A conversation between Nathan ‘BOF’ Hughes and Paul Hamon about Adelaide’s early rave scene, the birth of IP Productions, The CORE Magazine, and the evolution of dance music culture.
BOF: Welcome to Rave Tales, everyone. I’m BOF, and today I’m joined by Paul Hamon, calling in from sunny Thailand. Paul, let’s start at the beginning—tell us about your first rave experience.
Paul: Do you mean the first rave I went to, or the first one we put on?
BOF: The first one you ever went to—I’m assuming it wasn’t one of yours!
Paul: Right, no it wasn’t. That was Origin, which Gareth Lott’s still doing—Origin 2 is coming up in a couple of months actually. That was the first thing I’d call a proper rave, with Adelaide’s first international guest, CJ Bolland, plus some other big names I can’t quite remember.
I remember lining up out the front with MPK and Damien. The line was massive—probably 800 people at the Rock. I don’t know if there could have been that many just upstairs, but it felt huge. Tickets must’ve been a whopping $18, though I reckon we got ours free from Gareth or whoever was running it. Damien used to get free tickets everywhere—he was a good scammer.
The show was great. I didn’t take drugs back then, so I was straight all night. I would’ve been 20. I didn’t start taking any recreational things until 23. But yeah, it was a good night.
BOF: Nice. So that was Origin in ’92?
Paul: Yeah, Easter ’92.
BOF: And then after that, IP was born. How did you guys meet?
Paul: We’d met earlier at The CORE Magazine. I was helping the guys who ran it back then, before me and other guys took control of it. I was doing the bookkeeping for them—that’s what I was studying at university. And Damien was just this scrappy little turd who came into the office now and then.
One day we were sitting down on the floor just talking about things, and we thought, “It couldn’t be that hard to put on a party.” And we were wrong.
BOF: Famous last words!
Paul: That’s exactly what we said though—”It can’t be that hard. Other people can do it.” So we teamed up with Mr. D, Damien, who Damien and Daniel were friends from high school. We started doing little Sunday shows at Cheston. That was probably before your time, BOF?
BOF: Yeah, I didn’t do Sunday shows. I was a baby.
Paul: You’re showing your age! Or lack of it. Your birthday’s coming up in a week, right?
BOF: Yeah, one week.
Paul: I’ll be in Australia by then.
BOF: Really?
Paul: Yeah. So we started out doing small shows—friends selling tickets directly, little things. That’s where IP started to get its legs. Then we had one good night—it was a long weekend Sunday and no one else in Adelaide put on a show. Everybody came to ours and we made money, maybe a thousand dollars or something. We thought we were the bees knees for about 20 minutes until we lost it all on our next show, which was called Sin. It had two little boys at the beach dressed in—well, naked—dancing on the front of the flyer. I don’t know how we got to that design, but that show lost a lot of money.
Then Inquest came along. That would have been about 18 months after my first rave.
BOF: So Origin was Easter ’92, and Inquest was January ’93?
Paul: That’s right. About nine months. I turned 18 in February ’93.
BOF: I’m not sure why I wasn’t there—there were thousands of underage people at your rave!
Paul: I was a good boy back then. So that was the first Inquest, and that’s when IP was born. We called it IOP—Instantaneous Productions—because we had to make a company and we had no idea what to call it. We signed partnership documents and all that. I think it was my idea and I liked it, but the other guys couldn’t get out of it fast enough when they went to Ultraworld. IP lasted about two years before Damien and Josh moved in that direction and Damien went to Sydney.
There are a few flyers out there with both IP and Ultraworld on them—like “Brought to you by IP, introducing Ultraworld” kind of thing. But I wasn’t part of IP by then. I’d left to do The CORE.
BOF: How did The CORE come about?
Paul: ACE and Gareth had been doing the books for two years—that’s the little magazine which I’ve been scanning and uploading a fair bit lately. It drew everybody together, which was great when we actually had media you could touch. But they were running out of money and patience, and as a couple they were on the rocks.
Me, Matt Pierce, and Taiwan Lee got together and thought, “Hey, how hard can it be? We can make a magazine.” There’s a theme for me, right?
BOF: Yeah, there is!
Paul: That would have been end of ’93 or sometime in ’94. For two years I slept under my desk at the office, bummed around, ate a lot of shitty food, and tried to make money. We brought friends on. I think it was pretty successful—we were energetic from the very beginning to the last year or so.
BOF: You moved into that house in Wayville in ’94, didn’t you? The double-storey one in the little cul-de-sac?
Paul: Yeah, that one. Fuck, man, long time. Though I think that’s got to be ’95, doesn’t it?
BOF: Could be. So during The CORE days, what parties were you going to? Were you still involved in promoting?
