Latest news with #rave
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Liquid star Eamon Downes has died: Tributes pour in as rave pioneer behind club anthem Sweet Harmony loses five year cancer battle
Rave pioneer Eamon Downes has died following a five year battle with cancer, his family confirmed on Tuesday. The talented producer, who was also known as Ame, enjoyed enormous success as one half of pioneering dance act Liquid in the early 1990s. Signed to XL Recordings - the label responsible for launching The Prodigy - Downes and band-mate Shane Heneghan, best known as DJ Model, scored one of the biggest hits of the era with Sweet Harmony. Originally released independently in 1991, the iconic track sampled heavily from the CeCe Rogers' 1987 single Someday - notably its euphoric piano motif. Confirming his death on social media, fellow DJ Billy Daniel Bunter wrote: 'It's with heartbreaking sadness that I'm letting the world know we've lost Eamon Downes, devoted husband to Stella, proud dad to Bea, and one of my closest friends one really hurts. 'I still remember him playing me 'Sweet Harmony' down the phone before it got cut. When XL signed it, he was buzzing. Sending dubplates by bike to Pete Tong and then straight to me at Labrynth, he loved that side of things.' MORE TO FOLLOW
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Such a violent confrontation': Love Decade, the Leeds rave that prompted 836 arrests
As the booming sub-bass of LFO rattled around an old Sony warehouse on the outskirts of Leeds in July 1990, the reverberating sound was enough to mute the buzz of police helicopters circling above. However, when their lights began to pierce through the glass windows, the 800-plus ravers at Love Decade knew something wasn't right. 'There was a dark, intense atmosphere,' recalls Jane Winterbottom. 'I felt trapped, claustrophobic, and a wave of nausea came over me. I wanted to escape but I couldn't. All the doors were shut and we were locked in.' As word had spread that the building was surrounded by police, a young DJ who was on the decks at the time, Rob Tissera, decided to take action. 'I got on the microphone, and very stupidly and regrettably, said: 'If you want to keep the party going, we're gonna have to fight the bastards.'' People did just that. 'Everybody turned into bloody hooligans,' he says. 'It ended in a three-hour siege and got pretty nasty.' A van was moved against the shutters to block police from coming in, and objects were thrown at them out of the windows, as the authorities even tried using a forklift truck to pry open the steel shutters. 'It was a full-on riot,' says Winterbottom. Eventually the police got in and grabbed every single person, all 836 of them, resulting in one of the biggest mass arrests in UK history. That day, 35 years ago, was a pivotal moment in UK dance music, and one that had perhaps been brewing for some time. This was the era after 1988's 'second summer of love': house and techno were powering a grassroots rave scene that was outraging the tabloids and facing a crackdown from police. Winterbottom had been part of a crew in Blackburn throwing illegal warehouse parties but, she says, 'We couldn't get one going there any more, the police were too heavy.' So they found a spot in Gildersome on an industrial estate. Tissera had been DJing a wedding earlier that evening in Manchester, where the father of the groom had given him a stern telling off for playing too much rave, and then he headed over. 'There were hundreds of cars going from the north-west to Leeds, so I followed the convoy,' he recalls. Things had become so clandestine by this point that sound systems had to be built on-site to avoid detection, and decks were brought in covertly in ski holdalls. Things began normally enough but soon there was a feeling something was off. It's estimated there were about 2-3,000 ravers outside trying to get in but they had been stopped by a police operation involving roadblocks, dogs, searchlights and helicopters. Around 5am, after the hours-long standoff, police got in. 'The crowd were running around the warehouse in sheer terror,' says Winterbottom, who also says she witnessed her female friend knocked unconscious by a police truncheon (West Yorkshire police did not offer comment for this piece). 'The whole thing was so scary. It was such a violent confrontation. You couldn't escape.' The police pulled people outside in groups of about 20, put them into vans and sent them off to various stations to book them. Most were later sent home and back to their normal lives with just a caution, but not Tissera. 'They did a dawn raid on my house and scooped me up,' he says. 'They took me to Halifax police station and said, 'We've got a video nasty that we want to play you.'' It turns out there was video footage that had captured his incendiary words to the crowd. 'When I saw what it was: hands up, guilty as charged, there was no way around it.' He thought he was going to get off. 'My barrister said I was going to get a fine and a suspended sentence,' he says. 