On the frontlines of New York’s renegade rave scene

We’re approaching midnight on a chilly Saturday night in New York. The journey to get to the forest rave is so convoluted it feels like I’m covertly crossing borders. I take a bus, to a train, to another bus and then arrive in middle-of-nowhere Staten Island. My friend, who’s taking photos for THE FACE, picks us up and we drive into the Greenbelt, a huge woodland with over 35 miles of trails, heading towards a set of coordinates posted online by Nocturnal Creature Society, a collective that’s been throwing DIY raves in secret locations across the tri-state area for over a year now.

After parking, we bumble along a path until we reach a checkpoint. Two black-clad guards await us like rave valets, checking to make sure we’ve come unarmed. ​“This is our first rave of the night,” one of the guards says with an earnest smile. ​“Keep it up, you’re real,” replies a skinny, twitchy guy in a red ski mask who’d been walking alongside us. At another checkpoint, party organisers greet us; a man who looks like a Gabber Gandalf with a wizard cane urges us forward, past caution tape and derelict shipping containers. We cross a bridge, soundtracked by the relentless chitter of crickets. Finally, a derelict stone building comes into view and we hear the muffled thump of bass.

We’re deep in NYC’s forgotten fifth borough for what’s known as a ​“renegade”, an illegal outdoor rave where DJs unleash a bludgeoning blend of electronic chaos. Since the pandemic, my friends and I have sought out these anarchic parties hosted by a slew of scrappy new crews such as Helltekk, Bodybag Collective and SLOT, as well as Nocturnal Creature Society. Some of these groups, like Helltekk and Bodybag Collective, also throw shows in legitimate venues, such as the 250-capacity Ridgewood club Trans-Pecos. Yet nothing beats the feeling of momentarily escaping NYC light pollution and the endless clamour of traffic to chill in a little idyll of musical madness. Sometimes the trek is far as hell. Sometimes the parties get shut down. But the raw energy makes it worth the risk.

In the ​’90s, American rave culture’s slogan was ​“Peace, Love, Unity and Respect”. These days, it feels more like ​“Peace, Love, Unity, Rage”. The music is pummelling, made by and for a generation that has reasons to be angry, still shaking off pandemic ennui and agitated by the omnipresent crises that are wrecking the world. There are often no rules as to what gets played at renegade raves, from kitschy happy hardcore and jungle, to freakish hardstyle, sextrance – a fried trance mutation that sounds as though it’s frantically spitting out pixels – and ludicrously silly edits (ever heard a techno remix of Edvard Grieg’s 1875 classic In the Hall of the Mountain King?)

The crowds here are typically diverse and queer. You also don’t have to worry about running into ladder-climbing club promoters or too-cool tryhards nodding limply to the beats. Compared to Manhattan’s scenester cesspits, where it seems everyone on the dancefloor has a navel-gazing Substack, and Brooklyn’s tepidly tasteful techno clubs, these coordinates-only throwdowns are not only thrillingly unruly but also also warmly communal.

Maybe the most tantalising spot I’ve been to so far was an edge-of-Bushwick rave, hosted by SLOT last year, in a tunnel system near the zany venue Purgatory. The tunnel is part of the planned Triboro train line, designed to connect the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, and was used in an episode of Succession as the venue for Tom’s bachelor party. Fortunately, SLOT’s no-holds-barred hardcore DJs scared off the squares, so there was no danger of Cousin Greg types scoffing coke in the bathroom stalls. SLOT disconcertingly warned that the middle of three tracks was active. Techno ricocheted off the dank walls and people climbed atop abandoned trains.

The location for tonight’s Nocturnal Creature Society has the sullied glamour of a dilapidated fortress. The derelict building has tall columns and walls splattered in graffiti, from menacing smiles and scribbles to a creature that looks like a psycho four-eyed Bowser Jr. The collision of moss, rotten bricks and dewy forest grass gives the air a sickly scent, like fresh cement from the underworld. Little nooks and side rooms, with a few people tucked in each, branch off the main passage. The central hall twinkles and strobes like a mediaeval arcade, while a DJ unleashes cosmically convulsive hardcore from a laptop.

