But the signage by the DJ deck gave a cheeky nod to the new world in which the party was launched. It was a "quarantine rave," he said; one of many that take place every weekend around the UK, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The event, which occurred near Manchester in the north of England last Saturday, caught the attention of British media in the past few days after police announced that several thousand people were present. Three stab wounds, a rape and an overdose death were also reported between this rave and another nearby, police said, and officials are investigating images of participants brandishing weapons.
Authorities across the country are struggling to keep up with the pace of hastily organized and dangerous parties in quiet, natural places. "We cannot say for certain that we can prevent all of these events from happening," Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham admitted on Friday. "(But) it's not about closing your eyes or taking a permissive approach."
The parties are also alarming health officials, with the UK's reproduction rate of the virus just below one and the country only temporarily releasing its lock restrictions in the hope of returning to normal. Large gatherings are still banned in Britain and there is little hope of social distancing during these events.
They are also condemned by established members of the British illegal rave scene - even if their existence is not a complete surprise. "This is the result of the situation we are in right now," said DJ Mandi Gordon, who played illegal raves until the pandemic, under the stage name Mandidextrus. "People are frustrated, people want to be able to go out now."
A combination of strict licensing laws, club closings and the high cost of living in British cities had already led to a boom in underground raves, say industry insiders.
But reports of new pop-up events are so prevalent that most British media are now predicting a repeat of the second summer of love - the short-lived explosion of colorful illegal raves, fueled by MDMA, that have crossed Great Britain. in 1988 and 1989.
During these two years, the ravers would play cat and mouse with the police while they wandered from the woods to the fields to go to the abandoned warehouse, exploding the acid house of their stereos before returning to monotony of the work week.
"Everyone in society just had this pressure on them, which you didn't even notice until you stood in a field and took your first E [ecstasy] and realized: "Oh my god, I live like an idiot," recalls Gavin Watson, a skinhead turned raver whose photographs and books of the time helped immortalize the second summer of love - named in tribute to the first psychedelic celebration of "flower power" in 1967.
"That was it. This is what my life will look like," he recalls thinking of his first event in 1988. "It was all built around the rave for two years."
Is a rehearsal really possible? Much of modern Britain fits into this period - financial toil, unemployment, club closings and a decade of conservative rule - but many things are also different, and the greats of this long summer are skeptical of the possibility to repeat them.
Still, they agree with today's DJs, revelers and disapproving authorities that a new wave of rave is upon us - and the pandemic will only make it stronger.
"I had the busiest year of my life, and all of that was destroyed by the Covid-19 situation," says Gordon. "Things are going to be lifted and there is going to be a big rave resurgence. It is on the cards, 100%.
"History does not repeat itself, it rhymes," adds Watson. "Something is happening, like 30 years ago. I can't put my finger on it."
"A strange new cult"
Sunil Pawar was 15 when he went to his first illegal rave, just like culture was bubbling in the late 1980s in Britain.
"I was checking the laser gun in a huge abandoned warehouse in East London," he recalls. "The DJ cut the music and dropped Roy Ayers' Everyone loves the sun", and the place went wild. The next thing I knew was outside in the cold, bundled up in the sun back of a car, covered in blood.
"I fell off the scaffolding a few flights and I had to go out. I couldn't go to the injured because they were asking too many questions, so the promoters brought me home and took me dropped into the house, "he laughs. .
Pawar's brutal introduction to rave culture did not dampen his enthusiasm and he was not alone.
Every weekend, thousands of revelers of all classes and from all walks of life flew under the radar of local authorities, gathering at British motorway service stations to hear details of the evening of that night. Some would be informed of the events on pirate radio stations; others picked up cryptic flyers from record stores or bars.
"It really looked like a strange religious cult, a frenzy, that had invaded the young generation - everything was new and disturbing, from acid house and techno music to clothes and crazy dancing," says musician Simon Reynolds, who compiled a history of the period in 1999 called "Generation Ecstasy".
"The entire yuppie scene has been destroyed," adds Watson. "As a skinhead, I have always been a rebel, but rave has turned everyone into that ... people left their BMWs on the side of the highway. Former football hooligans teamed up with the Lords.
"People were just finding warehouses or plots of land and calling them out," recalls Bryan Gee, who frequented a lot and now promotes legal club nights and DJs in illegal raves in Britain. "At 2, 3 in the morning, we are all on the highway, waiting for the next pager to tell you which exit from the M1 highway.
"You would be looking at someone at the gas station and you could just tell by the clothes they were wearing that they were going to the same place as you," he said. "You would hear rumors that the police found it - sometimes the police found it, and it would be broken before it happened.
"Then at 4 or 5 o'clock, you finally find yourself on a West Country farm."
Today's illegal ravers are not being sent on the same wild goose chases - but the events are just as secret, organized under the guise of private WhatsApp and Snapchat groups, with locations revealed at the start of the party.
And the events are gaining popularity in a way that established DJs have not seen in three decades.
"It can be crazy. Three, four, five thousand people," says Gordon of the underground events she plays. "There is a very large network of sound teams in the UK - every weekend there are probably 20 or more parties across the country."
Authorities have new concerns about the new wave, most of which revolve around the changing nature of drug use. "Drugs are very different," notes music journalist Chal Ravens.
And the security concerns that surrounded the first period of rave have barely dissipated. "I went to an illegal rave about a year ago and it was so dangerous," says Gee. "I was in this old warehouse, on the high floors, it was just a complete closing of the windows."
But the exit from the underground scene continues to push back a lot. "There is a feeling of being free from the rules and regulations of being in a club environment," says Gordon. "The sensitive side of me made me think that it is not safe," added Gee during his last visit. "But the child in me loved it."
