Take a trip back in time
- Lee Lakin
- Sep 30
- 2 min read
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, from Monday 29 September to Monday 13 Oct 2025.
Review by Lee Lakin.
It's approaching midnight and I’m in the back of my mate's classic Peugeot 205. The cassette player is blasting out Joey Beltram’s 'Energy Flash' and we’re heading down the A45 at speed. Following cryptic clues, and checking the well-used A-Z, for directions to an industrial estate just outside of Coventry.
I look out the window and we’re now in a convoy, it’s happening, we’ve just taken the call, the rave is on. The music gets bigger and the excitement starts to build as we get closer and then…I’m in the air floating above the convoy of cars heading towards a huge pulsating orb on the horizon.
This is ‘In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats’ and it’s taken me all the way back to 1989. A different time for me, I wasn’t a raver, I was an indie kid. 1989 was the year I went to my first Reading Festival, not a rave act on the bill but the music did cross over.
Anyone who stood outside the Joe Bananas blanket stall would have been dancing to 'Chime' by Orbital or 'Papua New Guinea' by The Future Sound of London. You couldn’t fail to be taken by the beat, and it went on until the early hours.
As it wasn’t my scene, I didn’t know the importance my home city had on rave culture, but this experience made me feel proud to be from Coventry again.
The city has taken a bit of a battering in recent years but thinking back to 1989 it was a really vibrant place. I was only 18 and thought everything was fantastic. There was somewhere to go every night, and I had a great group of friends, all into different styles and music.
I knew raves happened and this finally gave me the chance to join in the thrill of finding the party, although I’m sure the euphoric experience back in the day totally eclipsed this. It’s so authentic though, from the cars to the clothes, everything is correct down to the final detail. I’ve been left feeling very nostalgic, for my city from 36 years ago and a whole underground scene that I didn’t know existed.
One final bit of advice, it’s a VR experience, if there’s a chair it’s not real. Don’t try and sit on it!
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