Dreaming In Yellow: The Story of the DiY Sound System

In 1986, already a veteran of both the Hacienda and free festivals, Harry Harrison moved from hometown Bolton to Nottingham to study law, intending to become a human rights lawyer. Instead, he became a founder member of DiY, an ever-expanding collective of DJs, party organisers, clubbers, travellers and degenerates who achieved international notoriety in the early nineties following their involvement in seminal outlaw events such as the Castlemorton free festival.

In addition to steering DiY through the debauchery and hedonism of the era, Harry also championed their political and social significance, and that of the wider free party movement, writing numerous articles for magazines such as iD, the Face, Mixmag, DJ and XLR8R. He was also a regular on various discussion panels, including with Howard Marks at the Ministry of Sound, with the Salon team at Festival 6 discussing acid house and the infamous panel on Superclubs at Glasgow’s ‘In the City’ music festival. As the rave generation burned out at the end of the nineties, Harry continued his research via London and San Francisco, eventually landing in rural Wales where he finally wrote this book after twenty years of talking about it and where he now lives with his kids and dog.