London club KAOS deserve a medal (glistening steel, on a little leather strap, pin through the nipple) for opening the doors for a hectic and active new wave of largely LGBTQIA+ focused nights devoted to the dirty spot where techno, EBM and experimental music, sex and art meet. Each year, their ‘anniversary’ parties shift expectations of what the club gets up to, with the 2025 event focusing on live performances. It takes place on 13 November at the Peckham Levels, the new venue from the good people of Iklectik, and features Becoming Animal (a collaboration between Cinder of Cindytalk and Massimo Pupillo of Zu), Rangelova, Rotten Sun (KAOS’ Lee Adams with noise violinist Mia Zabelka), Samuel Kerridge and Vanity Productions, the solo project of Christian Staadsgard of Posh Isolation (you can find out more and buy tickets here). “The decision to focus on live performances was largely contextual, but it also aligns with my own interest in programming and performing in more experimental sonic realms outside of techno and club culture.” The last time tQ spoke to Adams he discussed the then trend for “deathdrive techno, ultra-fast BPM, the sound of the void”, something that he feels is coming to an end. “I do have a feeling that the death spiral of what Karl O’Connor calls ‘non-adult tempo’ is finally drawing to a close amidst a renewed hunger for quality electronic music in queer and subcultural spaces.”
Adams is now based in Greece, and that distance has enabled him to get a fresh perspective on what’s happening back in the UK. KAOS have been running parties at Athens’ Astron Club since July 2024, featuring artists such as Ancient Methods, Broken English Club, Koketamc, Hecate Legacy, Samuel Kerridge and ANFS . “This perception I have that tastes and dance floors are maturing away from the somewhat cheap (social) media circus we have been witnessing over the past few years may also have something do with the fact that I’m spending less time in Western Europe,” he explains. “The scene in Athens never really embraced the immediate post-Covid era trend of 170bpm techno-trance-pop. The electronic music community here is opinionated, discriminating and informed.”
Adams is enthusiastic about the movement that has sprung up in London in recent times. “Many people have told me over the past two decades that KAOS has inspired them to create their own projects and as these have evolved and mutated an entire underground scene has developed. Younger artists such as Proteus, Othon, Twang, New Flesh, Judgement Hall and Law334 who all grew up at KAOS are now running their own visionary events.” He’s equally excited about the diversity of what’s happening in his new home. “In Athens there’s s an intense creative energy, just in the last week I have been to the launch of a new self-organised night by the infamous trans artist Shelly with the support of Evita Manji, (wryly titled Clubbers Die Younger), an experimental hip-hop performance by Palestinian artist Asifeh at KET, a radical drag performance by Lebanese and Greek artists Diva and Kangela Tromokratisch; part of Marwan Kaabour’s Athenian launch for the Queer Arab Glossary, organised by Bustan Studio and Ron Athey and Hermes Pittakos’ epic durational event Darkness Visible featuring 40 international queer performance and sound artists such as Myrgon, Lana Del Rabies, Mexican Jihad and the incredible operatic, auto mutilation of Sainerine.”
Adams believes that as the world shifts towards the right, with bigotry empowered and legitimised by state structures, clubs like KAOS and what he sees around him in Athens have vital a role to play. “I vividly remember growing up as a queer working class kid in Liverpool in the Thatcher era amidst the maelstrom of the AIDS crisis, going to my first live gig which was Julian Cope from The Teardrop Explodes (playing with Thighpaulsandra who is now performing with Cindytalk),” he says. “It was a portal, a revelation and this moment feels like a full circle. Constant shallowness leads to evil, our enemy is dreamless sleep! Next week I am returning to Tbilisi to play at Khidi club for an event in collaboration with LEASH (the Georgian queer collective co-founded by Khidi resident Knaughty) against backdrop of increased and often violent state repression directed towards the LGBTQIA+ community. and the electronic music scene. Cultural and sonic situations that connect us to other kindred souls are absolutely vital, especially in times of turbulence and political anxiety. They provide the opportunity to inspire each other, to dream of different futures, to express our otherness, to experience authenticity, solidarity, tenderness, rapture and catharsis on the reverse of the black mirror of the society of the spectacle.”
