Friday, October 17, 2025

inside the ride

Fascinating piece at the Graun by Daniel Dylan Wray about the links between amusement parks and the lumpen-futurist end of UK dance music - hardcore, donk, etc - with a specific focus on the Hull Fair, where the most emetically rotational rides (Waltzers) double as sound systems. They have not just resident deejays but guest sets, and MCs who chant their throats raw during sessions that can go on for 11 hours. One of the chants is the classic ardkore "oi oi oi!" shout-out.

I had never heard of Hull Fair, which is enormous ("16 acres, 300 attractions".. 600,000 attending over the course of its week-long annual existence) and honestly it looks from Wray's description to be my idea of hell: the roar of the burger grease, the smell of the crowd, the blare of the rides, the glitz blitz of the lights.  And also the aroma of fresh vomit, according to Wray. 


The names of the Waltzers (another term I never heard of - I'm not an habituee of these places - but I like the echo of the waltz,  originally a lumpen, for-its-time raunchy dance before being gentrified) sound like back-in-the-day raves or deejay names:  Hell-Blazer,  Atmosphere Creator.




On this clip above  - Atmosphere Creator - you can hear the MC doing the call and response "oggi oggi oggi, oi oi oi" with the riders 


This connection between fairgrounds and the rougher-but-cheesier end of rave was forged pretty early on. I remember when first writing about hardcore, someone telling me that it was all you ever heard at funfairs these days. 

And then from the other side of the equation, the raves themselves had gyroscopes and  merry-go-round rides and even bunjee jumping from very early on. 

I remember a Raindance advert on the pirates listing "the biggest free funfair we've ever had!!" as a prime reason to go.

Other evidences includee the "Fairground Mix" of The Prodigy's "Everybody In the Place". 


On the B-side of "Everybody" there was a track called "G-Force", which I guess doubled, or tripled, as a reference to the music's rush-inducing torques, the accelerant thrills of pills, and the extreme sensations of fairground rides.  



Ooh and look - a rollercoaster figures on the front cover. 




Somehow I never saw this official video



I was reminded also of the fact that one of the EDM festival promoters - the guy behind Electric Daisy Carnival I think -  I spoke to for this piece described his ultimate ambition was to create a Disneyland for adults.  Isn't there this term "the experiential economy"? 

On which subject... there was an interesting  piece in The Atlantic recently - "Why Theme Parks Keep Getting More Extreme". All about the science of amusement park rides, and how they are pushing to new extremes of vertiginous plunges, wrenching rotations... a kind of  arms race of adrenalin overdose hyperstimulation. 

Subtitle: "Inside the Very Expensive, Extremely Overwhelming, Engineered Fun of Theme Parks". 

Dek: "Roller coasters are bumping against the limits of physics and the human body to keep their riders entertained."

Bianca Bosker writes:

"Rides are bumping against the limits of physics and the human body to deliver experiences that are more death-defying than ever before. There are hyper-coasters (more than 200 feet tall), giga-coasters (more than 300 feet tall), and strata-coasters (even taller) capable of hurtling people at 120 miles an hour. A 640-foot-tall “exa-coaster” more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty will open soon in Saudi Arabia, and will reach speeds of 155 miles an hour.

"The goal is not just to delight but to overwhelm."

Compare this from Wray's piece: 

“What we do takes people away from the pain and sorrows of life,” says Willy G, passionately. “It’s like a big wonderland. And if we can create that for people … what more can you do?”

with Bosker's

"Walt Disney pioneered the art of micromanaging visitors’ experiences when, 70 years ago, he opened his first park, Disneyland, in California. To prevent life’s unpleasantness from impinging on his utopia, he did not allow the sale of newspapers....


Other snippets: 

"But even as rides have become more complex, the storylines behind them have gotten quicker and simpler to accommodate shrinking attention spans. “You have to create these moments where they are impactful, but they’re not long enough to bore you. It’s like, ‘Wow, this is great.’ BOOM—and then you’re just jumping on to the next one,” Thierry Coup, a former Universal executive who oversaw the creative development of Epic Universe, told me. “It’s more like the TikTok philosophy.

"At Universal’s parks, Kevin explained, “everything is as it should be in a perfect world.” Harry Potter’s Paris at Epic Universe, for example, has magical creatures and no cigarette butts. “Obviously, if you go to Paris, you’re going to see Paris as it really is,” he said. His frown made clear that “Paris as it really is” was indisputably a bad thing."

"For all the warm and fuzzy feelings they engender, theme parks spend an astronomical amount of effort and money to simulate the feeling that they are trying to kill us. Stardust Racers, the sinewy roller coaster that towers over Epic Universe, shoots bodies through the sky at more than 60 miles an hour and plunges them toward the surface of the Earth from the height of a 10-story building. On a roller coaster, the theme park commands your full and undivided attention."

"Roller-coaster aficionados have their own extensive vocabulary to catalog all of the techniques that rides use to give you the impression you’re going to die. Stardust Racers, which a roller-coaster critic called “one of the greatest on the planet,” has “top hats” (abrupt rises and falls mimicking the shape of Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat); “airtime hills” (which make you feel like you’re floating); “ejector airtime” (which tosses your body into the ride’s restraints); a “zero-g roll” (a 360-degree twist that spins you upside down and makes you feel weightless); “crossovers” (where the track loops back on itself); and several “head-choppers” (moments where the coaster seems like it’ll rip your skull off)."

"One of the challenges of building coasters is that each one is, essentially, a prototype—Stardust Racers is the only ride in the world that weaves two groups of people around each other and upside down, mid-air—and these prototypes must work safely and reliably from opening day, 14 hours a day, hundreds of days a year, for 30 years (the estimated lifespan of a coaster).