The party’s only just kicking off and there are already some of the usual characters milling around, from Bunny Girl – rabbit-themed knapsack, oversized ears – to shirtless ravers adorned in fluorescent arm and leg bands who basically perform Soulcycle callisthenics on the dancefloor. Small clusters of people who look like they’ve just stepped out of class at NYU, with baggy pants and beanies, skulk awkwardly in the corners. There’s a gaggle of women wearing what’s probably the Pinterest mood board for ​“Y2K goth.” My favourite is a guy carrying a majestic rainbow triangle-shaped object while smoking a joint. I mentally nickname him Triangle Shaman.

Just as a throng of people spills in and I approach Triangle Shaman to ask where he acquired his God Triangle, a man in uniform sprints into the room. A pack of police follow him. The music cuts out. ​“Party’s over! Get out, you have to leave,” a cop yells, shining flashlights in our faces.

Suddenly, we’re back in the cool night, trying to escape the tree maze as police shepherd us along. It’s unclear what happened. Were some fusty Staten Island Karensenraged by the beats? Did late-night trail walkers narc? A chorus of Where’s the afters? and Fuck the police! rings out.

“Sad ending,” one guy cries. ​“You could get away with any other crime in humanity but this,” a pink-haired goth girl groans. The crowd gradually splinters until only a few are left. Back in the parking lot, we find the two rave guards sitting on the back of a van, looking glum but wishing people a good rest of the night. They say they hope they’ll still get paid. ​“People should be allowed to party,” says one, sullenly.

It’s the latest in a string of frustrating party cancellations and shutdowns in New York’s burgeoning rave scene. Last year, the tunnel spot near Purgatory was found and shut down by cops. A few months ago, police arrived in the middle of a renegade in a Queens park, hosted by Chroma Rave and Zoey Rochdi. In late August, a Helltekk party in Queens was also halted by cops, right as it was about to start. The group alleged that a rival raver crew snitched on them so they could divert disappointed revellers to their own party that night. The drama played out in real-time on Instagram Stories, as Helltekk claimed they’d lost hundreds of dollars from their own pockets, and a promoter for the rival crew was reportedly sucker-punched off his moped (it’s unclear if and where this actually happened, and who did it). As a result of the chaos, Helltekk announced they would no longer publicise events on Instagram, only passing info to trusted attendees.

Helltekk might be the best renegade collective in the New York area. Their events are all free, and there’s water and harm reduction supplies to mitigate drug risks. The instigators are native New Yorkers who are clearly tapped into rave history and the lore of legendary sound system crews like Spiral Tribe. Their frequent outdoor park spot, basically a mound in the middle of a woodland in Queens, was apparently the same location used by rave outfit Renegade Virus in the ​’90s and 2000s.

My favourite party this summer was a Helltekk rave in late June, at that very same spot in Queens. To get there, I had to Insta DM a fellow Tekker for the coords, then venture to a mostly vacant, secluded zone that felt more like a sleepy Midwest suburb than hardcore HQ. After ascending a sewer drain, crossing a bridge and following a tree-flanked path of abandoned train tracks, I finally heard the juddering hardstyle kicks. The line-up was a cross section of the NYC rave underground: Helltekk co-founder Fortified Structures and CITYSPROBLEM, a trance head and member of United Jump Front, a group that evangelises the madly frantic hardstyle sibling jumpstyle with the militancy of a modernist manifesto. There was also Evilo, whose sets always rip, and AKAFAE, part of 909 Worldwide, the DJ collective leading the 2020s hardcore revival.

This June party seemed to be their biggest rave yet, with hundreds of people congregating in the cluster of trees. A little too trashed, I tried to climb over some kind of ledge when I was leaving and ended up falling in a bed of thorns, tearing up my leg and cracking my phone. But it was a small price to pay for a jolt of wildness in the woods with my friends. As police continue to crack down on outdoor parties, crews will need to be increasingly wily with how they select spaces and organise events. Hopefully, these fledgling renegade raves will spark an even bigger movement — with too many free parties for the police to cage, and too much joy for them to kill.