Raindance: the promoter still running, thirty-five years after it started
Most of the names in this section stopped. Raindance is still booking rooms.
Beckton, 1989
Raindance was founded in 1989 by Paul Nelson - brother of DJ Slipmatt - alongside Lou Lewis and Ray Spence, running parties from Jenkins Lane in Beckton, East London, through the breakbeat hardcore era. Paul Raindance provided the sound system and is still promoting under the name today.
The promoter took a hiatus between 1993 and 1995 as the wider scene fragmented and the pressure that produced the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 made the open-air model harder to run - the same law covered elsewhere in this section.
Bagley's, Sanctuary, and a home under London Bridge
Raindance came back in 1995 with events at Bagley's in King's Cross - also covered in this section - and went on to run nights at Pleasure Rooms, Sanctuary in Milton Keynes, The Rocket and Camden Palace. Between 1999 and 2009 it held a residency at The Drome, underneath London Bridge station, which became club seOne, running multiple rooms across breakbeat hardcore, jungle, happy hardcore and house on the same night.
The promoter helped launch DJs including Carl Cox, LTJ Bukem, Mr C and John Digweed, and hosted acts such as Shades of Rhythm, N-Joi and The Prodigy across its run - a lineup history that puts it alongside the biggest names in the genre's development rather than as a footnote to them.
Still running
Raindance now runs events at Heaven and at Fabric - both still-operating venues, Fabric's own history covered elsewhere in this section - which makes Raindance one of the few promoters from the original late-1980s rave scene still actively booking rooms rather than existing only as a compilation-album brand or a reunion event.