Photography by Cian O’Riain
The popular VR experience In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats arrives in Leeds, promising to transport audiences to the birth of UK rave culture. For me, it unlocked a flood of teenage memories – nights in Novas and Escorts, Timberlands on the dance floor, and friendships I’ll carry for life.
I wasn’t old enough to have experienced the Second Summer of Love first-hand, but I caught the afterglow… when the Criminal Justice Bill pushed the illegal raves into more official clubs and venues up and down the UK.
It was 1995. I was fifteen. I’d rebelled and started dating an older boy in Stoke-on-Trent, warmly welcomed into his group of friends – people who would become my closest allies for the years that followed. We’d sit in tiny bedrooms at their parents’ houses, blowing smoke out of open windows and listening to records. There was Teatime Tay, as we called him, because he’d always go for his tea at the same time every night. Nick, who was trouble (and I hear became a porn star, though I’m not sure that’s true). Little Steve, sometimes – gentle and always smiling.
They shared stories of those earlier days. Shelley’s, the local spot, was their regular. All Timberland sweatshirts and baggy jeans. Immaculate Timberland boots. Always a lighter in the back pocket.
They taught me how to roll spliffs. Which were the best hip hop albums. Tay, the most sensible one, passed down little nuggets of wisdom, almost taking me under his wing and trying to steer me right. We had our adventures in tiny cars, aka “freedom wagons”. Souped-up Vauxhall Novas, battered Ford Escorts. Peugeot 205 GTis if someone older turned up. Speaker systems in the boot so big you could feel your brain rattle. We’d head to Liverpool, Birmingham, London, Leeds, Sheffield, Derby, and Manchester. At least, I think it was with them. It could’ve been in the years that followed, when I hung out with kids my own age and drum and bass was the thing.
Tay, Little Steve… four others I knew from that time. All gone now. It was only a small window in my life, but there was something special about those years between 1995 and 1998.
Which is why I was taken by surprise at Leeds’ latest must-see exhibition, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, at the excellent Testbed. This is the only northern stop on its national tour after a huge 74-day run at London’s Barbican. Created by immersive artist Darren Emerson and East City Films, the experience takes you right back to the start of UK rave culture – specifically, 1989 Coventry, when the legendary Amnesia House was shaking up the Midlands scene.
Testbed is the first real warehouse space the tour has visited, and that makes a difference. You feel it before the VR even starts. With a Woojer haptic vest, VR headset and headphones, you’re dropped into an adventure with three others – the new multiplayer twist means you can actually share the rave, pass each other objects, and discover the party together.
Without giving too much away, there’s a moment near the beginning when you’re in a car on the motorway with your mates, heading for a rave. Streetlights whip past. The seat hums under you. Orbital’s Chime pulses through your soul, and I don’t know what happened, but I was fifteen again. Back in that car, on the way to a club. Sharing a can of Stella with Tay. Smoke curling out of the window. The air thick with aftershave and anticipation. My eyes stung, and the tears came fast, slipping out from under my securely fastened headset.
It was in that moment that it hit me what we’ve lost. Our youth. Dear friends. And there was this sudden pang for the ’90s again. Simpler times. No mobile phones or Internet. No mortgage or responsibilities. Your biggest worry? Whether you had enough skins and Silk Cut to see you through the night. Maybe nostalgia is a devious thing. Rose-tinted glasses, and all that. But you look at where we find ourselves, in this era we’re experiencing, and your soul screams for a return to those freer days. I just never realised I felt so strongly about it all until I was immersed in East City Films’ rave culture experience.
I lost touch with that crowd. I realised the boy I was seeing wasn’t for me. And as these things go, I left his friends, too. University meant three years away from my hometown. When I came back, I had different friends. One of them would later become my husband.
The last time I saw Tay, he was walking home. I was driving my first car, a Fiat Punto, so it must’ve been 2002. I pulled over and asked if he wanted a lift. We were different people. Always had been. But my heart lifted to see him. A warmth in his eyes. A polite exchange as I drove him home. But there was something else. A darkness where there hadn’t been before. A sadness.
I wanted to be back in those happy days, crammed into his teenage bedroom, full of promise and hope. When the world was ours and the night ahead was thick with possibility. I wanted to throw my arms around him and thank him for what he meant to me. But instead it was just a nod and a pause – the kind that says it all.
A year or two later, he was gone.
I left In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats feeling like I’d unearthed something I’d kept buried deep in my soul for thirty years. Not many people know I left home at fifteen, or how much mischief I got up to. Those nights shaped me. They taught me how to read a room, talk to anyone, and find my people. My love of human connection grew from those club floors. My curiosity still does.
The baggy jeans and Rizlas are long gone. But the spirit of those days – the freedom, the friendship, the thrill of not knowing where the night might take you – will always live in me.
Standing there afterwards, I realised just how deeply I love Britain and its culture – its people, its history, its stubborn old pubs and mismatched terraces, the sound of rain-soaked motorways, the orange haze of the streetlamps, the way the seasons change the very smell of the air. All the little details you take for granted until they rush back to you like that fave tune you thought you’d forgotten. It felt like coming home.
Thank you, East City Films and Testbed, for handing me back a piece of myself I never thought I’d find again. One love.
