GABBER ELEGANZA / EWEN SPENCER & MARK LECKEY

“ When I launched Gabbereleganza.com in 2011 my idea was to create a simple tumblr – an infnite scroll of images from one particular scene, each connected to the other, but without a specifc editorial line. The more my research grew, the more the idea arose, thatthere was indeed an underlying coherence within this collection of visual artefacts – a kind of internal logic.

I began to wonder if this project could, in some way, build a bridge between the subcultures of Rave and Hardcore, and the contemporary culture of music and art, which, up to that point, had despised the aforementioned movements. With a newfound sense of conviction I began a period of extensive research, selecting unpublished visual material relating to various diferent subcultures. My approach was not to focus simply on aesthetics, but on socio-anthropology. It was no longer about bringing the culture of a bygone era back to life, or reappropriating it nostalgically, instead it was a way to catalogue idiosyncratic styles, from which something new could be born.

It was during this research that I came across the work of Ewen Spencer, a photographer, whose pictures possess a level of intimacy and energy that truly captures life within these subcultures and indeed youth itself – an artistic vision that I immediately felt was refected in my own work. His photos are honest and respectful, but at the same time elusive, as if fuctuating in limbo between a nostalgia for adolescence and the future. A place where potential and kinetic energy are found in perfect equilibri- um, Ewen’s photography captures that impalpable moment, in which something is about to happen.

We met for the frst time in London in 2017 and spent the night at a Dalston pub talking about Northern Soul and Hardcore-Gabber, both fascinated by our diferent backgrounds. Having seen his series on Northern Soul weekenders and Hardcore raves, shot over periodof several years, the idea to create something together came very naturally, emerging out of these two seemingly dissimilar scenes.

This is how Hardcore Soul was born – a publication that explores the analogies between two worlds, appearing as they do entirely at odds with one another, yet through a shared devotion, rhythmic frenzy and euphoria, both ofering on-lookers a key to understanding them. Choosing to publish the images in a non-chronological order is an attempt to createthe impression that everything is happening in the same moment, in the same space, fxing them at an indefnite place in time. At this moment suspended in time, dance, the hammering 4/4 beat as well as a natural and chemical euphoria, culminate in the eruption of one’s soul, ofering a way, in which to escape one’s reality. “

Alberto Guerrini/Gabber Eleganza

In the spring 2019 he launched Never Sleep a label platform with curated books, zines, records and merchandise garments. Hardcore Soul is the frst Never Sleep's publication, a collaborative book project by EwenSpencer and Gabber Eleganza with the contribution by the Turner Prize Mark Leckey