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[title]It’s 1988. The walls are sweating, your ears are ringing with thick acid squelches, and a hundred bodies are moving together in an ecstatic, love-drenched frenzy. The absolute best part about it? There are no BeReals, drunk texts, or Instagram Stories in sight.
Dave Swindells was Time Out London’s Clubbing editor from 1986 until 2009, arriving just in time to capture the seismic effect of acid house on club culture. Photographing and reporting on the scene for the mag as the music grew from the underground into the overground, Swindells revisits the summer of ’88 in his new book, ‘Acid House as It Happened’.
From early nights at Future and Shoom to larger parties at Spectrum, Trip, car parks and warehouses, Swindells’ photos emit a dangerous dose of nostalgia. Colourful seas of smiley face T-shirts, baggy jeans and bandanas fill the frames, with key players like Andrew Weatherall recognisable among some of the crowds. That’s right, folks: there were no Infernos fish tanks or Love Island guest appearances in those days.
For Swindells, it all started at Future: a balearic beats party hosted by Paul Oakenfold in The Soundshaft behind Charing Cross station, a venue which is now part of Heaven. ‘Ten minutes after walking in, I just thought: ‘wow, this is the future’,’ Swindells says. He remembers it being packed with all kinds of carefree punters, from football hooligans to trendy club kids. ‘When acid house – basically, when ecstasy – liberated so many people and their attitudes, it was obvious that this was going to have a massive impact.’
That same weekend, Swindells went to Shoom, a club in a gym on Southwark Street. ‘The Shoom Club encouraged expressive, uninhibited fun that sent world-weary clubbers into rapture, especially because it ran late on a Saturday night and regulars could be as self-indulgent as they liked,’ Swindells wrote in Time Out in June 1988, as part of a feature detailing the potential for a second ‘Summer of Love’. ‘Shoom in particular had this family, almost back to childhood, vibe,’ Swindells says.
In London at the time, the music of acid house felt fresh and new – and it just so happened that there was loads of it. ‘House music had only been played in certain clubs and on pirate radio in the UK,’ Swindells says. ‘So there were two or three years of really great music [mostly made in the US], ready to be played.’
The scene expanded and grew in popularity, taking over larger venues like Spectrum and the Astoria where queues of 600 could be found at the door and street parties spilled onto Tottenham Court Road after hours.
By summer, the scene had reached east London. ‘While the West End shifts gears towards garage grooves and gets more soulful, hardcore Acid House is burning holes in the East End, the suburbs and out of town, where the crowd are just as enthusiastic as the First Mateys were back at Shoom in the spring,’ reported Time Out in September.
While the tabloid press caught onto acid house later on, Time Out and style magazines like The Face and i-D championed the scene with caution. Swindells even avoided listing the correct postcodes of parties in Time Out. ‘As journalists, we were all really kind of conscious of not basically telling the truth about what was going on, because we thought it would kill it,’ he says. ‘I talked about ecstatic dances, but just sort of hinted at the drug use.’
According to Swindells, it was a moment in London nightlife where divisions of class, colour, and gender seemed to melt away as everyone became part of one groove. It almost didn’t matter what clothes you wore or what football team you supported, as long as you kept moving. Acieeeeed!
‘Acid House As It Happened’ by Dave Swindells is £50 and is available from IDEA here. Follow him on Instagram @dave_swindells.
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