Prolekult - Marx, Debord, Crass and more...

London based 1990s label Prolekult was influential in popularising the hard/acid trance sound, but its visual imagery really stood out with record labels each featuring radical left icons. Their first release in 1993, Sourmash's Passport to Paradise, set the tone with Karl Marx.

From there it was an eclectic mix of the good, the not so good and the ugly of radical politics depending on your particular perspective... Let's just say I don't think all of this lot would have got along!

Bertolt Brecht

Che Guevera

Lenin

Andreas Baader of the Red Army Fraction

Wasn't sure of who this was - but reliably informed on twitter that its Russian revolutionary artists Mayakovsky, Malyutin and Cheremnykh in 1919

'No Justice, No Peace, Resist the CJB' (Criminal Justice Bill) - image from 1990 Poll Tax Riot

Rosa Luxemburg

Leon Trotksy

Helen Steele and Dave Morris - the much spied upon McLibel Two

Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party

'Welcome to the future: let me breathe'

Malcolm X

Mexico Olympics 1968

Stephen Lawrence

Zapatistas

Harvey Milk

Aung San Suu Kyi

The Clash

Crass

'Chairman Gonzalo' of the Shining Path in prison in Peru

Guy Debord - Down with the Society of the Spectacle

Tony Blair and John Major - Zero Difference

Paris 1968

Anarchist clash with police in Barcelona, before or during the Spanish Revolution (thanks to @semicoda for spotting)

Situationist Rene Riesel - confirmed by @andrew_wilson_a on twitter

Keith Narey, Bradford Socialist - featured on 1997 release Vuture  Shoque by Logique (Kult 23). I had some difficulty identifying him, but @casperpottle on twitter recognised the photo from his local pub, The Brewery Tap in Bradford. He seems to have been a larger than life figure well known in the Campaign for Real Ale as well as Militant who sadly died celebrating Labour's victory in the 1997 general election.

Prolekult was a sub label of Hooj Choons founded by Alex Simons and Red Jerry (Jeremy Dickens) in 1990. They put out a lot of big house tunes, notably Felix's "Don't You Want Me" (1992) co-produced by Red Jerry and Rollo. The thinking behind the Prolekult label, and the labels, is set out in the booklet accompanying the 1997 Prolekulture compilation:

 

"We started Prolekult up in the spring of '93 as a harder alternative to the more commercial-oriented house we'd been involved with up until then. There was never much of a gameplan involved, just a bunch of preferences and prejudices: a liking for hard, having-it, often Euro-flavoured trance and total indifference to the up-its-own-arse electronic doodling that characterised the UK techno scene at the time.

Sourmash's Pilgrimage To Paradise was a good tune to kick it all off with, emanating as it did from the UK, but packing the punch of a Beltram / F. De Wulf / Orlando Voorn record. Getting off to a start like that, we'd hoped to overcome our sense of musical Europhilia and carry on signing banging home-grown material, but it wasn't to be. Of the twelve tracks included here [on the CD], three quarters were licensed from European labels, reflecting the failure on our part to consistently find the kind of material we were after here in the UK. We're not sure what that says about us, or the UK, or both ...or neither, but we like the vibe surrounding the very up-for-it free party scene that's developed over the past few years and the producers that are now emerging from this sector of the underground are kicking arse. Proper UK acid business.

When it came to adopting a name, logo, etc, for the label, as unreconstructed lefties, we turned to socialist political history for inspiration. "Prolekult" is an adaptation of the Russian word "Proletkult" which was a workers cultural organisation set up in 1907 by the socialist exiles Alexander Bogdanov and Maxim Gorky. The theory went, in simple terms, that at a time when Russia's Tsarist dynasty was at the weakest and most vicious stage in its squalid history, the Bolshevik party was to lead the political opposition, the unions to lead the economic opposition and the Proletkult the cultural opposition. Perhaps the best known work to come out of the Proletkult was the post-revolutionary films of Eisenstein (Strike, Battleship Potemkin), but within a year of his rise to power in 1921 Stalin had effectively stripped the Proletkult of any autonomy, vibrancy or relevance, turning it, as he did all other genuine bases of working class expression, into just another instrument of state power.

