Rave sucks : hoovers and housework

Cookney, DJ

Abstract

The warehouse (a blanket term used to describe a number of disused industrial buildings that would also include mills and factories) has long been associated with the UK’s rave subculture. These have become more than just physical places that situate the activities of participants and have subsequently provided a transferable aesthetic. The genre of ‘house music’, for example, takes its name from ‘The Warehouse’, but it’s a specific type of record – such as LFO’s ‘LFO (Leeds Warehouse Mix)’ and 2 Bad Mice’s ‘Ware Mouse’ – that have attempted to replicate, or at least complement, the acoustics of these often derelict environments. This lineage may continue techno’s love affair with the industrialized city, but the warehouse as performance space has dictated the need for sounds that are bold enough to match the noise of machinery that would have once sound-tracked these spaces. The ‘Mentasm’ or ‘Hoover’ sound that was first associated with Belgian label R&S helped to fill this void and followed a template of almost Wagnerian rave bombast with what was viewed as the Roland Alpha Juno’s most vacuum cleaner-like sound. Tracing this back to its inception via tracks by Second Phase and Human Resource to more recently where it has embedded within Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’, this presentation will look at that relationship between the warehouse’s reinvention and the ‘Hoover’ noise.

Citation

Cookney, D. (2013, April). Rave sucks : hoovers and housework. Presented at Noisy Places, Noisy Music: Theories, Practices and Spaces of Noisemaking Panel, University of Salford, MediaCity

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Noisy Places, Noisy Music: Theories, Practices and Spaces of Noisemaking Panel
• Conference Location: University of Salford, MediaCity
• Start Date: Apr 11, 2013
• End Date: Apr 14, 2013
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Mar 26, 2019
• Related Public URLs: http://www.iaspm.net/
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference