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The dance music history of East Anglia is rich, multi-layered and messy  — and little documented. Matt Anniss chats to some of the scene’s longstanding figureheads about the region’s airfield parties, seaside throwdowns and forgotten clubs, discovering a vital but rarely discussed stage in the UK’s rave evolution

1st May 1994 was the first big London protest against the looming Criminal Justice Bill, the piece of legislation that first proscribed a genre of music — rave music, “wholly or predominantly categorised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” — in law. Despite widespread demonstrations at what was seen as draconian power-grabs by the UK authorities, the Bill became law later in 1994. Here, Harold Heath looks back at the reaction from the dance music community at the time, and the Act’s lasting impact on the rave scene today

Amapiano has become a world-conquering genre since emerging in South Africa over a decade ago, with the sound mutating in recent years to solidify its place as an embedded dance music culture. Here, Shiba Melissa Mazaza asks: who are the South African artists carrying the torch for amapiano right now?
 

In the midst of the ruinous Thatcher era, Manchester’s Hulme Crescents estate became a haven for squatters, anarchists and acid house ravers, who converged in the hedonistic flat-turned-studio and after-hours club, The Kitchen. Kemi Alemoru speaks to former residents, DJs and familiar guests from the Madchester scene about the lasting impact this space had on the city’s cultural landscape