in. These differences tell a story of modern times, and totally reflect the politics around them. Those old, terrible, Inbetweeners-style clichés about Strongbow and fingering are looking increasingly redundant, as this new culture of free parties, balloons, bucket hats and internet economies takes ahold, yet the same age-old tribal ideals of escapism and exploration that date right back to the dawn of the teenager are still at the heart of what they do.

Britain has a long, incredible lineage of youth culture, and today’s teenagers are every bit as part of it as their forefathers.

Most importantly, they’re a long fucking way from Zoella.

This is only really clothes and music and dancing and drugs, but that’s all youth culture has ever been.

VICE MAGAZINE, 2016

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