At the moment I’m working on a book called: A Darker Electricity. It’s about my time spent on the road, in the early 1990s, with the outlawed Spiral Tribe Sound System: a collective of people who staged large, free and unlicensed, dance parties across Britain and Europe. That is until the British government accused myself and others of being the ringleaders of a new rebellion – a rebellion so dangerous in its appeal and popularity that it required a new law to criminalise it.
Never before in British history has a musical style or youth culture been singled out and outlawed in an act of parliament.
Did the money-makers conspire with legislators? Spike booze-free youth with alcopops? Ring-fence the open fields with razor-wired regulation? Lock up the open-door policy of the free festival and free party movements? Criminalise a culture – because it was noisy – or because it was free?
Excerpts from the book can be found on my blog: https://waywardtales.wordpress.com/book/
Mark Angelo Harrison
(aka Stray Wayward)
‘Mark Angelo Harrison has a fascinating and necessary story to tell – an account of 90′s rave culture as it butts heads with Thatcher’s State. This is writing with a big heart, a sharp vision, a driving energy, intoxicating detail, deft craft and an insider’s authority.’
Christopher P. Wilson
‘Mark Angelo writes with flair… his story of the founding of Spiral Tribe, its evolution and its subsequent confrontations with the Thatcherite state, presents us with a vivid slice of 20th century social history… I really look forward to this book, and whatever else he might go on to produce.’
Barbara Trapido
‘Mark Angelo is a beautiful writer and his account, told close up and from the inside, plunges the reader into the fervour of those tumultuous times.’
Caroline Brothers
