New Rave Biography

NEW RAVE BIOGRAPHY

New Rave

What goes around, as they say, comes around. And never has this been more so than in the music and fashion industries, where the rave culture and dress sense of the 80s has been reinvented (or perhaps just recycled) and regurgitated into the New (or 'Nu') rave scene.

As Channel 4's down-with-the-kids comedy drama 'Skins' portrays the new-ravers in their retro neon hoodies, and Topshop leaps on the bandwagon with 'save the rave' t-shirts, those old enough to remember the rave scene first time around are probably sniggering into their white-gloved hands.

However, whilst the fashions may owe something to the original rave scene, the music bares little if any resemblance to what most would have called dance/rave music back in the day.

The Klaxons, Mercury Award winners, were first plonked in the 'new rave' pigeon hole back in 2006, although their sound is far more guitar than synth-driven, especially on their second album - and the group themselves aren't all that keen on being labelled as new rave anyway.

(However, if they were looking to distance themselves from any confusion, they could have picked another song to cover than Grace's nineties dance-floor favourite, 'Not Over Yet').

In all, it seems that new rave music, at least as espoused by groups such as the Klaxons, and snappily named Reading four-piece 'Does It Offend You, Yeah?', owes just as much to punk music as to acid house/rave music of the nineties.

Energetic, euphoric and aimed at getting people to dance and thrash about, it's an unlikely mixture of guitars and synths, and of strutting Hoxton boys and punkish smashing-up of instruments on stage.

Although the image of New Rave treads dangerously close to Shoreditch Twat/Nathan Barley territory, it appears that for the time being at least, it's the latest thing in youth not-quite-sub-culture to be seen in huge Timmy Mallet specs, day-glo tops and shell suits, waving your hands in the air like you really don't care.

It'll no doubt burn out as quickly as it began, as with all trends, and a horde of people will wake one morning, look at themselves in the mirror and say 'What was I thinking...?'