For the last few days, social media has been ablaze with posts by confused Taylor Swift fans. You see, due to a pressing error, their “orchid vinyl” copies of her new re-recording of the Speak Up album don’t feature her wildly popular pop-country songs, but rather a clutch of cuts from Ed Cartwright and Leon Oakey’s Happy Land compilation – a set of impossible-to-pigeonhole tracks recorded and released by British electronic musicians in the mid 1990s.

As you’d expect, the furore has been widely reported, with the words of one “Swiftie” on TikTok – who was definitely a bit puzzled by the doom-laden paranoia of Cabaret Voltaire’s excellent ‘Soul Vine’ – being widely quoted in outlets including US entertainment industry bible Variety. Above Board Distribution, who funded and released the compilation, were even pressed into releasing a statement about the mix-up. Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder was naturally amused, as were those of us involved in the project.

It was almost a year ago when I sat down to write the liner notes for Happy Land. You can read those if you grab a vinyl copy of the album (which, since it has sold out on wax, is a bit tricky). In them, I tried to explain the compilation’s concept and justification, and how the diverse, often quite mind-altering music on show was a reflection of a number of musical, social and cultural movements happening simultaneously in the UK at a time when the country felt like it was coming apart at the seams, with increasingly authoritarian policies from the government and self-styled “forces of law and order” viciously clamping down on alternative lifestyles and – my area of expertise – unlicensed rave culture (sounds familiar, right?). My fellow scribe Joe Muggs, whose own teenage raving experiences were partly soundtracked by some of the music on the compilation, does a good job in summarising all that here.

None of which will possibly placate angry and bewildered “Swifties” whose minds have been mangled by the “cursed electronic music” on show. So, if you’re one of those Swifties, I’m here to help. What follows is an open letter – an attempt to explain and contextualise the surprise music they heard in a more beginner-friendly way, making some of the same points outlined in my ‘Happy Land’ liner notes.

Dear Swifties,

I get that it was a bit of a shock when you dropped the needle on your ‘orchid vinyl’ copy of Speak Up (Taylor’s Version) – I’d have felt the same if I’d bought a copy of some oddball electronic music compilation and ended up with one of Taylor’s albums instead. That’s not a criticism of her or her music, just a reflection that my tastes are most likely very different to yours – and vice-versa.

For those not versed in electronic music culture’s weirder and more druggy fringes, the music showcased on Happy Land is definitely hard to fathom – or at least some of it is. You’ve only got a portion of one of the two different vinyl editions of Happy Land, featuring just three tracks. Across the whole compilation, the music is quite varied and includes music rooted in house and techno – albeit earlier, often quite British incarnations, such as Bleep & Bass and breakbeat hardcore (which are the subject of my book, Join The Future, which was republished in an expanded and updated edition earlier this year, and has its own partner compilation album), rather than the shiny, festival-friendly forms of dance music that dominate the pop charts in the 21st century.

These takes on club music are very British (and the presence of basslines, beats and sounds borrowed from Jamaican dub reggae particularly so, as it reflects the role played in British musical culture by the sons and daughters of Caribbean immigrants, who made their home in UK towns and cities from the 1950s onwards), but have their roots in African-American dance music culture pioneered in the cities of Chicago, Detroit and New York in the 1980s.

You may find some of this music a bit easier to understand and enjoy than the more experimental fare you’ve heard, which to untrained ears probably sounds a bit dark and crazy. But at the time the music was made, in the early-to-mid 1990s, the United Kingdom was a dark place – at least for those who didn’t have enough money to ride out the economic recession, or who had chosen to pursue “alternative” lifestyles.

What counts as “alternative” is always hard to pin down – after all, some “alternative” rock bands have racked up millions more streams than “pop” acts – but in this instance it means anyone who was unwilling to conform to whatever the mainstream media and leading political parties considered “normal”. At the time, there were hundreds of thousands – if not more – people in Britain who could have been considered “alternative” in this way.

Between 1990 and ’94, the UK’s Conservative government (like the Republicans in the United States, but with far fewer guns) introduced new laws cracking down on “alternative” lifestyles. The most famous piece of legislation –though not the first – was the 1994 Criminal Justice & Public Order Act, which cracked down on protest (including environmental campaigners and those opposed to fox hunting, a traditional pursuit of Britain’s moneyed elite), travellers (Roma gypsies, Irish travellers and ‘new age travellers’, who chose to live in vans and caravans, opting out of ‘regular’ society for a more nomadic existence), squatters (people who take over and live in unoccupied properties without permission), anti fox-hunting and what are known as “raves”.

You may have heard of “raves”. They were (and, on the rare occasions they happen in the 21^st century, still are) unlicensed dance parties, often held in the countryside or in crumbling former factories and warehouses on the outskirts of towns and cities. Those who organised these events often didn’t ask permission from the owners of the land or buildings they used, and use of party drugs – Ecstasy/MDMA, cocaine, LSD, magic mushrooms, cannabis, you name it – was rampant. Some of these “raves” were enormous and you had to pay to get in; others were put on by “free party” crews, who didn’t charge and simply wanted people to have a good time.

