Hypnotic Scenes of 90s London Nightlife

Legendary photographer Eddie Otchere looks back at this epic chapter of the capital’s story in new photobook ‘Metalheadz, Blue Note London 1994–1996’

During the summer of 1994, South London photographer Eddie Otchere began chronicling the Jungle scene as it stormed the underground. “Being a very British sound, it was regional so every village in London would have its own record shop with DJs, emcees, and local talent,” he says. “All the record labels were interlinked so that there was this society of Jungle and Drum & Bass producers, and I was here to document that.”

Otchere devoted himself to the culture, and was soon tapped by groundbreaking DJ and producer Goldie to be the exclusive photographer for Metalheadz, his Sunday night party at the Blue Note, an acid jazz nightclub that had just opened in then-abandoned Hoxton Square.

Metalheadz brought out all the producers, emcees, and DJs, and quickly became the center of the scene. Artists gave new tracks to Groove Rider, Fabio, and Goldie on Friday that were ahead of the Saturday night crowd, and debuted them on Sunday to a more free, experimental room.

As the year came to a close, he remembers a movement towards a darker, wintry sound. “It felt like summer was the end of one era, and then Metalheadz as a club was the beginning of this big sound,” Otchere says.

“Drum and Bass stripped everything down,” he continues. “It was more techno, less reggae, more breaks and less samples. It had really sparse vocals so you’d be dancing off your face for 20 minutes, really in the zone, and the only lyric you heard was ‘Every day of my life.’”

As Jungle gave way to Drum and Bass, Otchere teamed up with journalist Andrew Green to don the pen names James T Kirk and Two Fingas for the whirlwind 1994 novel, Junglist, recently brought back into print. Otchere liked to write after he came home from the club, making the very photos in his new book.

Still a student at the London College of Printing, Otchere took the film he shot on Sunday nights to the school darkroom on Monday afternoon, then brought the prints to Goldie that evening to recap last night’s party.

“He was giving me wads of cash to buy more film, do the same thing next week, just keep documenting. And he worked really hard to make sure that no one else was there with the camera,” Otchere says.

Otchere’s photographs are a map of the early days of Drum and Bass, revealing the ways in which the artists came together in a shared experience. He says, “Those Sunday nights was like the sound like summer madness to winter badness.”