From the archive: Clubbing and the jpeg generation

I'm shifting all of my favouritist old Time Out columns onto here before they end up in the Internet cemetery. First up: this feature from 2007 on the new wave of clubbing photographers snapping the fashion kidz in east London. It originally appeared in Time Out London in March 2007. Read it after the jump.

Clubbing and the jpeg generation

Photo websites like Dirty Dirty Dancing and We Know What You Did Last Night not only showcase fabulous party people, they add excitement to an already frenetic party scene

Take a trip down to EC1 at the weekend and you’ll see something different. Not only are the clubs awash with party-goers in all their fluoro, metallic and skintight threads, but these clubbers are posing and pouting for some lanky guy with a nifty-looking camera on the dancefloor. Come the morning, proof of their party appearances is eagerly downloaded and lands on their online profiles for all to admire. URLs are eagerly swapped as the night before is crystallised in all its garish glory, devoured hungrily by the jpeg generation.

Digital photography is literally changing the face of clubbing, feeding on the swarms of London ravers who love nothing more than to don outlandish outfits and be seen. Generic crowd shots fill giant clubland websites like Tillate.com and Dontstayin.com, but a new school of photographers are more focused (excuse the pun) on snapping the beautiful with style. They’re not stalking the overexposed main floors of Fabric or theMinistry though. They are inspired by the thriving electro, indie and grime scene – represented by nights like Boom Boxx, Durrr, Computer Blue and Anti Social.

Alistair Allan is one photographer ‘capturing the moment’. His website, Dirty Dirty Dancing, casts a dewy glow on all who grace it and he barely misses out on a high-fashion hoedown. Only venturing into club photography a mere six months ago, his site now receives 900,000 page views a month. Similarly, Chris Birkenshaw, who runs online gallery We Know What You Did Last Night, only started snapping recently ‘by accident’ and has already done the rounds with nights like Club Motherfucker, Chalk and Our Disco. There are few photographers covering the ‘cool’ clubs to this degree.

Instead of pouring over MySpace, clubbers consult websites like these for insights into what parties are hot right now. ‘My friends have overheard quite a few people say, “Oh, Dirty Dirty Dancing is here!” or “I got dressed up for DDD” in clubs, but I don’t really listen,’ says Allan. ‘I try to steer clear of people who might ask me to take their photo – I usually just pick out the people I think look interesting.’

But if photographers are seeking out people purely on their looks then is this an accurate representation of London club culture? ‘Probably not, no,’ admits Birkenshaw. ‘You don’t want to see pictures of everyone; you just want people that look good or who are doing something weird. Private people turn their heads away when they see a camera, so I suppose [we’re] looking at clubbing through rose-tinted glasses.’

Allan argues that what he shoots is a true representation of the big-city nightlife, but only at the clubs he parties at. ‘It is kind-of only showing one aspect,’ he says, ‘but I’m not really interested [in all clubs]. ‘People look that good before post-production, but I mostly take photos of people I know. The flash is just really harsh with most cameras so I soften it all down,’ he continues, without revealing just how he gets that perfect-skin glow. ‘We never see the flaws in each other until we look at the photographs and start to notice things, so I’m portraying what people actually see.’

Allan and Birkenshaw both confess they sleep little more than forty winks a night, but then again, they do it for the fun, not for the cash. There’s no questioning, however, that there is still an enormous appetite for digital clubbing mementos, one that arguably heightens the clubbing experience as clubbers are inspired to create ever-more freaky dance moves and outlandish looks. ‘Some say I’m documenting the new rave scene and that people are going to look back on it and see the history of how it came about,’ says Allan. ‘Maybe in that historical sense [these photos] have importance, but it’s just fun for me; I’m not exploiting people’s vanity.’

Kate Hutchinson

Feature: East London airwaves

A version of this article appeared in Time Out London in April 2012.