'I was due to go to Corfu to DJ the following day. When the judge made me stand up for my punishment it was completely unexpected and it changed the course of my life. The verdict made my eyeballs shake. I almost fell over.' Tissera was sentenced to three months in prison for inciting a riot and the dishonest abstraction of electricity. A new law had very recently been put into place by the MP Graham Bright. The Entertainment (Increased Penalties) Act of 1990 meant that organisers of unlicensed events could now be jailed for up to six months or fined heavily. With Bright himself present in court, Tissera feels he was made an example of. 'And so it was off to Armley jail [now HMP Leeds],' he says. 'It was proper Victorian: two bunk beds and a bucket. It was quite unpleasant – I saw people getting slashed in there.' Thankfully, an experienced and avuncular cellmate looked after him and he came out unscathed. If anything, it did his reputation the world of good and the DJ bookings came flying in. 'It definitely helped,' he says. 'It became a bit of a folklore thing that you were the guy who went to jail for acid house. It gave me credibility. However, I should never have said something so stupid.' It was a line-in-the-sand moment for many when it came to illegal warehouse parties. 'It was a sure sign that this was the end,' says Winterbottom. 'You couldn't get anything off the ground. Even a little party in the woods for 50 people would get busted.' Many people left that world altogether: some went legit as dance music moved into a new era of commercialism, while others joined forces with the traveller community and moved the free party scene outdoors. 'That was the turning point,' says Tissera, who has become a career DJ. 'That incident really shaped what came next.' However, despite the fear, chaos and violence of that day, it has done nothing to taint the memories of that era and those wild, uninhabited raves when they were in full swing. 'It was such an experience to live through all of it,' says Winterbottom, who is writing a book about Blackburn raves. 'The parties were amazing, [they outweighed] the violence we suffered. I could never regret a moment of it.'
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Such a violent confrontation': Love Decade, the Leeds rave that prompted 836 arrests
As the booming sub-bass of LFO rattled around an old Sony warehouse on the outskirts of Leeds in July 1990, the reverberating sound was enough to mute the buzz of police helicopters circling above. However, when their lights began to pierce through the glass windows, the 800-plus ravers at Love Decade knew something wasn't right. 'There was a dark, intense atmosphere,' recalls Jane Winterbottom. 'I felt trapped, claustrophobic, and a wave of nausea came over me. I wanted to escape but I couldn't. All the doors were shut and we were locked in.' As word had spread that the building was surrounded by police, a young DJ who was on the decks at the time, Rob Tissera, decided to take action. 'I got on the microphone, and very stupidly and regrettably, said: 'If you want to keep the party going, we're gonna have to fight the bastards.'' People did just that. 'Everybody turned into bloody hooligans,' he says. 'It ended in a three-hour siege and got pretty nasty.' A van was moved against the shutters to block police from coming in, and objects were thrown at them out of the windows, as the authorities even tried using a forklift truck to pry open the steel shutters. 'It was a full-on riot,' says Winterbottom. Eventually the police got in and grabbed every single person, all 836 of them, resulting in one of the biggest mass arrests in UK history. That day, 35 years ago, was a pivotal moment in UK dance music, and one that had perhaps been brewing for some time. This was the era after 1988's 'second summer of love': house and techno were powering a grassroots rave scene that was outraging the tabloids and facing a crackdown from police. Winterbottom had been part of a crew in Blackburn throwing illegal warehouse parties but, she says, 'We couldn't get one going there any more, the police were too heavy.' So they found a spot in Gildersome on an industrial estate. Tissera had been DJing a wedding earlier that evening in Manchester, where the father of the groom had given him a stern telling off for playing too much rave, and then he headed over. 'There were hundreds of cars going from the north-west to Leeds, so I followed the convoy,' he recalls. Things had become so clandestine by this point that sound systems had to be built on-site to avoid detection, and decks were brought in covertly in ski holdalls. Things began normally enough but soon there was a feeling something was off. It's estimated there were about 2-3,000 ravers outside trying to get in but they had been stopped by a police operation involving roadblocks, dogs, searchlights and helicopters. Around 5am, after the hours-long standoff, police got in. 'The crowd were running around the warehouse in sheer terror,' says Winterbottom, who also says she witnessed her female friend knocked unconscious by a police truncheon (West Yorkshire police did not offer comment for this piece). 'The whole thing was so scary. It was such a violent confrontation. You couldn't escape.' The police pulled people outside in groups of about 20, put them into vans and sent them off to various stations to book them. Most were later sent home and back to their normal lives with just a caution, but not Tissera. 'They did a dawn raid on my house and scooped me up,' he says. 