60: A radical vision for club culture with Anjali Prashar-Savoie

A stack of new interviews are coming down the No Tags pipes right now, but first we return to a conversation from our sold-out event at the ICA last month.

If you couldn’t make it down, or if you were there but forgot to take notes, this episode is a keeper. London-based rave researcher Anjali Prashar-Savoie set out her vision of a ‘club commons’ – a radical, positive and participatory kind of nightlife, as inspired by her research into the history of queer scenes in the UK, from lesbian sound systems with a creche on the side to George Michael-themed free parties.

The interview section begins at 41m. Before that we spend some time reporting on our New Year jollies, our seasonal “locking in” progress, and recent film-watching (Into The Abyss, Marty Supreme, The Smashing Machine).

Then a conversation about the growing magnetism of Substack, a nine-year-old newsletter platform that’s suddenly having a moment with musicians and celebs. Does the Troye Sivan newsletter herald a new intimacy in fan-artist relations? Or is this just another example of Brands Saying Bae? (With apologies to Shawn Reynaldo, who wrote his own First Floor newsletter on this subject a few days after we recorded ours. Soz.)

If you missed it, the ICA event was also a book launch for No Tags Vol 2: Conversations on underground music culture, featuring interviews from the last year of the podcast and four brand new essays. The book is available from our Shopify, and from select bookshops and record shops.

In other news! Chal has written about Britney Spears and her memoir for the latest issue of the London Review of Books. (It also references Jeff Weiss’s 2024 book Waiting For Britney Spears, which we interviewed him about last summer.) And Tom has more dance music out on his label Local Action.

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