Hedge Monkey Returned Techno Faithfully and Soulfully…. in Westbury!

Somewhere just outside Westbury a sizable barn hosted the most memorable new year’s eve raves in the mid-nineties, but I’d never have imagined then, that thirty years later I’d be saying I went out raving in Westbury last night, but I did, sort of!

Attendees at the Westbury Conservative Club yesterday willingly admitted not a lot happened here, but none I badgered about it, Uncle Albert style, seemed to recall any of the raves, nor can I find any record of them online. It is not all in my warped imagination, honest, that I recall a rumour circulating one year that Altern 8 played a live PA. They may have done, but with hazy recollections, my matured mind must consider the very real possibility it could’ve been any number of random nutters dressed in illuminous bodysuits and dust masks, probably was, and no one would’ve been any the wiser if it was!

No one there at the time gave a hoot if Altern 8 played or didn’t, it was never an era for live music, (it wouldn’t have been “live” music anyway,) it was all about DJ culture. Likewise, events for rave die-hards today mostly rely solely on DJs, unless you’re lucky enough to trek to festivals or city gigs from bands like Orbital. That is, not to discredit them, even those who combine cheesy raves with soft play centres, just to say, when local trance-techno collective Hedge Monkey organise something of a reunion, or comeback gig in an era geared more toward actual live music, with instruments and everything, it was something matured, proper, and fantastically different.

“We were a band years ago,” singer Lou Cox explained for our preview piece, “even played Glastonbury festival twice! But this was before social media, really. I’ve been recording music with Jase the whole time, but we never did anything with it. Just recently we decided to get it all back together and it’s been fab, so we decided that we need to have a comeback gig!” Both Jase, the main man at the control tower of Hedge Monkey, and Lou, were que sera sera on what the gig indicated for the future of the band, but based on what I and a packed club of devoted fans, friends and family of the collective’s members witnessed, I sincerely hope there’s more to come.

It was, in technical jargon, bangin’. If we’re at the boundary for the westcountry penchant for crusty trance-techno, historically bands emerged from it, like Eat Static, tended to knock out endless layer-building electronic beats, chuck a few samples in and tick them off as a job well done. Not that there’s anything wrong there, it’s the beats and bass entrancing the crowds and hence giving the subgenre its name, but as a collective Hedge Monkey brought out multiple female singers, who did their parts and returned to the dancefloor with their friends, and a real drummer, with a real drum kit, and these elements gave it body and soul, something I feel often overlooked from the ambience of techno.

Alongside the archetypal gorgeous, plodding basslines of trance it was experimental too, with dubbed rises and delays akin to what Norman Cook later brought to the breakbeat party, but with a squeaking overlay of wobbly 808s it held tightly to acid house, the root of it all. But to repeat myself, for it’s worth noting, each singer brought their own styled vocals to the melting pot, one even brought alto choral tones, and the drummer watching the tempo, Hedge Monkey’s sound is unique, as if striving to make the subgenre formulated to traditional pop music templates without rejecting its roots. At one point interpreting Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, at most though, original compositions which wouldn’t look out of place when LFO and 808 State ruled the day.

Needless to say, without intoxication, as I’ve matured way past all that, and even booze was off the cards being I drove, I still felt the irresistible urge to shake my thang to this like the noughties never happened! There was a communal, reunion feel to the gig, without cheese, glowsticks, and the poorly researched assumptions of what symbolised the rave epoch, and though not part of that and alone, by the end I made temporary friendships in the manner the rave scene has always advocated, and this besides the sublime sounds, blessed the party with vibes of yore; top one, nice one, and all this grandad needed to be sorted was a nice cup of tea and cheese toastie when I got home!