Obviously, none of this has much direct relevance to the records we put out as the lack of vocals involved makes overt political statement difficult ("you gotta have house" repeated a few times on Neurodancers' Wippenburg [sic] - the only vocal on the twelve tracks - isn't exactly "Blowing in the Wind" is it?) but it made a change from the cod-futurism to be found on the sleeves and logos of so many techno/trance labels and, in terms of lefty icons over the last two hundred years, we knew we had an extensive reserve of imagery to draw upon. There was also the quiet hope on our part that by using pictures of long-forgotten working class heroes we'd be making our own tiny contribution to the rehabilitation of these political giants who have effectively been written out of our history. We thought that even if the odd person here and there asked "who's that?" then the labels and imagery would have transcended their original role as mere packaging and taken on a higher role as potential consciousness-raisers (man). Unfortunately it soon became apparent that no one gave a toss about which old trot we wheeled out next and after three years and seventeen releases I can safely say that we could put Donald Duck on our next release and no one would bat an eyelid...

...When we first decided to use socialists/revolutionaries etc we had assumed it would all pan out in neat chronological order, beginning with Marx and ending wherever, of course within three or four releases it had all gone. Last minute desperate scrabble to find someone reasonably relevant the night before label copy and image due at the printers etc. and to be frank the odd dubious character go used for expediencies sake". Nevertheless they meant it and included potted biographies in the compilation,,

(if you search prolekult you can listen to all this on soundcloud, spotify and all the usual places)

Breakbeats & Benefit Gigs at 1990s Pembury Tavern, Hackney

I was in Hackney recently for a Hackney radical history walk/talk and went past the Pembury Tavern on Amhurst Road. The pub has been there since 1856 and has witnessed much of the history under discussion. It has certainly changed since I first went there in the early 1990s and is no longer full of squatters - but neither is Hackney! No doubt it has always changed to reflect the changing locale and it was good to see that it still seems to be flourishing - now of course a home to craft beer (it is linked to Hackney based Five Points Brewing Co.) and pizza.

Anyway I came across a flyer from a night there in December 1998:  High-Rise 'Freestyle underground sounds every Thursday at the Pembury Tavern'. My friend Laurel from Luton ('Flo Hrd' junglist) was involved and it was another of our Luton friend's birthday (Kim). Hence I played a short set as Neil Disconaut, can't say my mixture of space disco and Ambush records breakcore exactly set the place alight but hey. 

The Pembury was a regular venue for benefit gigs around that time. This listing from radical zine Contraflow from Autumn 1997 for instance highlights several gigs there, including benefits for Reclaim the Streets, Hackney Refugee and Migrant Support Group, the Autonomous Refugee Centre Hackney (ARCH) and Contraflow itself. Head Jam, PAIN, Inner Terrestrials in the house, not to mention Radical Dance Faction, Dead Dog Mountain and Tofu Love Frogs in the area.

After first writing this I came across this mention of the Pembury in an interview with Class War founder Ian Bone in Freedom magazine (vol 82:2, 2022/23), where he talks about Hackney in the late 1980s/early 90s:

'The Pembury (pub) was like a sort of red base, with squatters, red actionists and class warriors, also a palpable anarchist community, like maybe there'd been in Brixton in the early '80s, lots of anarchists per head of the population and a lot of little magazines like Hackney Heckler, loads of other stuff, a very vibrant scene. There was the music scene, then we'd do stuff like chase the housing manager down the road. Yeah, people were declaring it the People's Republic of Hackney'.

Good to see some old friends on the 'radical history faction' walk, some of whom were involved in some of those things mentioned above. There were various tales of poll tax protests and squatting adventures including the occupation of the empty London Fields Lido which helped prevent it being demolished and turned into a car park. 

'Being a clubber felt special' - Dom Phillips' 1990s Mixmag

Terrible to hear of the murder of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in Brazil - not just an isolated act of violence but a moment in a brutal war against those trying to protect the Amazon and those living in it, encouraged by president Bolsonaro and enabled by his global far right backers.

All a long way from the 1990s when Dom made his name as editor of Mixmag magazine, the biggest and most popular of the dance music magazines of that time with a circulation reaching up to 80,000 a month. It might not have always been the coolest, steering as it did towards the mainstream of UK clubbing, documenting and itself accelerating the growth of mega club brands and big name DJs. This was a phenomenon Phillips himself was to write about in his 2009 book 'Superstar DJs Here We Go!':  'From 1992, when acid house moved into legal venues, until 2000, this was the era of superstar DJs and superclubs. A generation gleefully lost itself in a maelstrom of disco euphoria and house music and clubbing became the defining sound and lifestyle of 1990s Britain'.