The earliest British raves/unlicensed dance parties took place in the late 1980s. In the summers of 1988 and ’89, there were loads – so many that they became front page news and media organisations like the BBC and ITV (Britain’s original commercial television broadcaster) made documentaries about the “acid house menace” (“acid house” being the name of a style of house music created in Chicago that includes wild, psychedelic noises created by a bass synthesiser called the TB-303). The government decided to react, under pressure from Conservative voters in rural areas and rich landowners, and handed the police and local authorities draconian powers to shut down raves and imprison those who ran them.

At one rave near Leeds in northern England in 1990, over 800 people – dancers, DJs and the event’s promoters – were arrested. Only one, a DJ called Rob Tissera, was charged. He ended up going to prison. For DJing at a party. Seems a bit harsh, doesn’t it? Then, in 1992, at the height of the rave movement, an estimated 20,00-40,000 people gathered at Castlemorton Common, in the idyllic countryside, for a near week-long rave that included scores of DJs and free party crews from across the UK. It was the lead news item for days and much of the media, reflecting their readership and the views of Conservative voters, called for action. That came in 1994 with the infamous Criminal Justice & Public Order Act.

This piece of legislation was widely protested by ravers, travellers, and those who sympathised with musical counterculture. Written into the section dealing with “raves” was a ban on any “gathering on the land in the open air of 100 or more persons at which amplified music is played during the night”. It defined music as anything including “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” – a direct attack on electronic dance music.

At the same time as raves were becoming a battle ground between young people and the police, drug consumption habits were changing. Ecstasy pills were cut with all sorts of nasty substances – and less MDMA, which was the mood-enhancing ingredient – and crack cocaine use grew. Stronger strains of cannabis appeared on the scene too, inducing paranoia and dark thoughts in users. The mood at raves, previously happy and united, got darker.

Then there was the politics of the time. Just like in 2023, Britain’s Conservative government was mired in scandal, hugely unpopular (they would eventually be booted out of office after 13 years by Tony Blair’s ‘New’ Labour party in 1997) and prioritising policies that did little to enhance to lives of young people, many of whom struggled to get work or felt left out of society.

Dark times – whether induced by drugs, the actions of the Police, unemployment or personal turmoil – often result in dark music. British dance music got darker – or at least, some of it did – and stylistically it got more diverse. What started with house and techno (and disco long before that) started careering off in different directions. Music made to soundtrack drug “comedowns” – which was often not aimed at dancefloors, but rather post-rave or post-club listening – increased in volume and popularity, got more experimental (or, if you prefer, weird) and utilised recording technology that allowed bedroom creators to make music at home – just as people in garage rock bands had been doing for years.

The music on Happy Land reflects all of these interweaving musical, social and cultural strands. Some of it is rare, obscure and sought-after by fans of electronic music (just as you sought out an “orchid” coloured vinyl copy of Taylor’s latest album), while some are merely personal favourites of the two men who compiled it, Ed and Leon. It’s a snapshot of a specific moment in time in British electronic music – one that has traditionally been left out of histories of UK dance music culture. Oh, and the song ‘Happy Land’ by Ultramarine, which features on the incorrectly pressed record you have, reflects many of the themes I’ve discussed in this open letter (and that feature across the compilation).

During the time-period covered by the compilation, I was a teenager doing my school exams and heading off to university at the other end of the country. Music like the tracks showcased on Happy Land blew my mind when I first heard it and drew me closer to both dance music and electronica – something I’d previously experienced through remixes of pop acts, indie-rock bands, and the work of dance-pop mavericks The KLF. It fostered a life-long love of electronica and dance music culture that resulted in a lengthy career as a music journalist, and more recently as a dance music historian. Now I’m part way through researching a PhD thesis on rave culture in East Anglia, a region of England unfairly categorised as a “rural backwater”.

The music from Happy Land you’ve heard is unusual and odd, for sure, but give it a chance. It’s possible to love pop – whether that’s Taylor or others – and other forms of music. Some of the stuff I like is strange and celebrated only by a handful of people, but I also love a good sing-along and my music collection contains all sorts of pop and indie-rock hits, as well as reggae, jazz, folk music, African and South American albums and so on (’ll admit that the majority of records I own are dance music related, though, as you’d expect). Variety is the spice of life and all that.

When you’re ready, head over to the Above Board Bandcamp store to check out the compilation in full – you will be surprised by what you hear, and you may even enjoy it. If you don’t, that’s fine. Hopefully now you understand it a little more.

Yours in music,

Matt

PS: If you’ve curious about Cabaret Voltaire, whose ‘Soul Vine’ track is on your mis-pressed record, you can read an excerpt from my book which discusses their role in early UK techno, here. I also wrote this obituary of one of their founder members, Richard H Kirk.