The Jungle Years
with Tristan O'Neill
Tristan captured the Jungle and Drum & Bass raves that took over UK nightlife in the latter half of the 1990s. Filling up big arenas across the country every weekend, thousands of kids would gather to skank, whistle and sweat away the hours until sunlight. It was a lifestyle that centred around love for a new and energetic sound. Pirate radio stations, magazines, fashion and raving made up the fabric of an exciting new dawn for youth culture.
Interview by Esta Rae | 06.04.24
How did you get into club photography?
I was born in London and brought up in Belgium which is where I got into taking photos. I came back to London and did GCSE photography and loved it, it was my favourite subject. I spent all my time in the library reading every book and magazine I could and taking in all the photos so my composition was really good. I was naturally good at taking pictures and I never stopped taking them. I’ve had millions of cameras over the years but now I just always use my phone because it’s always on me. Around age 16 at the same time I was doing the GCSE I started listening to pirate radio stations and really liking the music which was a lot of hardcore jungle at the time. My friend would come to my house every weekend and we’d listen to pirate radio stations together. He would go to the record stores and found this magazine that was a few sheets of black and white paper stapled together and folded, it was made by the people who did Labyrinth club in Dalston and he said why don’t you contact them and see if you could go and photograph one on their nights. So I went down with my friend Carlo and queued up outside for what seemed like forever, I’d never been to a club before so really didn’t know what to expect. It was tiny inside, a labyrinth of rooms going up, down, left, right and all over the place. Absolutely rammed and sweaty.
After that I shot at a much bigger special event rave which was very different. I was reaching out to Atmosphere Magazine for months asking to do work for them but nothing ever happened so I took matters into my own hands and got a ticket for Orange Club in Leicester Square. It started at 4 in the morning which was horrific because i’m not a night person. I went to bed, got up and put my huge puffer jacket on, camera hiding inside it. In those days you got searched quite well so I was always surprised I managed to get in with my camera. I took some pictures of that night in Leicester Square and bumped into Nicky Blackmarket who worked at Black Market Records and I recognised. I’m not a word person, I’m a picture person. There was no way I was going to write a review but all reviews need pictures. I asked Nicky Blackmarket if he’d be interested in writing me a review, he’s really friendly, and he did and I sent it off a few days later with my photos and it got published the week after. That was basically the start, after that every other week I was out taking photos.and searching out every single music magazine I could do pictures for.
So you’re not a night person but you were drawn into the clubs because you loved the music?
Both the music and the pictures kept me up. I would take a maximum of five rolls of film and when I ran out of that I was ready to go home. I didn't drink or do anything else. By three o’clock in the morning I was ready to go. I was there listening to the music and going around searching for pictures of everyone else and seeing what the vibe was.
The time that sticks out to me was from ‘94 to 2000 because that was the Jungle and Drum’n’Bass years. I remember everybody going crazy to the tunes and jumping around like mad. It wasn’t a people trying to be cool thing, actually people didn’t care they were just going for it and genuinely partying.
So that’s why everyone looks so put together in your photos because it’s not quite the end of the night.
So many people say my pictures look like AI. Because they’re a bit surreal and some of them don’t quite look real. They’re very colourful and almost stuck together.
You’ve travelled to a lot of parties and clubs, where did you find the best crowds and dancers?
The time that sticks out to me was from ‘94 to 2000 because that was the Jungle and Drum’n’Bass years. I remember everybody going crazy to the tunes and jumping around like mad. It wasn’t a people trying to be cool thing, actually people didn’t care they were just going for it and genuinely partying. Later on I started taking photos in clubs that played mostly House and that’s not what I was into although I enjoyed taking the pictures. So my era was really the era of Drum’n’Bass. I remember people didn’t even dance, they just jumped up and down, that was the energy.
If you’re staying up for hours on hours you need a good crowd and good sounds to get through it. The energy of the time definitely comes through in the photos. It seems like everybody’s happy to have their photos taken, why do you think that is?