Mixmag featured interviews with DJs, musicans and producers, but Dom Phillips clearly realised that it was the clubbing experience itself that was central and the diverse clubbers who were the real stars. The mid-1990s 'were the golden years of 1990s clubbing, when you could meet anyone and be anyone, when the most unlikely networks of people were formed, criss-crossing the country. Club after club sprouted up in drab northern and Midland cities, little blooms of colour and life. Being a clubber felt special. It was about belonging. And for many clubbers, that sense of identity was a huge part of the lifestyle... Clubbing felt like a big, happy party that went on and on' (note by this time people tended to identify as clubbers, hardly anybody was calling themselves a raver).

Those buying the magazine wanted to have their amazing nights out reflected back at them and to see people like themselves dressed up, dancing and ecstatically happy.  And this is what Mixmag offered, as in these examples from one issue (September 1997). A piece 'What are you proud of? captures people at the Pride festival on Clapham Common, as well as 'Goodbye Cruel World' in Leicester, Equinox in Wilmslow, The Leadmill in Sheffield and a Reclaim the Streets party in Nottingham.

Another article was based around the premise of photographing/interviewing people boarding a flight to Ibiza and then doing the same a week later when they returned. We see 'speed garage queens' Leanne and Michelle from Bexleyheath heading off for a 'club marathon'

All of this reflected Phillips' mission for Mixmag: 'Clubland was a broad church and I wanted all these different voices, clamouring at the tops of their voices, tumbling out of the pages of the magazine'. Around this time even I had a column in the magazine (Back in the Day) for a little while where I managed to squeeze in snippets of radical history such as the Stonewall riots and the origins of Notting Hill carnival.

Mixmag, September 1997 - Goldie is the cover star, Bjork also interviewed inside

[click on images to enlarge]

Dom Phillips, 1964-2022. Rest in Power

All quotes from Dom Phillips, 'Superstar DJs Here We Go!: The Rise and Fall of the Superstar DJ' (2009) 

See also obituary in Mixmag by David Davies

Always Remember: the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Hyde Park (1994)

TV Programme 'Grayson Arts Club' (March 2022) featured long term HIV survivor Jonathan Blake making a new panel for the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The original quilt from the 1990s consists of '48 twelve foot by twelve foot panels, each comprising up to 8 smaller panels' each of which 'commemorates someone who died of AIDS and has been lovingly made by their friends, lovers or family' with nearly 400 people remembered (UK AIDS Memorial Quilt). It was inspired by the US AIDS quilt started in 1987 in San Francisco.

In June 1994 the UK quilt was displayed in London's Hyde Park, laid out on the grass alongside sections of the US quilt in the very moving 'Quilts of Love' exhibition. Here's a few photos I took a the time. As always wish I'd taken more and had a better camera!

This section of the quilt was made by women prisoners at FCI Dublin, a prison in California.

'Remembering those who died without dignity and respect. Silence = death'

'Although our bodies are confined in prison, our hearts are free to be with our loved ones who died from AIDS'. Not sure what prison this came from, but if highlights that the prison system in many countries was a frontline in the HIV struggle due to the criminalisation/incarceration of intravenous drug users who were at high risk of HIV.  Many people died from AIDS while locked up instead of being cared for in the community.

'Cumann Haemfile na hÉireann' - Irish haemophiliacs, a reminder of those who were infected by HIV through contaminated blood products.

Jasmine, 24 April 1992 to 26 December 1992: at this time babies were still being infected through 'vertical transmission' (i.e. acquiring HIV from HIV+ mothers) before new drug treatments largely prevented this 

Panel for Joe, Chain Reaction (1980s fetish club held at Market Tavern in Vauxhall); and from Act Up Ireland  - 'don't let our epitaph read we died because of complacency and denial'

There's a great recent article by Clifford McManus in History Workshop on the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt: '40 years on from the first HIV related deaths, and despite amazing advances in the prevention, treatment and support of people living with HIV, stigma still exists. The AIDS Memorial Quilt continues as a living piece of community art through which stigma and attitudes to HIV can be challenged. Every time it is displayed in a public place it tells the stories of real lives lost. It draws the memory of a person, and all those who have died of AIDS and AIDS related illnesses, out of the shadow of stigma into the light of celebration'.

Also a good article by Dominic McGovern at Vice

Hyde Park, 1994