Spiral Tribe and Mutoid Waste, Bedlam etc in the Czech Republic Summer '94 Nel Stroud. The anarchic free party organisers, Spiral Tribe have allied with the Mutoid Waste Company, a group of artists who sculpt with scrap metal and reconstruct abandoned engines, their medium the effluent of modern society, mutating waste to configurations hailing the millenium, all the post apocalyptic iconography of Dan Dare and Mad Max, Robocop and a warrior sensibility whose ancestor may well have been the mighty Beowulf, Spiral Tribe too have crawled from the underside of the facade that is `civilised' life - their creation is music and that too a mutation, sound generated by computers, a vast nightmarish arcade, twenty K of sound and Bass to make your eyes water. there is certainly no ethno vibes no strumming of guitars around camp-fires with soulful memories, no whimsical talk of the hereafter, for if there ever were a group of people into the here, it's these. From this virtual, military world they emerge and that they reflect, wired up, driving riot vans, camped under camo netting, heavy boots and shaven heads. A rapid growth of the popularity of a few parties in England, and a sweeping hysterical paranoia in the minds of the straight population has lead to the witch hunt of Spiral Tribe and their followers. At a party in an empty house in Acton, the Police feigned a sympathetic attitude, and then late in the night, started banging on the walls and came smashing through breeze blocks, batons flailing. They smashed up the musical equipment and knocked people to the ground. The Criminal Justice Bill validates this fascist Bully boy attitude. It legislates Gypsies and travellers, gatherings, peaceful protests, against techno itself- "music wholly or predominantly characterised by a succession of repetative beats". The result is an exodus to the promised land, Europe and beyond; as England tightens the screws, enforces its consumer monoculture of civil obedience, and staticism, the energy of the scene flows out - tendrils of techno energy and here we are, its the late twentieth century and Spiral Tribe and the Mutoids are in a scorching field way out in the Czech Republic, Eastern Europe.