Mutualism, massive and the city to come: jungle pirate radio in 1990s London

One icy Friday in December 1991 Londoners woke up to find themselves breathing in a throwback from the city’s past. Overnight, a thick toxic smog had wrapped itself around the city, covering the streets and reaching out into the countryside, where it was held in by the chalk hills that edge the capital’s sprawl. But that weekend, creeping through the empty spaces of London and the surrounding countryside, were radio waves carrying fragments of the future. Anyone flicking across their FM dial could hear it in the gaps between the BBC and commercial stations - the Friday-to-Sunday broadcasts of a new kind of music, illegally beamed across the city from improvised studios in empty flats, via aerials on tower block rooftops. A unique sound - breakbeats, live spoken vocals, and bass lines. Jungle!