Raves dilute classism, racism and sexism in a way that conventional club nights can’t. Here, we narrate the birth of Incrypted London, a rave promoter founded by uni students Will, Olen, Louis, Alfie and Sonny
The five of us were DJs with a sonorous set of speakers. What more could you need to run a rave? In our case, all it took was a text message – ‘let’s set up our speakers in an abandoned mansion along Billionaires Row’ – for us to puncture the underground scene. The next thing we knew, our bluetooth speakers were vibrating through the streets that Russian oligarchs called home. A writhing mass of bodies pulsated before us. They were eager for an encore. It came in the form of Incrypted London, our strictly legal take on the revered rave.
We were getting big. Leave it to word-of-mouth marketing to transform a free party for our friends into a sanctuary for seasoned and unseasoned ravers alike. Rather than messing about with a couple of speakers, we decided to take the frenzy under the blinding lights of an independent venue. From recruiting resident DJs to commissioning artists to design psychedelic posters, we left no stone unturned. As we went down the legal route, our attendees grew alongside us.
Herein lies the charm of rave culture. Underground or not, a close-knit community has our back. It doesn’t matter where the dance floor is. Revellers have followed us from derelict mansions to beer gardens to nightclubs where vodka is cheaper than drinking water. They’ve even helped us set up from time-to-time. We started doing this for them anyway. People forget that we’re a quintet of part-DJs, part-uni students, who have lost hundreds of pounds for the sake of celebrating sound and movement. Where the conventional club exists for profit, we exist for people: their minds, bodies and souls.
Our obsession with drum and bass helps. The EDM sub-genre that punctuated British rave culture in the ‘90s finds its roots in Jamaican dub and reggae sounds. It isn’t all about supersonic tempos and heavy basslines. Peace, unity and respect: the tenets of D&B and the loving cultures that influenced it are reverberated through each of our events.
My days as a nightlife neophyte were made memorable by a man who would shamelessly dress up as Elsa from Frozen. He was committed to the costume and the character, turning heads at every possible event as a fictional princess. Nobody questioned it. Everybody loved it – so much so that he was baptised ‘rave Elsa.’ Consider him an insignia of the organic, individualistic and happy-go-lucky subculture that separates raves from the creeps and clout-chasers. Think of it this way: Incrypted London aims to cultivate a crowd that would laugh with rave Elsa and not at him.
The London club scene is tainted with horror stories of discrimination and ill-intent. Sad to say, even security guards are not immune to the racism that determines who goes past the front doors. Raves are refuge for the outcasts, who would otherwise be pushed to the margins of an overpriced club. Our dance floor sees no gender, race or class. Any veteran raver will tell you that people at raves – strangers included – look after one another. In a nightlife atmosphere that reeks of rivalry, social media-driven facades and artificial conversations, raves are a breath of fresh air.
Since day one, we’ve steadily forged a safe space to get down and dance. We care more about the kind, rather than the number, of people who pull up at our parties. As they say, it’s all in the details. We’re careful – borderline finicky – about who we bring in, whether it’s the staff and security or the DJs and the sets they play. Countless hours are spent perfecting our line-ups so that each rave rhapsodises over a completely new sound, talent and genre. We want you to see something you’ve never seen before and may never see again. We don’t sell drinks, we sell a good time. We don’t play music, we perform it. That’s something you won’t get from a club with a Spotify playlist on heavy rotation.
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All images, Ⓒ pexels and Incrypted London.