FAR FROM THE MADDENING CROWDS

After Michael Howard's 1994 Criminal Justice Act outlawed gatherings of
people dancing to music "wholly or predominantly characterized by the
emission of a succession of repetitive beats" many thought the days of
outdoor raves were in the past. James Tapsfield discovers they were wrong.

Thursday April 3, 2003

It's 3am, and a rumble like thunder breaks the peace of the Norfolk
countryside. A rag-tag convoy of fifty or sixty cars hoves into view, horns
working overtime and dance music pumping from their supercharged stereos.
The large white van at the head of the procession weaves playfully from
side to side, and then pulls off the road into a field. Soon it is
surrounded by a swarm of willing bodies, keen to unload a huge sound system
and lighting rig from the boot into a rickety old barn.

"Bloody hell," I hear someone say. "If we don't get going soon we'll freeze
to death."

It could be 1990. But in fact, it is March 2003, and this is one of
hundreds of such events that take place every weekend across the country.
Outdoor raves - the term is rarely used nowdays and has been commonly
replaced with the term "free party" - never really went away. They just
disappeared further underground as the dance scene fragmented. And now,
according to police and rave-goers, their popularity is on the rise again.

I have been invited along to this event near King's Lynn by Giles. He is
not your stereotypical "rave-head". A responsible, career-minded
27-year-old, during the day he does research for a major pharmaceuticals
company while studying for his PhD. "There are definitely more raves around
these days," he says. "We tend to have quite techno-style DJs and usually
two or three hundred people come along, but some places you get thousands.
It's anti-capitalists, students, all sorts, but mostly people who just want
to dance and have a good time."

In the bad old days of rave, newspaper stories would emerge of thousands of
people descending on a site, terrorising locals, getting into bother with
police with their drugged-up behaviour, and leave a scene of destruction in
their wake. Here, Giles tells me, people are more civilised and discerning.
For a start, the organisers have brought a supply of litter bags and plan
to stick around afterwards to tidy up. Drugs are as widespread as ever, but
most are using pure MDMA (the active ingredient in Ecstasy) rather than
unpredictably-cut pills, and there is no edge of violence to the euphoric
atmosphere. The music is dark and heavy, and like nothing you will hear in
the charts, but it certainly seems to get the crowd going.

"When you first get into the dance scene these days, you go to places like
the Ministry of Sound," says Giles. "But after a while you grow out of it
and see how fake and commercialised it is. Most of the music we play you
won't find in the shops - people make it in their bedrooms and distribute
it over the internet. People here are genuine enthusiasts for the scene,
and that's why we don't get any trouble."

Perhaps the most surprising thing about raves or free parties today is
their organisational sophistication. Established groups will produce their
own newsletters, and often require a truck rather than a van to move their
kit. Some even run lost property services.

"These aren't your spotty 18-year-olds organising these events," says DJ
Sublim, a sub-editor on a national broadsheet newspaper who runs regular
events in Wales and Hertfordshire. "We have lawyers, doctors, civil
servants coming along to our bashes, and they want to cause as little
disruption as possible and not get into any trouble themselves. So we
behave well and take precautions."

The precautions usually include creating special mobile phone hotline
numbers, which are spread by word of mouth and over the internet. They
change frequently, and only operate for a few days beforehand, in the early
hours of the morning when police are thought to be changing shifts. Call,
and you will be told a rendezvous point - often a country lane - where
ravers can gather without arousing suspicion. Then you wait until the sound
system turns up, anywhere between 1am and 3am, and proceed in convoy to the
site.

"People spend a great deal of time hunting around for really isolated,
prime sites," says DJ Sublim. "And if you know how to work things, it's
pretty unlikely that you will get caught. But if we are, we will stop and
move on. Only the idiots carry on playing music after the police have come
and told you to stop."

PC Pete Hale, operations officer with Thames Valley Police - which covers a
popular area for outdoor raves - agrees that the systems are becoming
increasingly difficult to crack. "We don't ignore it... We try to
second-guess them as best we can, and we've got local people monitoring
prime locations. But the organisers are certainly a lot more sophisticated
than they used to be."

"When officers do find an event, they have powers to confiscate the sound
systems and even arrest people if necessary, but most of the time it's just
a question of asking people to move on. There are some nasty elements, but
generally the people are perfectly decent reasonable sorts out to enjoy
themselves, and we try to remember that."

The precautions seem to work for the King's Lynn event. There is no sign of
the police, and the site is remote enough not to bother any locals. But I
can't say whether the organisers tidy up, because we leave at around 9am.
It's not that things are starting to wind down - far from it. But Giles has
things to do today. He is taking his four-year-old daughter to the cinema
and wants to get a couple of hours' sleep before she arrives.

Outdoor raves may still be going strong, but things have definitely moved on.