Film documenting cultural origins of bleep techno premieres in London this week

A film documenting the cultural origins of bleep techno in 1980s Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford will have its London premiere at the ICA this week. 

Created by Sheffield-based filmmaker Jashan Walton, Ultra Violet Neon Planet uses a mixture of interviews and archival footage to explore the “transatlantic connection between South Yorkshire and the midwestern cities of Chicago and Detroit” and “[unravel] the subconscious influences that shaped the sounds of bleep”. 

The 18-minute documentary places particular emphasis on highlighting the music’s Black roots. Speaking to DJ Mag about its creation, Walton says: “It’s so important to show the Black origins of electronic dance music. But what was more important was to show it in a northern context. Even just hearing Black northern voices on screen you realise it’s actually quite rare.”

Read more of our conversation with Walton, and watch the trailer for the documentary below. 

Growing up in Sheffield, Walton was drawn to the “deep and wobbly basslines” that local party starters Off Me Nut would play, noting that “you can always hear bleep’s resonances within Sheffield music.” However, it was only after reading music journalist Matt Anniss’ book Join the Future, which chronicles the history of the genre also known as bleep and bass, that Walton was inspired to make this film. “The vivid descriptions of blues parties in Chapeltown or the anecdotes about parties at Mona Lisa’s in Sheffield got me hooked on the topic,” he says. “I could feel that it was a movie and was amazed that there was no material out there.” 

Working with Sheffield-based archivist Alex Wilson, who runs Memory Dance, Walton began to piece together the film in a “leftfield and poetic” way with editor Jack Lilley. “I think we’re all quite bored of the talking heads docs with the same Netflix style narrative structure,” he explains. So instead, the film features archival footage that ranges from sound clashes to experimental student films, which are interwoven with interviews from key voices of the genre, such as Forgemasters’ Rob Gordon and Winston Hazel, Nightmares on Wax’s George Evelyn, and DJ Martin Williams, a founding member of LFO.

As well as being a documentary about the evolution of this music, Ultra Violet Neon Planet is, at its heart, a film about Black British identity. “With bleep, there are these sonic geniuses like Rob Gordon and Martin Williams, without whom the sound would not have had a lasting impact,” Walton says. “But to look at their influences you have to talk about dub, Chicago house, Detroit techno and the experiences of being Black in the north.” 

A big part of Walton’s reason for making the film was to help unpick the still London-centric narrative that dominates historical dialogues around UK dance music. “I think there’s now a consensus that UK dance music has its roots in Jamaican sound system culture,” he says. “But I think these understandings, or perhaps the way they are depicted within film, are concentrated within London.”

So, the film touches upon Leeds’ hugely overlooked role in sound system culture, and as a home for carnivals, when exploring this point. “With Leeds, it was the influence of sound systems that made the city resonate with the sounds of Chicago house,” Walton says. “It’s the rhythm and the basslines that made it so relatable to the sound clashes that they grew up on there. It resonated with them and they had the urge to react to it.” 

This catalytic reaction is where the magic took place, and where the gut churning basslines and infectious melodies of bleep originated. “There is something incredibly profound in the connection between Black diasporas who have very different material realities and yet there is this identification with sound,” Walton says. “Where you have all of these West Indian kids finding a sound that resonated with them that was Black and adding their own stamp on it and making it their own. This was going on in cities across Yorkshire and they all came out with these similar sounding tunes – a kind of dialogue with no words but they were all painting the same picture.”

Ultra Violet Neon Planet is screening at the ICA on Saturday 14th December at 16 30. Get the details here.