2018-07-29 23:40:11.191009 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub
Published: 2014-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

Off the Map and into the Counterculture

Today, the English house scene still defines the pulse for other house-infected cities. Whether through the brain-drain of emigrees like Heley or the exportation of London-mixed dance tracks, Great Britain still holds the most coherently articulated expression of the house ethic. While there's less technology, fewer gays, and fewer smart chemicals at London clubs, there's a much clearer sense of house's role as a countercultural agent.

Some argue that this is because London's morphogenetic field of counterculture is more developed than America's. London's pagan cultures have endured centuries of repression and distillation. Their phase-locking was probably achieved somewhere in the twelfth century. Symbols and even personalities from ancient pagan times still live in London house.

One such pagan hero is Fraser Clark, a self-proclaimed psychedelic warrior from the 1960s who began Encyclopaedia Psychedelica magazine, which has since mutated into London house culture's `zine Evolution. At his London flat, which he shares with two or three students half his age, the long-haired Welshman rolls some sort of cigarette and explains to me what's happening. From the British perspective, this is a historical battle for religious freedom.

A kid grows up in a Christian culture and thinks he's probably the only one questioning these ideas. When he comes to house,'' the English are found of using the word alone like that, as if it's a religion, "he suddenly realizes he's got a whole alternative history. He might get into UFOs or whatever there is--drugs, witches, it's all in there.''

And all quite accessible. To participate in this experience of resonance, each participant must feel like part of the source of the event. Where a traditional Christian ritual is dominated by a priest who dictates the ceremony to a crowd of followers, pagan rituals are free-for-alls created by a group of equals. For house events to provide the same kinds of experiences, they had to abandon even traditional rock and roll concert ethos, which pedestals a particular artist and falls into the duality of audience and performer, observer and object. The house scene liberates the dancers into total participation. Fraser, whose new club UFO opens tonight, explains the advantages of a no-star system:

Nobody is that much better than the next guy that he needs a whole stage and twenty thousand people fillin' up a stadium to see him. Nobody's that much better than the audience. We don't need that and people don't want it anymore. A lot of the music you'll hear tonight is never gonna be on a record. Kids just mix it the week before and play it that one night.''

So the house movement is determined to have no stars. It is in the face'' of a recording industry that needs egos and idolatry in order to survive. It depends, instead, on a community in resonance. The fractal equation must be kept in balance. If one star were to rise above the crowd, the spontaneous feedback creating the fractal would be obliterated. The kids don't want to dance even facing their partners, much less a stage.

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