Pearsall presents Squat Rocking 11: Organgrinder Records 1997-2001
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Recorded in Berlin, October 2024
100% Vinyl
(65:59, 151 MB, 320 KBPS MP3)
Direct link to the mix:
https://sonicrampage.org/mixes/sqr11/Pearsall-SquatRocking11-OrgangrinderRecords1997-2001.mp3
Tracklisting:
- Gizelle – Does The Fire Burn [Organgrinder]
- Geezer – Morally Diminished [Organgrinder]
- Underground Sound – No Mirror, No Line (Geezer Remix) [Organgrinder]
- DJ Orange Peel – Chemical Warfare [Organgrinder]
- Dogs on Rope – Prozak Nation [Organgrinder]
- DJ Orange Peel – Citric Acid [Organgrinder]
- Skank – Fly Squatter [Organgrinder]
- Geezer – Gurning [Organgrinder]
- Underground Sound – Us & Them, U & Me [Organgrinder]
- Geezer – Fat Freddy [Organgrinder]
- Geezer – Resistor [Organgrinder]
- DJ Orange Peel – Crackhead [Organgrinder]
- DJ Zebedee – Weirdo Magnet [Organgrinder]
- Dogs on Rope – Buzz Saw (Kids on Drugs Remix) [Organgrinder]
- Skank – Da Killer Weed [Organgrinder]
For the 11th edition of my long-running Squat Rocking mix series (now 20 years old!), I’ve decided to focus on one of the more obscure labels from the 90’s London squat party scene: Organgrinder Records.
The Squat Rocking series is my attempt as a dj to curate the sounds of the London illegal rave scene that I was a part of in my late teens and early 20’s; although I was active on the scene for only a brief time, those parties, and the music played at them, has made an indelible impression on my life.
I’m still trying to make sense of those experiences decades later!
Organgrinder was a label run by Zebedee from Restless Natives / Trancentral, and Lawrence, who was I think part of the Underground Sound crew. If the Liberator crew and their label Stay Up Forever was the scene’s link to the wider electronic music world, these guys were uncompromisingly underground, doing squat parties every weekend in abandoned venues across London.
Honestly, I don’t even know very much about Organgrinder, its history, the background, ethos … nothing. Just the music!
And that’s why I’ve chosen to focus this mix on them – there were much more famous labels in the scene, labels that are still well known and in some cases even still running, but Organgrinder, and labels like it, also had a crucial role to play, and so I thought it would be great to shine my (modest) spotlight on them, and highlight these amazing records to people who might not have heard them before.
What does it sound like? Well, Organgrinder put out absolutely ruthless hard techno and acid techno, full power underground music that still sounds absolutely vital almost 30 years later. This is techno for dark rooms, for kicks reverberating off concrete walls, for strobe lights and smoke machines. This is not techno for TikTok videos, it’s the sound of a militantly anti-consumerist scene that tried to exist outside normal society, of punk attitude fused with electronic music.
Whenever I think of Organgrinder, I think specifically about one party I played at where Zebedee was also playing. It was the summer of 1999 and I had showed up at a squat party in Canning Town, east London, where there was a party in some abandoned railway arches next to the Docklands Light Railway train tracks. As I remember, the Jubilee line extension had recently opened, so I ended up heading out there with a bag of records and the idea to talk my way on to the decks.
My memory is quite fuzzy about why I went by myself, was I meeting someone there? I ended up playing for the Pendulum crew that night in their arch, playing at around 7am, so perhaps I’d already talked them into letting me play? Honestly I don’t even remember now, but in retrospect it seems so insane to me that I traveled all the way from west London to a much less salubrious part of London with a bag of records to try to talk my way on to the decks. What the hell was I thinking?
I do remember that I ended up getting a ride from the station to the party, but the circumstances of that are quite mysterious through the mists of time, did they recognize me as someone going to the party? Did they already know me? I remember the guy in the back seat was a drug dealer associated with one of the party crews, and he showed me a big wad of cash, more money in one hand than I’d seen before, but how I ended up in that car I have no idea.
Memory is so unreliable!
The party itself was a classic London squat party, accessible via a dingy alleyway, maybe even via a hole in a fence, with several empty arches hosting different sound system crews, each with massive speakers and rudimentary lights and strobes, as well as an outdoor space with another sound system and a bar.
I would have been there for the whole night but honestly I only really remember fragments of the night – since I had my records with me and since I left with them, I must have been very cautious about losing them, and I think I was just drinking cans of Stella Artois (the standard beer on sale at squat parties), while wandering around. I don’t remember any of my friends being there, but maybe we met there? It’s so funny how you can know you were at an event and only remember little fragments, but those fragments are so vivid even decades later.
One fragment that I absolutely do remember was seeing Zebedee’s set in the morning outside, playing absolutely brutal acid techno to a seething crowd of crusties, weirdoes, and ravers. My memories of him were of an extremely imposing figure – tall, shaven-headed, pale, and with a large, angular nose and intense eyes. I have this vivid memory of being outside in the morning, hearing this pounding acid techno, and seeing a train trundle by on the other side of the fence, with the Sunday morning passengers gawping at the scene in front of them, the sun rising above all of our heads.
Seeing this very large, very intense man (who was also a resident at the Trancentral legal parties) playing these insane acid records in the murky dawn of a London summer Sunday morning is something that’s always been seared into my head, even as much of the rest of that night has simply disappeared into memory fog.
How was my set? I remember I came on right after D.A.V.E. The Drummer at around 7am, and I was so nervous that I could barely drop the needle on the record, but I recovered my composure enough to work my way through the set and managed to keep people dancing, which was good! I got some good feedback afterwards, and I went on to play for Pendulum a few more times, including in an abandoned loading dock in a pre-gentrification Dalston. Funnily enough, I still remember the first record I played in that set – it was ‘PVC Perversion’ by Gizelle on Manchester’s Havok label.
Memory is such an amazing thing – I was probably at that rave for close to ten hours, but I can only remember a few discrete bits, but those memories are very sharp. One more memory was going home – I remember leaving the party and heading to a local high street to see if I could get a mini-cab back and it was absolutely deserted, even eery. No one about, nothing open – in the end I gave up and checked the bus route and found one that would take me to Oxford Street, where I changed to get another bus home.
As someone who is now in their forties, it honestly seems so crazy that I did stuff like this at 18, especially because in this pre-smartphone era I often had only a vague idea of where I was and how to get home from there. Frankly, I’m amazed that the worst thing that ever happened to me was having a baseball hat stolen. I’m not sure if that’s good fortune, or if generally things are safer than I give them credit for, and I’ve just gotten more paranoid as I’ve gotten older.
Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy the mix! Next up I’ve got a mix of funky / hard groove techno from the early 2000’s. My goal this year is to focus more on music from this century, and to really do some serious crate-digging in my collection. Other mix ideas that I’m working on at the moment:
- White Peach records tribute mix – a fine selection of modern grime and dubstep
- A mix of modern dubstep from the last ten or so years
- Repertoire Records tribute mix – one of my favorite modern drum n’ bass and jungle labels
- Eurotrash 10 – the tenth edition in my long-running old skool European hard trance mix series
- A mix of modern techno all by Berlin-based techno producers