Discover the ideas and inspiration behind BOSH

I grew up in the 00’s going to free parties in the edge lands between England and Wales – near a market town called Bishops Castle. As soon as I passed my driving test I was driving me and my friends to raves in the hills setup by sound systems from the midlands and the North. We would drive around lanes and the forestry commission listening for bass and looking for the parked cars of fellow party goers. My car would be full of people, some in the boot, and we revelled in these moments of questing together, the conversations, encounters and connection with people from far away places. And of course there was the love of the music which was the foundation of my coming-of-age. They were the best of times, sound tracked by jungle, breaks, house and techno, from East London, Chicago and Detroit, DJ’d by collectives from Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. The car was more than our transport, it was our freedom, and a space we could journey together in as teenagers seeking our future paths, fuelled by connection with each other, and fun.

The idea for BOSH came about through a conversation with Joshua Tarelle of Manchester music duo Space Afrika. We were sharing our stories of going to parties in Manchester and how crucial the drives were. With CD Walkmans plugged into cassette tape car stereos, and pirate radio stations on FM, these journeys were more than a ride, they were the pre-party, where we listened to new music, had intimate conversations with our friends and cruised through our local geographies taking in the night-time sights of our cities and countryside.

A fantastic group of people helped to shape BOSH, most importantly the audio experience inside the car. I worked with friends I know have a connection to rave culture and most are DJs and music producers in their own right. Crucially everyone has a direct lived experience of rave – and not the kind you need to pay for. Rave is not the same as club culture – it’s free, it’s about a quest and a destination usually created in occupied land and buildings, that always brings surprises. It was about going into that unknown, and being good to the people you found on the dance floor. Smiles, love and ecstasy. Sometimes it was scary, there were tough guys and messed up guys, dodgy drugs and the cops. But fundamentally we partied together, and looked out for each other. We found a focus which was the love for the music and the moment, and that was all that mattered.

• Cath Carver – artist, lyricist and DJ composed the foundation structure of the soundscape. We worked together to gather field recordings at Romford Dogs, and Cath along with Dave was instrumental in shaping the final audio mix.
• David Berry – musician, producer and raver. Dave mixed the final audio and brought his own musical influences by composing original baselines and the crucial amen break mixing it with our field recordings which resulted in a jungle track sampled from Romford Dogs and Born Slippy by Underworld.
• Lydia Beardmore – a writer and culture researcher with a practice rooted in music sub-cultures especially rave. She/they crafted the script for the Party Line, which I then recorded with a colleague from Essex in one take who had spent years living off-grid and going to squat parties in the UK and Europe.
• Kad Karababa – is an artist with a practice rooted in visibility of otherwise unheard voices through his own reflections as a queer, working class, migrant artist from South London.
• Annalisa Mandia – is an Italian artist and sculptor who works in film and events. She has crafted sculptures for Joe Rush (original free party and Glastonbury “car-henge” creator), and with her crew of fellow womxn sculptors and welders was integral in shaping the visual aesthetic of Hackney Wick warehouse culture before gentrification. You can still see many of her larger-than-life animal sculptures made from scrap materials around the clubs of Hackney Wick today.
• Reuben Hendy – is a visual artist who grew up in France and now lives between London and the Caribbean. His work as a 3D visualiser taps into the hyper-real and psychedelic images that define many ravers’ subjective experiences.