'They took me to Halifax police station and said, 'We've got a video nasty that we want to play you.'' It turns out there was video footage that had captured his incendiary words to the crowd. 'When I saw what it was: hands up, guilty as charged, there was no way around it.' He thought he was going to get off. 'My barrister said I was going to get a fine and a suspended sentence,' he says. 'I was due to go to Corfu to DJ the following day. When the judge made me stand up for my punishment it was completely unexpected and it changed the course of my life. The verdict made my eyeballs shake. I almost fell over.' Tissera was sentenced to three months in prison for inciting a riot and the dishonest abstraction of electricity. A new law had very recently been put into place by the MP Graham Bright. The Entertainment (Increased Penalties) Act of 1990 meant that organisers of unlicensed events could now be jailed for up to six months or fined heavily. With Bright himself present in court, Tissera feels he was made an example of. 'And so it was off to Armley jail [now HMP Leeds],' he says. 'It was proper Victorian: two bunk beds and a bucket. It was quite unpleasant – I saw people getting slashed in there.' Thankfully, an experienced and avuncular cellmate looked after him and he came out unscathed. If anything, it did his reputation the world of good and the DJ bookings came flying in. 'It definitely helped,' he says. 'It became a bit of a folklore thing that you were the guy who went to jail for acid house. It gave me credibility. However, I should never have said something so stupid.' It was a line-in-the-sand moment for many when it came to illegal warehouse parties. 'It was a sure sign that this was the end,' says Winterbottom. 'You couldn't get anything off the ground. Even a little party in the woods for 50 people would get busted.' Many people left that world altogether: some went legit as dance music moved into a new era of commercialism, while others joined forces with the traveller community and moved the free party scene outdoors. 'That was the turning point,' says Tissera, who has become a career DJ. 'That incident really shaped what came next.' However, despite the fear, chaos and violence of that day, it has done nothing to taint the memories of that era and those wild, uninhabited raves when they were in full swing. 'It was such an experience to live through all of it,' says Winterbottom, who is writing a book about Blackburn raves. 'The parties were amazing, [they outweighed] the violence we suffered. I could never regret a moment of it.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Knife attack at massive Portland rave leaves four teenagers wounded
Police in Portland, Oregon are investigating after four teenagers were stabbed Saturday morning at a pop-up outdoor "rave" party involving hundreds of people. Three adult men in their teens and one boy in his teens were stabbed at the large gathering along the Eastbank Esplanade, Portland Police told Fox News Digital. All four people were conscious and talking at the scene, according to authorities. Two were taken to the hospital with serious injuries and the other two were taken to the hospital for minor injuries. Chicago Drive-by Shooting Leaves At Least 4 Dead, 14 Wounded Police said during the rave, there was a disturbance in the crowd. However, it is unclear how many people were involved in the scuffle. Read On The Fox News App At some point, "someone" pulled out a knife and initiated the stabbing, authorities said. Terrifying Trend Emerges As Music Festival Fans Suffer Mysterious Needle Attacks One of the men who was taken to the hospital was detained by police, pending an investigation. The man's identity has not been publicly released, and it is unclear if he is facing any charges. Portland Police are not currently looking for any suspects, but asked those who were at the party to help detectives piece together the series of events. "Many potential witnesses left without talking to police," officials said. Witnesses are asked to e-mail crimetips@ attn: Major Crimes Unit and reference case number article source: Knife attack at massive Portland rave leaves four teenagers wounded
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Four hospitalized after stabbing at rave party on Eastbank Esplanade
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Four people were hospitalized after a stabbing incident at a pop-up rave party on the Eastbank Esplanade early Saturday morning. At around 3:30 a.m., officers responded to the Eastbank Esplanade at Southeast Salmon Street on reports of a stabbing. On arrival, police found there had been a rave party with hundreds of people in attendance. Man found unconscious in car with loaded illegal firearm in Northeast Portland At one point in the night, someone pulled out a knife and three men and a teen were stabbed. All four were taken to a hospital, two with serious injuries and two only requiring stitches, police said. They added one of the men was detained by police pending further investigation. Although officials say they are not seeking any suspects at this time, they are encouraging anyone with information on this incident to contact Portland police. This is a developing story. Stay with KOIN 6 News for updates. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
