"I’m not ready for other people’s sweat to drip on me"

“Bookings are starting to come back in,” says London-based DJ Josey Rebelle. Born and raised in Tottenham, where she still lives, she started going to raves at 14, back in the mid-90s. “Over the past year I’ve missed clubs so much. I miss being in the dark, hearing the music, feeling the bass reverberating through my body, rearranging my organs. But I’m still somewhat apprehensive.” She describes how a year of mediating every social interaction through a screen has left many, herself included, feeling ill at ease with the prospect of being in a crowd. “I’m taking safety considerations really seriously. I’m not so desperate to be in a club that I’ll think, ‘Oh, who cares, let’s just all go in there and catch Covid together,’” she laughs. “I know that people within the industry have already invested so much money to make sure that the spaces, venues and parties are Covid-safe – but I’m not in a mad rush to get back in among hundreds of people.” Rebelle also points out that, long before the pandemic, nightclubs were ripe for reinvention: last summer’s Black Lives Matter movement drove home how much inequality still exists within the electronic music world, from racist door policies to the acts and genres given top billing.