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Spiral Tribe was a free party soundsystem which existed in the first half of the 1990s. The group originated in west London and later travelled across Europe and North America. According to one member, the name came to him when he was at work, staring at a poster of the inter-connecting spirals in an ammonite shell http://www.uncivilizedworld.com/WTA_.... The group had a huge influence on the emerging free tekno subculture. Members of the collective released seminal records on their label, Network 23.

History

Spiral Tribe was responsible for numerous parties http://www.beyondtv.org/beyondtv/pag... in squatted locations in and around the South of England including:
*October 1990 - first party organised by Spiral Tribe.
*July 1991 - displaced Stonehenge Solstice Free festival at Longstock
*August Bank holiday 1991 - a rave (the White Goddess festival) for 2 weeks on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, where they combined their sound system with Circus Normal (to achieve a sound system of over 25,000 watts RMS) receiving complaints from over 14 miles away. Despite police pressure they partied on until all of the partygoers went home. The event was organised along with a number of other soundsystems including Bedlam, Circus Warp and DIY.
*Christmas and New Years Eve 1991 - The Camden Round House, North London.
*February 1992 - Numbers Farm, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire.
*The Uni-Chem warehouse party Uxbridge - the police had to enter through the wall using a JCB digger as all the doors were locked at 9am Sunday morning to allow the party to continue for as long as possible. This was one of the stories contributing to their fame as a sound system.
*May 1992 - Castlemorton Common Festival free party.
*June 4 1992 - Party in Canada Square, next to Canary Wharf, London. About 1,000 people manage to dance for a little over an hour before 300 police seal off roads and move in to make arrests.

Twenty three members of the group were arrested immediately after the Castlemorton event and were subsequently charged under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Their trial became one of the longest running and most expensive cases in legal history, lasting four months and costing the UK tax payer £4 million.

In March 1994, after being acquitted of all charges relating to Castlemorton, the group moved to Europe, doing parties in cities such as Rotterdam, Paris and Berlin. Over the next few year, the collective organised parties and teknivals throughout Europe, then it slowly dispersed with some members taking up residence in Germany and Holland and releasing work on Labworks and many other techno labels. Individual members of the collective joined other sound systems, did squat art events or pursued other interests.

The number 23

From its inception, the group was obsessed by the number 23. Images for musical releases, posters, backdrops and flyers featured the number 23. Parties were often organised on the twenty third day of the month. Members sometimes recorded under the moniker of SP23 and of course the record label itself was called Network 23.

Music

In 1992, some members of the collective signed to the major label Big Life, as a result of the publicity generated from their involvement in the organisation of the Castlemorton Common Festival. Three EPs were released and two albums, one merely a compilation of the tracks from the EPs, the other a full album entitledTekno Terra.

Members of Spiral Tribe also released records on their own highly influential label Network 23.

In 1997, Network 23 brokered a deal with Techno Import, a commercial distributor. A CD entitled Spiral Tribe The Sound of Teknival was advertised on television and sold at least 30,000 copies. This deal was not approved by members of Spiral Tribe, who made a statement which began F**k Techno Import and had to take quick action to ensure the name Spiral Tribe was not copyrighted by Techno Import.

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Teknivals (the word is a portmanteau of the words tekno and festival) are illegal free parties which take place in locations across Europe every summer. They vary in size depending on factors such as accessibility and reputation, with most increasing in fame (and therefore size) every year. The parties normally take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave scene and spawned an entire subculture.
History
Teknivals are a larger scale version of free parties and emerged in the early 1990s, when acid house parties and travellers in Great Britain became the target of political repression, culminating in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 Full Government text of Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 section 63. Section 63 of the Act gave the police new powers to close down illegal parties.

Sound systems then started travelling to countries in Europe where laws were less restrictive and the authorities were uncertain how to stop the festivals. One of the most famous of these sound systems was Spiral Tribe, which was at the forefront of the free party movement in Europe. Desert Storm was another famous sound system which organised teknivals in Spain and France and brought raves to the war-torn Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1996. At one party the front-line was 10 kilometres away and they were asked to turn off their lights in case they attracted enemy fire http://www.undercurrents.org/deserts....

While some teknivals are one-off events, most take place every year on or around the same date; the biggest, such as the ones in France or Czechtek in the Czech Republic (which blossomed from a small festival in 1994), can attract up to 80,000 visitors. In France teknivals have often taken place in car parks beside legal festivals such as Printemps de Bourges or Transmusicales in Rennes.

Just as the word 'teknival' was formed by merging together the words 'tekno' and 'festival', teknivals in different countries are referred to by abbreviated names, such as the aforementioned Czechtek, and also Poltek (Poland), Slovtek (Slovakia), Southtek (South Germany), Dutchtek (Netherlands), Easttek (East Germany) and Northtek (Canada). NorthTek was held on Crown Land in Ontario.

Recently in the United Kingdom teknivals have occurred again, despite huge police attention. In 2002 the tenth anniversary of the legendary Castlemorton rave was celebrated at Steart Beach http://www.squall.co.uk/squall.cfm?s... http://www.crossbones.co.uk/uktek200... in Somerset (there had also been a smaller teknival at the same location one year previously). In 2005 there was a UKtek in Wales http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/... and also a teknival known as Scumtek that happened twice in London. Only the first Scumtek was stopped by the police.
Organization
Sound systems gather on the site and play varied types of electronic music. Along with each sound system come friends and travellers so most teknivals have a multicultural atmosphere. The parties can last for several days or even weeks. Teknivals are organised by the sound system community using underground methods such as word of mouth, answerphone messages, flyer (pamphlet) and internet discussion boards. Normally the flyer states that the party is an open invitation, thus any artist who turns up can play music. The emphasis is on a DIY ethic. As well as local sound systems, who might act as the hosts, larger sound systems can spend the summer travelling from one teknival to the next before returning to their home country for the winter.