I discovered a techno wonderland, and it was inside a prison

My rave diary

5 PM, Saturday 12 November, 2022. C5 presents: WNDRLST.

The sandstone entrance to Maitland Goal is like a wind tunnel. A deep techno throb gushes through it, splintering my insides into flutters of excitement. The image of a shredded kite defiantly refusing to land settles in a corner of my mind. A seccy asks to check my bag but reassures me that it’s only to ensure I’m not bringing in alcohol.

Any prior nerves about admission – we’re entering a prison after all – dispel immediately.

Inside, barbed wire curls atop fencing. It is reclaimed space: once a site of state-orchestrated violence which housed notorious criminals such as serial killer Ivan Milat and enforcer/career criminal Neddy Smith, now a community space.

The gaol closed on 29 January 1998 amid state-wide reforms to the prison system, having seen continuous use since 1850. It was a relic of the past with squalid conditions, overcrowding and violent screws.

Tonight there’s a DIY bar and a local community group, the Rotary Club of East Maitland, make sausage sangas and burgers under a marquee for ravenous partygoers.

I cross a courtyard with my mates, Max and Jestika, and shuffle through a narrow doorway. A sign reads ‘B wing’. Upon entry: the sound hits me like a football to the gut. Soundwaves buffet in my face. The Funktion-One speaker stacks – black towers – loom at the end of the room emitting a force field around the dancefloor. Chains hang from the ceiling and prison cells line the corridor. The closer to the speakers we go, the more reality bends at the edges. The outside world tapers away. The early sets fuse jarring industrial soundscapes and hellish screeching with 4/4 techno kicks and crunchy staccato hardcore kicks, dissolving the boundary between hard techno and industrial hardcore. Warning: corrosive acid.

It’s mean as fuck.

Side by side, Newy lads hakk and BDSM-equipped techno ravers dance without a care in the world. I’m mesmerised by one shirtless guy who struts and hakks, forever on his toes, like a prize pony at auction, exuding energy and confidence. Hakking tends to be a male-dominated art form but the inhibition and willingness to get down to the music is infectious. Some girls shake each other’s hips playfully, holding each other. Guys remove their shirts but it’s not to show off. You heat up quickly dancing in a sauna like this. Plus, there’s the MDMA sweats.

The floor is slippery with spilled drinks and sweat and I feel like I’m on ice skates. The girl next to me takes advantage, shuffling her way into hard tek paradise. Later I spy her practically bouncing off the walls, doing chin ups on a chunk of wood holding up a corrugated iron roof. Bless.

It’s the right kind of dancefloor: a place of self-expression, movement and compassion. Solidarity without similarity.

View of the dancefloor in pixelated glory. All photos courtesy: yours truly.

Throughout the night, Jestika, Max and I need frequent breaks from the sweat box. Outside people dance in the rain. Yarns flow thick and fast with strangers.

During one toilet expedition, I get a sneak peek of the rest of the prison. The heritage-listed status of Maitland Goal renders it a time capsule. According to the New South Wales State Heritage Register, it is the “oldest substantially intact country gaol in NSW”. Only certain sections of the prison are open to the public when we visit, but the scars of the past are visible: flaking paint, chipped wooden staircases and Swiss cheese sandstone. One building has a thick wooden door and a cartoonish oversized padlock. The door doesn’t appear lifelike as if it’s a fake ripped from a low-budget film set recreating a seventeenth century London tavern. The whole site is a mishmash of historical periods, disorientating and intimidating in its seeming timelessness. Little wonder it has become a popular site for paranormal investigators.  

While I wait for the toilet, I get talking with one of the staff for the event (a volunteer?). He compliments the crowd. Apparently we’re better than the hordes who sometimes turn to scrapping at alcohol-fuelled functions and weddings at the old gaol. I get a sense that the older community members present are simply chuffed to see a bunch of young people using, enjoying and respecting the site.

When I go to fill up my water bottle, I discover there is Gatorade on tap. Literally. Blue nectar – the lifeblood of the Hunter – flows freely, disguised within a water cooler. Welcome to Maitland!

Back inside: pulsating bulwarks of sound lift me off the ground. The mixing is not always seamless. But who cares? The relationship between space and sound is so entwined, so spot on, in this carceral environment – kudos to the organisers, C5 – that frankly I’m relieved to hear some roughness in the music. The jagged edges are on theme. It’s DIY and punk. There’s no way anyone can prepare for a gig like this.

I lose sense of myself, and whether it’s day or night. I can’t pin the captivation solely on the chemical rush of the 2C-B I’ve taken. A red laser creates a shimmery trail like pieces of torn red fabric from a kite billowing in the wind. Lights flash red and blue and I wonder if it’s a self-aware nod to police sirens and the location’s sordid history of riots, inmate suicide and psychological violence. It certainly feels like a middle-finger salute to the cops.

I’m stuck against the wall as bodies press in and I see the irony. In any other circumstances, being pushed up against a wall in a prison means something different.

Funny what people’s conception of pleasure is.

When the headliner from the Netherlands, WNDRLST, comes on, a red light lights up above his head in the shape of a W. The last time I saw Jeffrey (WNDRLST) play, it was in the middle of a swamp underneath the M5 motorway in Sydney. Max had organised a good-old fashioned illegal bush bash for WNDRLST. It seems like old mate only does extreme gigs. What a sick cunt.

It’s almost becoming difficult to find events in Sydney that launch headfirst into such darkness. But here the DJs refuse the embrace of passive cultural happiness. There’s no sickly-sweet memecore or happy hardcore. At this point, industrial techno and hardcore is pretty much a counter-cultural stance vis-a-vis our Gen Z orientated cultural zeitgeist (it’s saturated with irony). So consider me a happy punter. The rave is absolutely worth the trek from Sydney.

As WNDRLST jumps between hard trance, acid and industrial techno – he is a true master of the craft – I realise that the crowd is experiencing a communal catharsis, that hard techno succeeds when you abolish any façade of coolness and stomp with your peers. The gothic get-up – chains and fishnets – is a costume. It’s simultaneously a nod to queer liberation and performative darkness. It’s not an attempt to wallow in isolation and self-pity. The Halloween-like aesthetics of the Maitland Gaol gig represents the dogged pursuit of limit-experience and egress, and it just happens to be filled with some of the friendliest people I’ve met.

It’s a conscious effort to tear away the veil of a difficult present, to feel for a moment, in the dark of night, part of something bigger.

Put another way: Maitland rocks.