Photographer Ewen Spencer documented a generation of euphoric club kids at the turn of the millennium, celebrated in his new photo book, While You Were Sleeping
From 1998 to 2000, Ewen Spencer spent almost every weekend documenting the British club scene for the Shoreditch-based youth culture mag Sleazenation, bouncing between Camden, Brixton, and the West End to capture the new millennium’s generation of hedonistic party kids, metalheads, and aspiring MCs. In doing so, he’d cement himself as a fixture on the UK garage landscape, before moving onto other countercultural movements when garage fizzled out. All the while, his young son slept soundly back in Brighton, where the photographer would return home to look after him on a Monday morning.
Now, 20 years on, things are obviously looking very different. Thanks to a grim cocktail of coronavirus closures and needlessly draconian legislation, many clubs have been forced to shutter up or move online, including in the capital. Even before that, a global recession and the overwhelming British urge to be dismal had pretty much decimated the country’s nightlife. Between 2005 and 2015, a reported 1,400 nightclubs shut in the UK, with an estimated £200 million removed from the value of the UK’s club scene between 2013 and 2018.
It was also during the pandemic, though, that Spencer trawled through his digital archive with the help of his son, and was inspired to collect everything he has to show for his millenial misadventures in a new photo book. Titled While You Were Sleeping – in reference to the nights he spent working while his son was in bed – the hardback book spans 156 pages, offering “an up-close portrayal of late ‘90s hedonism” through Spencer’s lens.
The photos themselves are largely black and white, partly thanks to Sleazenation photographic director Steve Lazarides’ aesthetic preferences. The resulting images take us inside intimate and mostly long-lost venues (skirting around the superclubs that dominated glossier magazines), and capture the clubbers and concertgoers crammed into them in granular detail.
Below, Ewen Spencer takes us through a few of his favourite photographs from the thriving UK club scene of 1998 to 2000. You can order the full book, While You Were Sleeping, here.

The Cross, Coal Drop Yard, Kings Cross, 2000
“If you were to visit Coals Drop Yard now you’d find Central Saint Martin's manicured School of Art Campus and a variety of tidy retail destinations and nice little restaurants overlooking the Regent’s Canal. If you were to go on New Years Eve circa 2000 you’d find a stinking burger van in a patch of wasteland, the gasworks, and if you were stupid enough to wander down to the canal in the middle of the night you might end up in it. These kids were safe and sound in the Cross night club, having a blast by all accounts” – Ewen Spencer

MC Dreams, London 1999
“This was in the West End, when garage became a little ropey around mid-2000. This lad is holding onto the MC dreams” – Ewen Spencer

Beautiful Octopus Club, New Cross, 2000
“In a New Cross community Centre on a Saturday afternoon in 1999 there was an absolutely jumping club called the Beautiful Octopus Club. It was run by disabled people for the disabled. I cried when I got the contact sheets back for these pictures and I dont say that lightly or for effect, it was an incredible afternoon of absolute joy” – Ewen Spencer

Brixton Trance, 2000
“This is a Trance Hippy in Brixton in the early hours of a Saturday morning” – Ewen Spencer

Elephants Head, Camden, 1999.
“Saturday early evening in Camden at the Elephants Head pub. Hard, raucous rockabilly sounds from the DJ, who I don’t remember the name of. It was packed with rockin men and women. You could always capture some golden moments down there. The majority of folks had spent their afternoon across the road jiving at Dingwalls for a few hours. I loved that place. You could hear the sounds waiting to cross the road” – Ewen Spencer

Slipknot, London Astoria, 2000
“Front row at Slipknot playing the Astoria in London. I can’t stand this music but I really liked the kids: funny, bright, communicative, and they just loved wearing those hideous, enormous trousers” – Ewen Spencer

Pass the Mic, WKD bar, Kentish Town, 1999
“1999, Kentish Town on a Wednesday night, just around the corner from the Elephants Head pub, this was the WKD bar. On this particular evening there had been a coach of young MCs and DJs travel over from Paris. It was some sort of a cultural exchange, the British kids would do the reverse the following week or month. The British and Parisian kids just mixed it up and went head to head on the mic. Pre-grime. Smiles and high energy abound” – Ewen Spencer