A roller coaster’s first riders are usually about 170 pounds with a head, torso, legs, and no arms. These dummies—human-shaped plastic bags filled with water to mimic the weight of real riders—can be outfitted with sensors, then loaded on a coaster to test whether speeds and g-forces conform to the computer’s predictions. Tweaks are rare, but sometimes necessary: a section of track might require reconstruction or brakes might need to be introduced to slow an unexpectedly speedy stretch. Disconcertingly, one can find videos online of dummies flying off rides during testing, though a 2005 survey of a decades’ worth of fatalities in the U.S. found that an average of four people die annually from coasters, fewer than the number killed by kitchen appliances."

"Roller coasters were once limited by technology, but now it’s our bodies that are holding them back. Coasters can subject riders to g-forces more powerful than those typically experienced by astronauts—people on Stardust Racers will experience more than 4 g’s of force, compared with the 3 g’s typical during a space-shuttle launch—though industry guidelines limit how long riders should be made to endure such strong accelerations. At upwards of 4 g’s, the human heart struggles to pump blood; you should experience this for no more than two seconds, per the standards for rides in the U.S. “The time is very important here because you don’t want people graying out or maybe even blacking out,” Daniel Schoppen, a roller-coaster designer with the firm Intamin, which has built attractions for Universal’s parks, told me. “This is not enjoyment. This is not fun.

And this is interesting in re. the music connection:

"Once a coaster has been deemed safe, its designers ride it over and over to further finesse the experience. To Schoppen, the best coaster is like a piece of music: “Every part has its own motif, has its own feeling,” he told me."


Also this:  "Braving a ride offers “a sense of assurance that you will survive no matter what is going on, what trials and tribulations you may be undergoing,” the Disney historian and former “Imagineer” Tom Morris told me. “It’s a way of proving that you can get through it.” When the world scares us, people turn to the controlled terror of theme parks."



Friday, October 10, 2025

Chav-ant garde

There's a doc about Victoria Beckham on the streamers (not as engaging as the David Beckham one) and that's my cue to dredge up this moment of genius.  


The doc doesn't mention this track - which got to #2 in the charts - at all, but according to the life chronology that the doc follows,  this would be from her flailing-around-a-bit period, after the Spice Girls split but before she launched her super-successful fashion and cosmetics business. A time when she was some combo of WAG and celeb-without-portfolio, drifting and dabbling, and mostly just existing to be photographed and to be seen at her husband's side.  

But if this is Posh Spice flailing... well, all former pop stars should flail so fabulously! 

Listen past the Auto-Tune gloss and it's one of  the more avant hit singles in UK chart history.  

Truesteppers - Jonny L and Andy Lysandrou - mash up the breaks 'n' bass and the stinging techsteppy stabs, but embed all that Nuummy Nuum stuff in a poptastic setting of nu-R&B meets 2step. 


There's a tuffer 12-inch mix for the clubs.


"This tune's gonna punish you..."


A remix by credible UKG artists 10degrees below versus X-Men  - not nearly as exciting!



Oh I didn't realise she had another intersection with UK Garage


Todd-ified


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What is funny about "Out of Your Mind" to me is that Andy Lysandrou was, only 7 or 8 years earlier, doing things like this track "Pain" under the name Kid Andy, for his hardcore label Boogie Beat Records, which turns around a huge chunk of "Careless Whispers". I remember ads for this track on the pirates, which was surprising because you really had a record advertised on a pirate and if you did, it would be compiliation. They must have expected big things of it. 



Then come 2000 and the astonishing total takeover of pop by UK Garage, he's no longer cheekily and  sneakily lifting a pop star's vocal as a sample, he's able to work directly with Posh -  a rough female equivalent of George Michael*, both in scale of fame and also regional / class location (George was from Bushey, Posh grew up in Goffs Oak - Hertfordshire massive, both of them -  and self-made middle class). 

So actually not really "chav-ant garde" although the hypergloss aesthetic of the clothes and the video is totally lumpen-futurist. 

The whole look that Posh and Dane Bowers are rocking  is very much a peek ahead to Love Island aesthetics.  Which as has been established is entwined with the Nuum to a surprising degree.



*Suddenly struck me that maybe Lysandrou chose the George Michael sample not just because it's so chuneful and well-known but because George was of Greek ancestry - he would have been the most successful Greek-British singer ever, I should think, so perhaps a point of pride. 

There was a cluster of Greek Cypriot involvement in nuum, UK clubscene, pirate radio - Nick Power, and influential instigator brother George Power (deejay, cofounder of Kiss FM etc etc). 

Thursday, October 9, 2025

"We'll Cut Out Raving"


 




































I think they are referring to the 'rave-up', an excitingly frenzied feature of their song performances. The feature says are they going to tone down their act for America - I wonder why? 

Earlier post on the 1960s Brit use of the words 'rave', 'raver', 'raving'

Sunday, October 5, 2025

passing troo

 


Excerpt from 

Raver's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1996 edition)

passing through  

(sometimes pronounced "passing troo" or "passing truh";  modified variations include "just passing through")

Rave buzz-phrase usually voiced by an MC either live at a rave or on a show broadcast by a pirate radio station. 

Evokes the transitory mode of the raver, moving through a club, or moving between clubs during the course of a night. It could also apply to a DJ or MC who has several engagements that night and thus is just passing through one particular club / rave on the way to another.  

Possible undertone of soundwaves (or radio waves) passing through the crowd body, through building walls and across the city.  

Some more fanciful observers of the raving culture have detected a near-mystical existential undertone to the phrase, viz. the transience of life itself.