East London's new hyperlocal radio stations provide a home for the area's best DJs

East London is awash with 'micro radio stations' showcasing the best new DJs. Kate Hutchinson finds a few of them lurking at NTS Live, which celebrates its first birthday in April.

Time was when you knew you’d made it as a successful dance DJ if you baggsied a rare late-night slot on a station like Kiss FM or Radio 1. But thanks to the recent surge in ‘hyperlocal’ internet radio stations in the east of the capital, there’s an emerging platform for authoritative music selections that don’t have to accomodate the mainstream.

The new wave of stations, such as London Fields Radio, Strongroom Alive and Hoxton FM, can operate free of the regulations that govern coventional broadcasting, a precedent set by internet arts station Resonance, which, coincidentally, celebrates its tenth birthday in May. But instead, these young stations are distinctly Hackney-centric, representing the local community and providing a much-needed mouthpiece for the sounds of London’s clubs.

Location is also key. NTS Live, which turns one in April, broadcasts from one of the empty shopfronts that line Gillett Square in Dalston. The station grew out of Femi Adeyemi’s Nuts to Soup blog (hence the name), because ‘there was a demand for something fresh’ on the internet airwaves. Adeyemi met radio producer Clair Urbahn, they cobbled together a rough-and-ready studio from whatever equipment they could blag, and NTS Live was born last year.

A year later and the station has amassed nearly 250 shows, ranging from hip hop and jazz to house and dancehall, tying together some of the freshest young DJs and club nights in the postcode (see pictures above for some of the station’s shows). Dan Beaumont, who runs Dalston Superstore, and Nadia Ksaiba team up on Rhythm Connection; rapper Ghostpoet and two of our tips for 2012, Thristian and Moxie, each host a show; and scenester names like Warm, Kutmah, Funkineven and Darksky have regular slots. The list goes on and on, and such is NTS Live’s reputation for cutting-edge content that it receives 100 pitches for new shows every week.

The internet allows for much greater freedom than an FM licence would. ‘We don’t run like traditional radio stations because we don’t have to follow any rules,’ says Adeyemi, who presents his own show, ‘It’s Nation Time’. ‘We say what we want and we play what we want.’

Adeyemi insists that, despite its obvious roots in cool, creative east London, NTS isn’t just hipsters who have been let loose on the mic. ‘I’d like to think that the diversity of our programming on the station reflects the diversity of people in east London,’ he says. ‘Certain shows are even hosted in the native language of the presenters, such as Turkish, German, Yoruba and Japanese.’ You don’t have to be the next Gilles Peterson to bag a slot – one of Adeyemi’s favourite broadcasts, ‘James’s Show’, recently featured recordings of storms on Saturn.

As with pirate radio, NTS Live represents the sound of the capital’s underground, but seasons it with a new-school approach. This nod to old and new is reflected in NTS’s first birthday celebrations on April 28 2012. The station is making the most of its location by throwing a huge outdoor block party during the day, which then moves around the corner to a secret location for a proper warehouse bash. There, acid house stalwart A Guy Called Gerald will headline alongside a plethora of NTS’s new DJ talents, all bridging the gap between classic and modern rave-hardy sounds. And, in true old-school style, you can even bring your own booze. So it’s no wonder that NTS is already being hailed as an east London institution.

www.ntslive.co.uk

More east London radio stations

London Fields Radio The original east London radio station creates podcasts from the corner of The Wilton Way Café. www.londonfieldsradio.com.

The Hackney Podcast Francesca Panetta's award-winning podcast series. http://hackneypodcast.co.uk.

Reel Rebels Radio Stoke Newington's own micro station with an eclectic music policy. www.reelrebelsradio.com.

Shoreditch Radio It bills itself as a community station but is a breeding ground for wannabe T4 presenters. http://shoreditchradio.co.uk.

Strongroom Alive One of the best programmes in the east with shows from Wang, Clash and Secretsundaze. www.strongroomalive.com.

Hoxton FM One of the newest stations on the east London block. www.hoxtonfm.co.uk.