Raving in a pandemic
Despite a devastating pandemic, the parties did not stop completely. "Even during the lockdown, I heard stories of many illegal raves going on. I don't think the pandemic can even stop it completely, "says Gordon.
But the lockout raves are not run by established promoters, who completely halted the launch events when the pandemic hit the UK and forced the closure of all places for people to gather in groups.
And raves worry the authorities, both in terms of safety and public health. "In an unauthorized event like the one we saw last weekend, on some occasions, emergency workers had difficulty reaching those who needed it because of the large number of people present and there is no planning around crowd management and security, "said Manchester Deputy Police Chief Nick Bailey.
A group, organizing an illegal rave in Sheffield this weekend, started leaving clues to its Snapchat subscribers on Thursday. "I hope everyone is always ready for a crazy weekend," they wrote in an update seen by CNN, before announcing a "Lockdown Rave" on Saturday for which a location will be revealed the same day.
As the plans were reported in local media, the group happily shared screenshots of press reports and police warnings, reassuring subscribers: "It's still 100%". Meanwhile, several new police warnings have been issued about similar events. Authorities in Manchester even released body camera images of their response to raves last week, with the aim of deterring revelers.
"What's new here is the nature of the pent-up energy that is released," says Reynolds. "It must have something to do with foreclosure - people despair of having the feeling of being in large social gatherings.
"To be young at this stage, you have to have the impression that a pause button has been strongly pressed in your life," he adds. "The feedback is therefore this explosion of recklessness." The pandemic has not only caused clubs and bars to close, but has also wiped out the entire summer calendar of music festivals and concerts, which are a staple of British youth culture.
These events have little in common with the raves of the late 80s, note those who attended them for the first time, and are rejected by the promoters for their poor quality organization and their implications for public health.
"I want to go back to a rave as soon as possible, that's what I like, that's how I make my living," says Gee. "But it's a very dangerous time to do that."
But they nonetheless attract daily attention in the pages of British newspapers - and some fear that they will tarnish the entire industry. "It's a bad look at the rave scene," says Gordon.
"Party at the end of the world"
If the parties to the lockout prove anything, it is that nothing can eradicate rave in Britain - and with or without the pandemic, today's societal conditions can drive it.
"We are going to head straight into a recession now, and there is no youth culture without a recession," says Watson. "Skinheads, punks, bikers, they never came out of a prosperous era. That's why I think, with the lockdown and the need to get out ... let's see how it manifests. Because I know something is happening past. "
Like many, Gordon places the resurgence of rave on "the complete and total gentrification" of British cities, which see pubs and traditional clubs closing at a rapid rate. The number of nightclubs in Britain fell by a fifth in 2018 alone, according to the annual industry report of the International Music Summit.
"There simply aren't really any more clubs in the middle of the city where you would go," adds Ravens. "There are a lot of check boxes to run overnight, and it costs money. I don't know of anyone who is a club promoter who makes huge margins ... (but) if you can avoid paying for the building, you might have a chance. "
"It leaves young people nowhere else to turn but to go back to warehouses, barns and fields and party," says Gordon.
The raves of the 1980s are also often remembered alongside the final years of Margaret Thatcher's reign and the outpouring of the youth rebellion it sparked. These nuances resonate again through free spins in the UK.
"I'm talking to young people 20, 30 (today), it's really the same thing," says Pawar, who recently held an art exhibit featuring images and stories from the second summer of the love. "You are deprived of your rights, you have no voice.
"I was quite horrified by these raves in Manchester," said Ravens. "But if you are now 18, you feel that there is no future ... it is not a very promising prospect for children of this age, and I am not at all surprised that there could be a "party at the end of the world" "attitude."
The response to the pandemic, much criticized by the British government, may also have added fuel to the fire. "It sounds a lot like one rule for the other, and I think people have had enough," says Gordon, referring to the Dominic Cummings scandal as she predicts a rave resurgence after Covid .
A third summer of love?
Although politics have never been their main motivation, many older ravers remember the ferocity with which the media and John Major's government targeted raves in the early 1990s.
"When the press took it, they looked very negative. It was all about drugs," recalls Pawar. This concern culminated in a free week-long party at Castlemorton Common in central England in 1992, which sparked the front page and a final legislative nail in the rave coffin.
"New age travelers, ravers and racketeers of drugs have arrived at a force of two divisions of the motorized army, with several massive bands and, above all, a highly sophisticated command and signal system," said the local conservative MP frightened in the House of Commons after this event. "However, they did not bring latrines," he said.
"They just took over someone's land, and when they were hungry, they started to cook the farmer's sheep," recalls Gee, who attended the party. "I remember going there, then I came back to London and came back for another day. You couldn't have that now."
Responding to the outcry, Major adopted a law on public order which prohibited unlicensed delirium and suppressed music "characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".
"It is time for Beethoven to overturn if that is to be the definition of" music, "" said Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, a withered judgment on the sour house, as the bill passed the upper house of parliament and became law.
"No member of parliament could ever side with ravers," said Reynolds. "Anything that has to do with drugs or large gatherings that disrupts the peace and tranquility of areas with high land value ... is something that normal voters of the average England type would strongly oppose."
Rave was never the same again. "It was going back and forth so quickly," recalls Watson. "It was really a chance to be part of this revolution ... for a small window there, there was total freedom."
But the desire to rave in Britain remains strong - and those who have waited to join the scene feel that their time is back. "The rave scene is really important," says Gordon. "If we don't have this escape, I think there will be a lot of hostility."
"There are loads of sound systems I know that are anxious to get out, and they are waiting for their time and waiting for that to happen," she adds. "I think it's getting closer."
