By accelerating hip-hop breakbeats, and pouring the pain of bigotry and authoritarian rule into music, Carl ‘Smiley’ Hyman and Philip ‘PJ’ Johnson blazed a trail that led to rave and jungle
In
British dance
music history, the likes of Shoom, Spectrum and the Haçienda are often held up as the defining clubs from the scene’s formative years in the late 1980s. But for Carl “Smiley” Hyman and Philip “PJ” Johnson, better known as pioneering duo Shut Up and Dance, the aforementioned clubs paled in comparison to Dungeons on Lea Bridge Road in east
London.
“You’re never gonna find a spot like that again,” PJ insists. “There were all these tunnels, each with their own sound system, all linked together like some sewage system. By the end of the night there’d be sweat dripping from the ceiling.”