One Foot in the Rave: Part 3

Beats in the Borderlands

In 90s’ Ireland and as the North staggered towards uncertain peace, far from political negotiations and simmering sectarian tensions, young people - Catholic and Protestant - were already living out an unspoken truce.

Between a barn in Boho and thickets in Glenfarne, a generation was raving - or at least attempting to - in the underground. Some nights hundreds gathered. Other nights, just a handful made it. They weren’t debating devolution, nor were they quoting John Hume. But each time, through wild late-night hours, something did get released: years of inherited mistrust and hardwired fears.

For decades, the Border symbolised division - geopolitical, religious, also cultural. It was a line patrolled by armed soldiers, marked by checkpoints, and heavy with suspicion. But while officialdom obsessed over control, ravers were building their own Republic. A flyer in a phone box, a whispered word from the local dealer, or scrawled directions on a crumpled beer mat often got you there. And it worked, all to a four-four beat.

From tasting menus to Techno

Most days you’ll find chef Neven Maguire in the kitchen of his multi-award-winning MacNean House Bistro plating dishes with meticulous care, or nearby at his renowned cookery school in Blacklion chatting guests through a slow-roasted duck with sweet orange glaze recipe like he’s narrating a bedtime story. Other times, he’s caught up touring Ireland or the continent filming one of his many cookery shows. Whatever the case, Neven is widely acknowledged to be the smiling face of Irish food.

But during the pandemic, Neven surprised all when revealing his erstwhile hidden persona: vinyl-loving techno enthusiast.

“I’ve been collecting records since I was 15 - and I still buy them today,” says Neven, whose collection now tops an encyclopaedic 6,000.

Before his 21st birthday, his parents, Joe and Vera, gifted Neven his first set of Technics 1210s and a mixer- decks he still uses. Back then, Neven spent his wages hopping buses to Enniskillen, Belfast, or Dublin to hunt down new sounds.

“I’d record mixes onto cassette tapes and sell them. That was the hustle,” he says, recalling with the softness of memory his bootleg release of ‘Hyper Hyper’, and ‘Beyond Reality’ - a six part series. Another of Neven’s own mixes was titled ‘Cosmic Baby’, inspired by the German electronic artist.

The first record Neven ever bought? Felix – ‘Don’t You Want My Love’ from Dublin’s Abbey Discs. “I’ll never forget it.”

In college in Fermanagh, Neven spent Friday and Saturday nights playing unpaid closing sets in places like Mirage and The Bush Bar in Enniskillen. He loved it.

Then came a trip to Berlin - the spiritual home of techno. Post-wall, pre-gentrification.

Part of a vocational exchange for young people from the border counties, Neven landed a job in the kitchen of the prestigious Grand Hotel in East Berlin, chopping veg by day and slipping off to gritty clubs like the now-legendary Tresor at night.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the reunified German city became a blank slate. Bunkers, power plants and abandoned buildings became the spontaneous backdrop to often illegal parties. Techno - borrowing beats from Detroit and Chicago - was the sound of freedom for a generation who had never known it.

Rave as rebellion

Back home, things were shifting too, though sectarianism still had a sharp edge. Flags fluttered. Bombs went off with territorial intent. The body count still counted.

Desmond Bell, a filmmaker and academic, set out to document whether rave could offer a safe space for cross-community contact. His documentary, ‘Dancing on Narrow Ground’, followed two groups of young people - one from Protestant East Belfast, the other from the Catholic Falls Road - as they moved through the scene. What he captured was equal parts euphoria and trepidation.

“There was real fear,” Bell recalls. “Of being lured into a sectarian ambush. And it wasn’t unfounded.”

The British Army still patrolled. Tensions sat just below boiling. At one point, a rocket attack occurred nearby. But inside the clubs, things were changing. People talked, danced, touched - in ways unthinkable outside.

One of the most powerful scenes in Bell’s film takes place not in a club, but on a beach. After a night at Kelly’s nightclub in Portrush - a Mecca for ravers - young people hauled speakers to the shore and danced until sunrise. Bell and his team captured it all.

“There was definitely awareness among the young people that they were stepping into a different space,” says Bell. “There was fraternisation - talking, dancing, even affection across lines that would’ve been unthinkable outside those rooms.”

Created in Cavan

South of the border, future trance producer Gary Maguire’s journey into music began with a borrowed set of belt-drive decks and a car weight taped to the needle for extra torque.

He was 14, living in Cavan after a childhood in Granard, and obsessed with the Happy Hardcore records his uncle James brought back from Liverpool and Manchester - energised by nights at the iconic Haçienda and the 051 Club.

“Every time James came back from Manchester or Liverpool, I’d be glued to him,” Gary remembers. “He had the decks, the records. That was it for me.”

Gary’s first decks were a dodgy set from Cavan, held together more by determination than design. But they taught him the ropes. By 16, he upgraded to Technics 1210s - same as Neven’s - serious gear bought with every inch of his McDonald’s wages and a little added help from his dad, Eddie, a former musician himself.

But with few local venues open to dance music - “the minute they heard a kick drum, doors closed” - Gary and his friends took the underground route.

In 2004, he co-organised ‘Wilderness’, a now-legendary off-grid rave deep in a Sligo forest. Everything was arranged via message boards. This was pre-Facebook. Pre-Bebo even.

Gary loaded his decks, speakers, and lights, then hiked it through the woods.

“We had a gazebo bought from Argos, a generator, even a bonfire - though someone lit it on the wrong side, so the smoke blew midges right at us. Total chaos,” he laughs looking back.

Still, close to 200 people turned up and danced the weekend in the rain, bitten to bits.

“It wasn’t about the thrill of breaking rules,” reflects Gary. “It was more about survival. If we didn’t build our own scene, no one would.”

Ecstasy and Epiphany

Of course, the elephant in the room is that drugs played a role. MDMA mediated more than most.

There were casualties of course - dodgy pills, addiction issues, lives derailed. But for many, this was the first time they’d felt communion - chemically induced or not - with someone from the so-called other side.

“We wanted to explore whether rave could be a non-sectarian space - whether it could offer a transformative experience. And in some ways, it did,” says Bell of his documentary. “But once they stepped outside the rave, it was back to divided Belfast. Business as usual.”

Rave culture “didn’t end the conflict”, nor did it “fix anything permanently”, Bell assesses. But even for a few hours, it gave people the opportunity to see “what it was like to exist outside the structures they’d inherited”.

Today, the landscape in Belfast is almost unrecognisable compared to what it was. Tensions flare occasionally, but the atmosphere is far “more relaxed”.

Rappers like Kneecap, too young to remember 1990s rave culture, sample Bell’s documentary on their track ‘Parful’ - a nod to a legacy that still echoes.

“Young people now are much more relaxed about religious background,” notes Bell. “There’s more mixing, less anxiety. That’s political change at work.”

Niche to national panic

Where clubs couldn’t operate legally, Ireland’s rave culture found its home in more liminal spaces. And the movement grew.

The response? Officials dusted off the 1935 Public Dance Halls Act, sent in the gardaí, and shut down the parties. Drugs were seized, adding to the moral outrage. Organisers were arrested - when they could be found.

The wider public only saw headlines. Raids in Ryefield near Virginia in ’94, or Arigna in Leitrim circa ’95. Alleged drug drops at a field outside Kilbeggan for a rave supposed to happen in Cavan and, when a portion of forest in forest in Castlesaunderson almost accidentally burnt down.

And still, they came. The raves didn’t stop and the dancefloors remained a rare neutral ground. Identities blurred. Allegiances meant nothing.

Scene and sensibility

The Irish rave scene was part of a wider European counterculture. Good Friday was always considered a key date on the rave calendar - precisely because almost everywhere else in the south was shut.

Stephen Wynne Jones, an award-winning journalist, DJ and editor of 909originals, does however think that the rave scene “arguably did more for the peace process” than countless meetings held in either Dublin or Westminster.

Much like punk in the 1970s, dance music “brought tribes of all persuasions together”.

“There were few career prospects for young people at the time, and this, coupled with the emerging dance sounds emanating from the UK, Europe and further afield, led a pioneering few to explore putting on their own events, in venues historically not associated with thumping beats - such as the Mansion House and Olympic Ballroom in Dublin. This helped light the touchpaper for what would become a vibrant dance scene.”

More than a feeling

The closer you got to the big cities, the bigger the scene was. Places like rural Cavan and Fermanagh weren’t as loud - but what happened there was no less meaningful.

“We planned one rave in Glenfarne Forest,” laughs Neven. “But the gardaí caught wind and stopped everyone in their cars. That was the end of that.”

There were others. “One in Boho - in a hay shed, believe it or not. Maybe a hundred, two hundred people turned up. Myself and a friend played for about an hour. It was mad - but great fun.”

It wasn’t Berghain. But it was enough. What stood out most to Neven wasn’t the crowd size - it was the feeling.

“There was never any trouble. On the dance floor, it didn’t matter who you were, where you were from, or what religion you were. Catholic, Protestant - nobody cared. We were all there for the same reason: the music.”

For a generation raised in the shadow of sectarianism, that unity was powerful.

“Whatever happened outside those four walls didn’t matter in that moment,” he says. “Inside, it was pure joy.”

Pirate radio

When not lugging kit through rough terrain, Gary Maguire ran a pirate radio station, Oxygen FM, with friends- blasting trance and techno across Cavan Town.

“We had a 100-watt transmitter and a studio on Bridge Street. One local shopkeeper just wanted to hear Joe Duffy. We weren’t very popular with him.”

Eventually, Gary and his friends did get to run the club nights they’d dreamed of. Mohill became popular. They designed their own graphics, booked legends like Scot Project, and played under aliases like DJ XL and Cyrus and Mr Wiz.

By then the anti mob had moved on and the pearl-clutchers became fixated instead with the genesis of ‘Brangelina’, Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl nipple slip, and Madonna kissing Britney at the VMAs, among other things.

Rave culture had also become legitimised - to an extent. No more cancellations. Homelands happened at Mosney in ‘99 and after that came Creamfields at Punchestown Racecourse in the noughties.

But it was the production side of things that really lit a fire under Gary. A record deal with Discover in 2008 and his first full-length album in 2014 marked major milestones. “Seeing it all come together - physical vinyl, sleeve in hand - that was surreal.”

He later served as A&R for Discover Dark and now runs his own label, Insight Music. But those early forest parties remain important for Gary.

“North or South, didn’t matter. There were no borders- just beats and bonfires.”

In the mix

These days Neven still cooks. Still smiles. Still spins. Though he’s quick to clarify: “I’m not a DJ. I’m a chef who loves music. That’s all.”

He recently played a two-hour set at Electric Picnic. Booked to cook, he ended up playing records instead and the Theatre of Food tent was bouncing.

“Didn’t cook a single sausage,” he laughs.

He also played his staff Christmas party in 2024 and has been asked to return again this year.

“Cooking is my life,” he affirms. “But having something you love outside of that - that’s important. Music lifts people up. Just like food. And in the world we live in now, we could all use a bit more of that.”

READ MORE:

PART 1- Tribal Gathering- The biggest gig that never was.

PART 2- The Infamous Rave at Ryefield.