Angus Farquhar

This is a great piece of imaginative social documentary making, that Deller situates in a truly diverse sixth form class in London now is all the more interesting, especially as it makes the activism and direct confrontation of the 80's, (which to many of us feels like recent history), seem so distant to this generation. He cuts footage of early raves together in a thoughtful way, especially by tracking the roots back to early Detroit house and black dance music in America. Conflating the hedonism of the scene with the radical resistance during the Miner's strike, could appear tenuous except many of the same people fought the police and heavy-handed state interference over two different decades. It's a joy when the schoolkids play with some of the early music tools that bridged the analogue/digital crossover at the start of the 90's, the idea of people taking production into their own hands, still rings true. All in all a genuine and imaginative series of linked ideas, offering a counter to the mainstream narrative of that time.