Magazine Sixty are once again happy to present a conversation with Suddi Raval, who not only helped shape the sound of rave in the late eighties but was also a key figure in the scene. Now, drawing on lived experience, he retells the story of dance culture through the lens of musicians, DJs, and cultural commentators from that era in his exciting new podcast series: This is the sound of…
For listeners discovering your work for the first time, could you share a few highlights from your musical journey? If you’d like to include a couple of musical excerpts to illustrate that journey, please do.
My musical journey began with the record Hardcore Uproar by Together, which I co-wrote and produced with Jonathan Donaghy. And more recently I have been making Acid House and Electro
3 different genres here highlighting my journey:
1990 Early House/Rave:
2022 Electro:
2026 Acid House: (with Chris Coco)
What inspired you to create this series of musical stories? To what extent do they also reflect your own life and experiences?
All of the genres in the 1st five episodes have played a big role in my life. I’ll explain each one (although some of these are not released yet.
Acid House. I discovered Acid at the age of 15 when I was still at school. To have this music brought to my attention during the peak of my formative years was pretty fortunate, as I became obsessed with it, unaware that 2 years later it would become a huge youth culture movement in the UK and spark an international clubbing scene.
Hip-Hop. During the early 80’s – we listened to Electro Funk many of which were the start of the Hip-Hop scene. The music was all lumped together in this one genre but later fragmented into Electro, Techno (with track by pioneers like Juan Atkins) and of course the rap element turned into Hip-Hop and became one of the biggest genres in the world.
Techno. I went through a phase of going to The Arches in Glasgow in the early Noughties. It was a legendary club night called Pressure put on by local DJ’s Slam. They’d book some of the biggest Techno artists in the world such as Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, Dave Clarke, Laurent Garnier, Green Velvet, Robert Hood, Carl Craig and many more. It was a real who’s who of Techno and most of the artists went on to help shape Techno for years to come.
Jungle. Whilst I didn’t attend many Jungle nights, its role in developing electronic music to a faster tempo is fascinating to me. The music was an important part of the early rave and House scenes, as it was a truly unique and British invention that ultimately turned into Drum ‘n Bass.
Each episode creates a real sense of adventure, with the soundtrack working alongside quotations from influential artists and cultural commentators. How do you approach bringing those different elements together into a coherent story?
This brought together 4 different vocations I had experience in:
a. Music.
b. Sound design – I have been a video game sound designer for the last 30 years so my day job is telling stories with sound so I applied that mentality to this.
c. Teaching – was the chief music historian at the Brit School for 3 and a half years. It played a big part in reigniting my passion for releasing music. I have never stopped writing music, but being around some of the talented kids in the UK was infectious!
d. Writing. After writing a book called A Brief History of Acid House I was asked to write for Iconic Underground Magazine. This led to offers from Attack Magazine and Ask Audio. So this honed by writing skills and prepared me for this project.
In addition to this, there was a hell of a lot of research involved! As I grew up with these genres, I already knew most of their history, but I wanted this podcast to be different and let music and sound design form a big part of the storytelling. So pulling all my experiences together resulted in what we have here.
Most episodes run to around ten minutes. Was that a deliberate creative choice, or did the format evolve naturally? Do you think shorter attention spans have influenced that decision, and if so, what role has social media played?
It was very much a choice. All of them have so much to say, each genre could easily have its own entire series of its own! But I wanted them to be concise and snappy! But now that they are starting to come out fortnightly, the one piece of feedback I have been getting is that people want them to be longer! So it is something I am looking at for future episodes.
From your own point of view, how has dance music’s countercultural spirit evolved over the years? Do the original ideals of peace, love, and community still resonate today, or has the culture taken on a different commercial meaning?
I would say that the original spirit does exist in underground clubs such as I Love Acid, where they focus on trying to create that same atmosphere and having been at the early parties and having been to many of these new events, they have done a very good job! However, there is a huge commercial scene too. Many of those are more about money and cashing in on a cool scene but there is a market for it and millions of young kids are loving it, enjoying it. So I am not in any way knocking it or dismissing it. They can be fun, but then nothing really compares to a dark basement where no one has their phone and people are just into it for the music.
Do you think collectives such as DIY and Spiral Tribe ultimately left a more enduring legacy than the commercially oriented superclubs?
Absolutely! Their role in what we are left with today was crucial. It was clubs like those that really helped spread the scene and even forced the Government to bring in legislation to control their rapid expansion! It makes me laugh that the Government were so scared of them!
I’ve just reached the Britpop episode, which feels like the series broadening into a wider exploration of British cultural history through music. Without giving too much away, what other stories are you looking forward to telling over the remaining episodes?
The current plan is to expand into most of the popular genres around the world. I deliberately threw Britpop in there so people knew this was about more than just electronic music.
There is a plan to look at related topics such as instruments that have changed the world, or in some cases, spawned entirely new genres and even a look at nightclubs that have resulted in new genres of music. I am currently in talks with a pretty well-known person in the music industry who’s interested in co-conspiring in some of these areas. These may form a more common conversation-based format than the narrative formats these have followed.
You’re planning a total of 41 episodes, which is an enormous undertaking. Looking back so far, what has been the most rewarding aspect of creating the series?
The most amazing thing has been delving deep into these genres and being reminded just how rich their histories are and how important they all are. Many of them have had a huge impact on the world and popular culture.
Finally, are there any other projects you’re currently working on that you’d like people to know about?
As I have been a sound designer in the games industry for the bulk of my life I have always had ideas on original concepts for games but making video games has always been such as massive undertaking, some of the games I have worked on have teams of hundreds of people and take many years to make so making a game on your own has always been unrealistic but it was always something I wanted to do but knew it would be difficult but recent advancements in the technology have meant it is possible and lots of people are doing it so. So I have decided to dive in and make one of the ideas I have designed. Some of the ideas I have are very much about music but I want to make the biggest splash possible with my first game, so I have something very original both visually and technically. My aim is to impress the peers I have worked alongside for 30 years because I know if I can impress them, I should have something half decent!
Listen to the podcasts: This is the sound of…
Suddi Raval
Suddi Raval Bandcamp
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