international news _ 11th January, 2007
New Year, Nu Rave, New Attitude
Text by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
All You Can Eat promoter Jim Warboy chatted to Skrufff this week about the
fast developing Nu Rave scene his club helped create last year and suggested
the genre is mutating faster than ever.
“Nobody seems to really know what nu rave is but, ultimately, it seems to
represent a change in attitude,” Jim suggested, “It is no longer about being
cool and isolated - the mood is much more about hedonism and a wider range
of people having fun together.”
Nu rave icons the Klaxons told the BBC this week ‘it's now a global media
phenomenon. You read something in a foreign language and you don't
understand a single word of it, and then the two words pop up next to each
other’, prompting a weary response from Jim.
“The desperate attempt to define and sell Nu Rave is a media phenomenon but
one that is taking advantage of a current cultural shift. On the London
scene this is very loose and certainly not that easy to package and sell,”
he said.
“Is Nu Rave an umbrella term trying to describe a rich and diverse scene or
is it, as certain parts of the press are trying to push, a narrower
definition of some current rock based music?” he continued.
“The places I go out in London that are 'regarded' as Nu Rave' certainly do
include those rock elements within the music played but they are much more
diverse than just that.”
Citing musical influences as diverse as rock, pop, electro house, baile
funk, and Balkan beats, the former Kashpoint promoter said he’s unconcerned
at the prospects of media backlashes, beyond intimidating more cautious
types.
“The immediate impact of the marketing hype has been a lot of people shying
away or fearing an association with Nu Rave but I think that the enthusiasm
the press and a lot of the public now have towards Nu Rave is indicative of
their desire for change. It's a new generation defining this decade and
pushing forward into the new century,” he suggested.
“Whether it's called Nu Rave or not is irrelevant, the change is already in
motion. People worry that calling it Nu Rave is killing something but what
is it killing? People who are making things happen are not simply Nu Rave,
they are creative. Putting a label on them won't stop them being creative,”
he added.
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