5 Dead Rave Zines That Will Give You Life

The dawn of rave culture in America in the early ‘90s brought with it a community of chroniclers who preserved many vibrant moments, both offline and on the then-emerging internet. They filed their recollections into all sorts of party handouts, like flyers, pamphlets and, most prominently, zines.

The term “zine” is short for “fanzine,” which in itself can be taken as a shortening of “fan-produced magazine.” It may be an unfamiliar term because it’s been somewhat of a dying art for a while now, but in the ‘80s, ‘90s and even early aughts, fanzines proliferated on many cultural topics, but especially on music. Many were photocopied at local copy centers, while others grew into slickly designed and produced titles that ended up on newsstands.

While it might seem like a quaint notion now, it would be incredible to see a new movement of paper pushers at parties. Luckily, some of these seminal early rave zines have been archived online so that we may look back or examine them for the first time. These specific issues are incredible time capsules, and you’ll find even more to devour at the source sites.

Under One Sky

DJ Heather Heart started the well-regarded fanzine Under One Sky in New York in 1991, and it’s a treasure that a couple of them have been digitized for history. Highlights of Issue 5 (1992) include an interview with the still-thriving Carl Cox, as well as a thinkpiece on whether techno parties should be shielded from the masses.

Project X

The bible of ‘90s club kid culture was Project X, and this former Project X writer would like to bow down to former staffer Ernie Glam for digitizing almost every issue on his Project X Archive. Check this out when you’re truly ready to go down a rabbit hole of incredible fashion and drug parodies (some that were actual real-life events), mixed with a very respectable catalog of music interviews. You can track its progress from a bare-bones zine to an actual magazine that was on newsstands. Issue 28 (1993), which profiles Aphex Twin and Malcolm McLaren, offers an especially debauched club report from James St. James of Party Monster fame and features what might have been the first fashion editorial for fuzzy animal hats.

PLURR

Sample a little slice of UK rave culture with this lil’ pamphlet PLURR (1994), which stands for Politics and Love for a Unified Raver Revolution, as dancers on the ground reacted to their government’s 1994 Criminal Justice Act. The bill tried to crack down on illegal raves and absurdly ban “repetitive beats”; as you can see, it didn’t last too long.

Reverb

Late journalist Dan Sicko was a treasured electronic music historian who authored the 1999 book Techno Rebels, now in its second edition. Before the book, he put together an early zine called Reverb, which is archived on Hyperreal.org. Take a peek at Issue 8 (1995), which features illustrations by and an interview with Alan Oldham (aka DJ T-1000) and an early look at rapper Common, then known as Common Sense.

Massive

The Midwest rave authority in the ‘90s was Massive Magazine, and luckily there are nine issues online that span from 1993–1996. Issue 12 (1996) has interviews with vets like Jason Bentley, Adam X and Hardfloor, as well as a particularly page-turning letters section featuring tales of raves gone bad and an artist going off over a bad review of his cassette tape.