The first Sound System started in Jamaica
Kingston's working-class speaker stacks helped invent DJ culture, sound clashes, dub, dancehall, hip-hop, and the bass-heavy logic that still runs through house music today.
Sarah H. · 4 min read
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London's Newest Clubs Have Given Up on Booking Stars. They're Selling You a Whole World Instead.
Time Out London has spotlighted three new venues, Coven in Soho, Palais in Peckham and Club Cheek in Brixton, that are pulling crowds on concept and serious sound engineering rather than marquee DJ names.
Larry Levan Built the Blueprint for Every Modern Dance Floor.
For a decade, Larry Levan turned a converted King Street parking garage into dance music's first true listening room, and the sound and selection philosophy he built there still runs through house and garage music today.
Sarah H. · 6 min read
Fabric Tore Out Two Rooms' Sound Systems and Rebuilt Them From Scratch in Five Days
Fabric London replaced the sound systems in Room 2 (unchanged since 2016) and Room 3 (since 2018) with bespoke rigs co-designed in-house with Norwegian specialists NNNN Audio, installed in five days ahead of a reopening event.
Samir H. · 4 min read
Belfast Gets Its First Listening Bar as the Hi-Fi Movement Keeps Spreading
Music Room, opening 1 July on Church Street, is Belfast's first dedicated listening bar, a custom hi-fi room built for sitting down and actually hearing records, and the latest sign that the global listening-bar movement is still growing.
Sarah H. · 4 min read
Cologne's Bootshaus Just Made Its Main Floor Play in 360 Degrees
For its 22nd birthday, Cologne club Bootshaus turned its main floor into a permanent L-Acoustics system that splits a DJ's ordinary stereo mix into a moving, three-dimensional field, billed as a world first for the format.
Samir H. · 4 min read
Spiral Tribe opens its free party archive in London this September, and it ends on a rave
The travelling sound system that helped trigger Britain’s anti-rave law will show its archive at REinsTate in Silvertown from 16 to 19 September 2026, closing with an SP23 rave.
Finn M. · 5 min read
France's free party movement is fighting the Ripost anti-rave bill with sound trucks in 30 cities
On Saturday 13 June the Tekno Anti Rep collective rolled sound systems through about 30 French cities against the Ripost bill, which would jail rave organisers for up to two years and fine them 30,000 euros.
Noémie V. · 4 min read
Echostage put a stadium-grade L-Acoustics L2 rig where a club PA used to be
Washington DC's Echostage, the highest-ranked club in North America, has installed an L-Acoustics L2 system, the kind of line array built for arenas, in one of the first permanent US installs of the box.
Samir H. · 4 min read