We’re teaming up with No Tags, for our money the best music podcast going, to bring a screening of “Free Party: A Folk History” to the Showroom cinema as part of the Festival of Debate.
Our evening will also include a Q&A between Chal, Tom and the wonderful Grace Sands of the legendary DiY Soundsystem crew, now a resident at the infamous Adonis parties in London.
About the Film
Free Party: A Folk History (Aaron Trinder, 2023) is major new, independently made, feature documentary following the birth of the free party movement in the late 80s and early 90s and the impact it's had on our present times. The film follows the inception of the movement, a meeting between ravers and the new age travellers during Thatcher's last days in power, and the explosive years that followed, leading up the infamous Castlemorton free festival in 1992 - the largest ever illegal rave, which provoked the drastic change of the laws of trespass with the notorious introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994.
About our panellists
No Tags
No Tags is a podcast and newsletter chronicling underground music culture headed up by Chal Ravens and Tom Lea.
Chal Ravens
Chal Ravens is a London-based music journalist whose writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Wire, Pitchfork, the London Review of Books and many other publications over the last decade. She is the co-host of No Tags, a podcast about underground music culture which launched in late 2023, and recently co-edited the first collected volume of interviews and essays from the show. She is currently the head of audio at Novara Media.
Tom Lea
Tom Lea runs Local Action, an award-winning independent record label based in London. He is the co-host of No Tags, a podcast about underground music culture which launched in late 2023, and recently co-edited the first collected volume of interviews and essays from the show. Prior to this, he edited FACT Magazine between 2010 and 2015, and has managed and worked with many influential artists in the fields of club music, R&B, grime and more.
Grace Sands (DiY / Adonis)
DJ Grace Sands is an underground legend. Her sets bring a queer take on the deep house from her DiY Sound System roots, free parties and worldwide travels in the partnership Digs & Woosh. She’s a current resident at Londons Adonis and Glastonbury's NYC Downlow
Tickets via the Showroom Cinema. You can check out the rest of the Festival of Debate programme here.