AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF THATCHERISM AND THE POST-INDUSTRIAL UPHEAVAL OF SHEFFIELD IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND, TWO FRIENDS, WINSTON HAZEL AND RICHARD BARRATT, WERE AT THE FOREFRONT IN CONNECTING A SOUL- AND JAZZ-DOMINATED DANCE SCENE WITH A RACIALLY INTEGRATED CULTURE OF DO-IT-YOURSELF ELECTRONIC DANCE-MUSIC PIONEERS.
by Andy Thomas photography by Barbara Wasiak, courtesy of Jose Snook
Sheffield’s electronic music roots run deep. Back in the late 1970s, while bands across the United Kingdom picked up guitars inspired by the DIY spirit of punk, in the Northern England city, a group of synthesizer and drum machine mavericks created their own more revolutionary movement. “We thought we were the punkiest band in Sheffield. They used three chords. We used one finger,” announces the Human League’s Phil Oakey in Eve Wood’s 2001 documentary Made in Sheffield . In his book Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 , Simon Reynolds explained how the Sheffield electronic scene of the late 1970s stemmed from “a bloody minded Northern disinclination to follow London’s lead [and] a local spirit of futurism and technophilia shaped by the city’s role as one of the engines of the Industrial Revolution.” But between 1980 and 1983, more than fifty thousand jobs were lost in the industry that gave Sheffield’s its nickname of Steel City. Against the backdrop of high unemployment and the divisive austerity of Margaret Thatcher’s right- wing government, in the mid-’80s, a new generation used the machine as their weapon, creating music every bit as groundbreaking as their counterparts in Detroit and Chicago.
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( opening spread ) Abandoned Jaguar at Broomhall, Sheffield, England, 1987. Ruins of Viners Cutlery factory in the background.
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