Review: IN PURSUIT OF REPETITIVE BEATS, Barbican Centre

Whether you want to relive the second summer of love and the late-Eighties Acid House rave scene or just want to feel what it might be like to fly through the cosmos, the updated “Virtual Reality adventure” In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats is a compelling experience. 

As a cultural phenomenon, Acid House was a strange blip on the British musical landscape. Between the teenage-friendly songs pouring out of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop factory and the MOR ballads crossing the Atlantic, it never really stood a chance in the charts.

There were a few breakout hits but it was arguably the live environment - usually a warehouse or field in the middle of nowhere - and the combination of heavy thumpa-thumpa choons and easy access to complementary drugs like Ecstasy (also known as MDMA, a Class A drug at the time and symbolised by the ever-present yellow smileys) that gave Acid House its core appeal.

When it comes to sheep-dipping us into its chosen era, In Pursuit… doesn’t mess about in terms of technology. While some VR experiences like Layered Reality’s War Of The Worlds work off just a headset, here we also get headphones, a vest that provides buzzy haptic feedback and two hand controllers that let us pick up and examine objects. 

The show debuted as part of Coventry City Of Culture festival but has been updated since to incorporate a multi-player experience. Allowing for up to four people at a time, each group member can be seen in the virtual world as a colour-coded human-shaped avatar. This has multiple benefits, not least being able to collaborate and avoid into each other as we explore the various areas.

Like 2022’s VR adventure Le Bal de Paris which took its audience through Paris, the physical environments in this Coventry-set story are meticulously created in meticulous and high quality detail. Early on, we find ourselves in a bedroom that recalls the starting point of Punchdrunk’s Viola’s Room. There are posters on the wall, flyers on the bed and a TV laying down some sweet, sweet exposition. Picking up a flyer triggers the first of many talking heads as the flat image on the paper we are holding comes to life and DJ John Scroggie tells us about their time spinning Acid House records.

As we go along, a constant stream of memories pour out one by one as we hear from a promoter, the sound system supplier and even the police officers who drove around Coventry attempting to shut down the parties. Their stories relate how the secret events were organised through a mix of flyers, cryptic pager messages and late-night car convoys, how the West Midlands communities put aside football rivalries on the dancefloor and the sheer bliss of spending the night amid a crowd of luvved-up dancers.

In Pursuit… has some deeply immersive moments. When not hanging out with three mates at home or in a park, we’re inside their car speeding along, watching as they select cassettes to play or bouncing up and down with them in a club. We are whizzed along from one scene to the other, never long enough to fully appreciate the ennui and keen anticipation beforehand, the quasi-sexual release of communal dancing amid hot bodies and hot lights in a locked-up warehouse once we get to the gig and then the inevitable comedown afterwards.

More impressive and well-paced are the interludes which lift us high above the landscape or into space. A full 360-degree view and a wind machine blowing into our faces gives the impression everywhere we look that we have left terra firma far behind. It’s too easy to disbelieve what our feet are telling us and instead put our faith in what we are seeing and feeling. 

Trippy moments like those are the chief allusion to one of the topics skirted around by the talking heads: why the police were so keen to shut down the parties. The high popularity of these events led to a press-fuelled moral panic which heaped public pressure for the boys in blue to act. Even without that, though, they had valid concerns: health and safety were at best negligible in the impromptu venues while drugs were being openly bought and sold. 

And, while the visuals are phenomenal and the talking heads are lively enough, there’s a dramatic deficit throughout. Unlike the vivid portrayals by John Simm, Shaun Parkes and Danny Dyer in Justin Kerrigan’s seminal 1999 film Human Traffic, the anonymous trio of co-ravers we are stuck with are permanently silent, never explaining who they are or what they feel.

After we spend a frenetic but brief time on the dancefloor (glow sticks raised skyward while limbs are thrown here, thrown there, thrown everywhere), we join them on the wordless journey home. Our ears are re-adjusting to the gentler thrum of the engine as a new day dawns and all we want to know is: was it good for you too? 

In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats continues at Barbican Centre until 3 August.

Photo credit: In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats