Raw photos from London’s underground rave scene

“Yo, you here for the squat?” a kid asks from a group dancing outside a building one night to London-based photographer Aiyush Pachnanda, colloquially known as Yushy. Drawn in by the ground shaking with the force of the bass, he and his camera step inside. That chance encounter would take his life and work in an entirely new, unplanned direction. “Over the years, a story started to take shape,” he says. “Documenting it kept me sane in many ways, and made me more empathetic toward the people I met in that world.”

These years of exploration, from 2022 to 2025, have been anthologised in his upcoming photobook Section 63: Underground & Unmasked - Documenting Underground London Raves (published by Velocity Press).  Section 63 refers to the infamous 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, introduced in response to the boom of the UK’s free party movement in the early 90s and headed with the line: “powers to remove persons attending for or preparing for a rave.” Despite the government’s decades-long crackdown, these communities have endured, and in today’s harsher political climate, the hunger for the DIY spirit of dance music feels stronger than ever.

“I think club spaces are uniquely cathartic,” Yushy says. “Being in these spaces helps grow both individuality and a sense of community. You can be alone in a club, but you will still be with people who care about the space you’re in.” With the internet trend cycles flattening subcultures into one amorphous counterculture, he wonders if something vital has been lost. “These spaces are special for anyone, regardless of music or location.”

“Clubs are closing at an alarming rate,” Yushy reminds us, with 65 UK clubs being shut down just in the last year, in part due to rising costs. “What we are seeing is a shift of people wanting a sense of community that, because of everything being so mainstream, just doesn't exist.” His own experience of clubbing has been varied, starting out wearing shirts at local high-street clubs to sweaty basement raves in his days studying photojournalism at the University of South Wales, and then onto massive warehouse raves and festivals. “I do miss a small club, personally – they are by far the best!” 

Originally, Yushy dreamed of doing fashion and filmmaking at college, but happily fell into photography by mistake. Inspired by Ewen Spencer, Simon Wheatley and even Nan Goldin, his fly-on-the-wall style captures both the raw energy of the events he attends and the personalities within them, making it hard to imagine his work never existing. “My best advice is to move and shoot. You move, adapting to the light, documenting what matters to you. Whether that’s your mates in the loos, to photographing what is left on the floors: it all matters.”

“One thing I found myself photographing a lot was intimacy between people; whether that’s people sharing a cig or two people kissing in a disused warehouse,” he adds. “Empty hallways in abandoned commercial blocks, the sound systems, an old 2006 calendar hanging on the wall, the condensation on the windows, it all makes for great context.”

Since starting the book, he reveals that he finds himself increasingly involved with the more commercial side of the photography business, and the conflicted feeling of navigating that world while still being authentically rooted in the underground. “What’s interesting is that I’ve started to see similarities in both spaces,” he admits. “There’s a real appetite for the rawness and energy of the underground, but often without the realities that come with it. At the same time, parts of the underground are seeking more visibility and accessibility, flirting with the mainstream in ways that can feel both exciting and complicated.” 

The book’s cover came from a moment Yushy spent trying to find the location of a rave. “It was a hot August week, and I’d been sent details to head to a local train station and ‘await further information’ about where the rave would be,” he says of this classic pre-rave scenario. “After a while, a few others showed up – all waiting for the same thing. Suddenly, we all received the same message: a what3words location.”

“I started making my way there, heading toward a motorway flyover. As I got closer, I could hear the faint sound of trance music drifting between the cars overhead. I turned around and there was a group of people following me, who had apparently been behind me for a while. It felt like something out of a strange dream, almost like I was the Pied Piper. I snapped a photo of them laughing and joking as they walked past me to the sound of the music. That became the image for the cover.” 

Yushy’s debut photobook is published by Velocity Press in October and is available to pre-order here. The accompanying exhibition will be held at The Farsight Gallery (4-6 Flitcroft Street, London, WC2H 8DJ) and will run from 3-9 September, 2025.