Paul: Not really promoting much. I think my thing was more about trying to build something that helped the scene rather than being the scene. I went to lots of parties—I mean, we had to for the magazine. We’d cover everything. But the magazine took up so much time and energy. We were trying to create something that documented what was happening, gave it legitimacy, you know?
BOF: The CORE was really important for that. It gave the scene a voice, made it feel like a proper movement.
Paul: That was the goal. We wanted people to take it seriously. Not just as some drug-fueled underground thing, but as a legitimate music and cultural movement. We interviewed artists, reviewed events, covered the international scene. It was proper journalism—or as proper as a bunch of 20-somethings sleeping under desks could manage!
BOF: I’ve got to ask—what was the music like back then compared to now? Did DJs play differently?
Paul: Oh, completely different. Back in the early ’90s, DJs played everything, right? You’d hear them play house, then techno, then breakbeat—all in one set. Nobody was really a specialist per se back then. Then sometime in maybe ’96 or ’97, if you weren’t a specialist, you weren’t part of that clique and you stopped getting booked.
You couldn’t play at a drum and bass show if you also played at a house event that week or month, or vice versa. The techno guys had to play just techno. Unless you were one of a very select few—I mean, Cam could get away with it, but not many could.
BOF: Why do you think that happened?
Paul: The scene splintered. As it got bigger and bigger, it fragmented into smaller and smaller pockets. That’s my theory anyway. I didn’t like it at all. Musically, it’s crap. I don’t want to hear the same music for eight hours. I like variety—that’s why I liked that lineup for Smile. It was changing all the way through. There wasn’t enough time to be bored.
BOF: That makes sense. The early days sound more fun in that regard.
Paul: They were! Everyone was figuring it out together. There were no rules yet about what you were “supposed” to do. It was all just about the music and bringing people together for a good time. Once it got too compartmentalized, it lost something.
BOF: We’ve got customers coming for dog training, so we should probably wrap up. Do people have any questions?
[A pause for chat questions]
BOF: Dane wants to know how long you’re in town for.
Paul: I’ll be in town for eight weeks this time. I’m arriving for BOF’s birthday show and then I’m leaving a couple of days after Origin 2. It’s the longest I’ve been in Australia for… 15 years, I’d say.
BOF: That is a long time.
Paul: I don’t know if I’m going to survive!
BOF: Dane wants to know how long he has to hibernate!
Paul: Just stay out of my way. Enter the comp and get your Anthems tickets and avoid me entirely!
BOF: Julian wants to know if you’ll be riding while you’re over here.
Paul: Maybe. I’m trying to ride more this year—I was a bit down last year. I’ve got some work to do on our real business while I’m in town, which sounds very boring when I say it out loud. I don’t like talking about doing work. The only thing worse than talking about it is actually doing it.
BOF: Can I ask quickly—how’s the jiu-jitsu clothing business been? Has it slowed up more than you anticipated?
Paul: Yeah. We’re 90% down in the US, and that was our biggest market by a massive amount. We’ve gone from doing 70-ish thousand a month to seven.
BOF: Fuck, that’s a lot.
Paul: Yeah, it hurts. We had it through COVID too because you couldn’t do jiu-jitsu through COVID—not a lot of social distancing in jiu-jitsu! We were coming back strong, and now this has just decimated the business. Thanks, Donald Trump and your tariffs.
BOF: Is the US the biggest market because that’s where the most jiu-jitsu people are?
Paul: Yeah, by a long stretch. The next biggest is Brazil, but there are economic and language barriers. They’ve got their own ecosystem. Pretty much everybody who does jiu-jitsu in America makes enough money to buy new uniforms. A lot of people who do jiu-jitsu in Brazil are living in favelas and getting hand-me-down stuff. Through no fault of their own, they’re not in a position to buy our gear. They’re worried about where their next meal is coming from.
BOF: I understand. That’s rough, mate.
Paul: Yeah. But at least the pressure’s not too bad—our debt ratio is pretty low, so we’re lucky that way.
BOF: Not lucky—good planning!
Paul: Smart wife is what you mean.
BOF: Yeah, incredibly smart.
Paul: Well, not too smart—she married me! But apart from that, yeah, very smart.
BOF: Any more questions, or are we done? I can’t see any. Thanks for joining us, everyone. Thanks to Paul for beaming in from the Orient, and look forward to seeing you all next week. Remember, you’ve got five more minutes to use the Twitch code for $20 off Underground Sessions 4 tickets!
Paul: Don’t be a cheap bastard—buy a ticket for a friend who can’t afford it!
BOF: What Paul said. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for doing this, mate.
Paul: Thanks for thinking of me, man. Always.
BOF: See everyone next week. Love you guys!
Paul: Bye!
Rave Tales is a series documenting Adelaide’s electronic music history through conversations with the people who lived it. For more stories from the scene, upcoming events, and archival materials, follow BOF and subscribe to the podcast.
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