Techno Shuffle

Paul Fleckney is a writer, educator and researcher. He teaches urban planning at the University of Melbourne. Paul grew up in England and became fascinated in rave during 1988s Second Summer of Love. Too young to experience the acid house explosion firsthand, he read the hysterical headlines in the press and watched the pantomime of moral panic play out on TV. A keen techno music fan, Paul remembers well the bitter disappointment he felt when he first stepped inside a nightclub. He pronounced rave dead, buried beneath a thousand commercial choons and a sticky beer-stained carpet. But then a conversation with Melbourne DJ Brewster B. in 2013 renewed his interest in rave. As Paul listened to Brewsters fascinating and outrageous stories, he realised that through writing about rave he could share in a subculture that had not only eluded him for 25 years but also had transformed the lives of thousands of young Melburnians.