Yeah people used to always jump in front of the camera and jump into groups all excited when they saw me taking photos. Everybody and their friends wanted to be in the magazines and they would ask what magazine I was shooting for and when they found out they’d get even more excited and jump into the picture again. I didn’t love taking crowd shots as much as I loved the composition of portraits of groups who are all doing different things and it’s like all these different little portraits weaved in one picture. My favourite ones were when they didn’t really know I was taking a photo and they’re just dancing. Everybody likes to be at the centre of attention when they’re out and they’re all dressed up and having a picture taken that might be in a magazine is the icing on the cake. Because magazines were big in those days. There were specific magazines that were more rave magazines, there was Dream Magazine which was a big one that I got to exclusively do the pictures for which was really fun. So that was really nice for me getting the magazine every month and seeing all the pictures that were in it, it was exciting, I loved the attention I got to have from behind the camera.
Working with a limited amount of film, how methodical were you with your approach to taking photos?
Yeah, there’s an approach. I wanted to sneak in as much as possible. That was very difficult but whenever I could I would first sneak in until they spotted the camera. I never used to ask for permission. My dream would be to have a camera in my eye and people not know that i’m taking photos, that would be the ultimate photography for me because I don’t want to interfere with the people that are there. I just want to see something and get it quickly before they stop what they’re doing. If I’m lucky they’re dancing and they don’t notice. I’m a candid photographer. I used to do some portraits of DJs and stuff like that for magazines but it didn’t excite me. I love capturing real life. My camera was quite small and I kept my flash in my hand, I liked using wide angle and getting really close on top of the subject, some pictures you don’t realise how close I am to the subject. It makes the audience feel like they’re there.
You mentioned those years leading up to the millennium being really important to you. Can you sum up or translate the energy of the time?
Well to me it was a very personal time. Music was almost a religion to me and my friends. We’d meet at my house and listen to pirate radio stations every weekend. I had this analog tuner and we put marks where all the stations were so that we could find them. At one point the things as covered top to bottom in marks, there must have been over 40 radio stations squeezed on there. We’d go to record shops and fight over who got to play their record or tape next. Then we’d go to raves with all our friends. It wasn’t just a job in that period of time, for me it was something really really special. It was the beginning of a particular kind of music, if you image being there when Jazz was created or something like that being around people who were really into it, that’s what it was like at the time being a part of something new. At the time we didn’t think about it we just liked the music, it’s take me a long time to realise that this is a part of history that now so many people are interested in.
Can you speak some more about the magazines at the time and the role they played in nurturing the scene?
The magazines were very specialist. It wasn’t like you bought a general magazines and flicked to the raving section at the back, they focused on a scene, they covered events in lots of detail with lots of pictures and write ups. There were quite a few of them, big full colour and really nice, they were crucial to the scene because there wasn’t the internet. People only found out about events through magazines and flyers from going to record shops. The flyers were colourful so we’d put them on our walls at home. So other than flyers and word of mouth magazines made it much easier for people to follow the scene, follow the references and get engrossed in it. It was fashion as well, they had clothing and brands that related to certain nights. It was like a little world, a little raving world. It wasn’t like people would just go into town and go to a club with their friends, it was a whole lifestyle in a way, a raver lifestyle. Rather than just going out on the weekend with the local crowd. And magazines were a part of that world.
If you could put one object into the Museum of Youth Culture, what would it be and why?
Probably my AWAL Records bag, again, it’s a personal thing. It was a 10 inch small record bag. I love the AWAL logo and I used to take it everywhere until it was falling apart, It’s been with me for a very long time. And also my first camera which was the best one, it was the smallest and the lightest one and stayed with me a long time.
I thought you might say the tuner with all the pirate radio station annotations.
Of course, If I still had that it would be amazing but I don’t anymore. I’ve got one really far away picture of it in a bedroom and I’ve zoomed in but it’s not very good quality. It was amazing how many stations there were at the time.
You can follow Tristan on Instagram here.
