Craze: Step Inside Sydney's Early Raves, Doofs & Festivals

by Stephan Gyory

CRAZE is a raw, first-hand account of Sydney’s early rave scene — told from the floor, not the booth.

From queer dancefloors to illegal warehouses, it captures the moment dance culture exploded into the world and evaded control.

“High Fidelity meets Human Traffic — Australian style.”
— Dr Noel Burgess (Vision Four 5)

This isn’t a DJ memoir or a drug exposé. It’s the story of how music, movement, and collective release gave a generation somewhere to go. It examines how policing, panic, and money pulled it all apart — and suggests how those cultural strands might be woven together again.

“A unique perspective from someone who was there from the start.”
— Andy Rantzen (Itch-E & Scratch-E)

Honest, unsentimental, and sharply observed, CRAZE fuses scene memoir with cultural history...and moves beyond both.

If you've ever lost a weekend to a warehouse, you’ll recognise this instantly.
If you haven’t, CRAZE will take you there.

538 pages, Hardcover

Published October 10, 2025

About the author

In the late '90s and early '00s, Sydney’s Darlinghurst was home to up to seventeen specialist dance music record shops.

In 2025 there's only one: the Recordstore. This salubrious establishment opened its doors in 2003, rising like a dazed and confused phoenix from the ashes of the beloved BPM Records (est.1994).

From disgruntled customer and promising psychology gradate, though manager of BPM, to co-owner of the Recordstore, the author has witnessed — and taken part in — the rise and fall and rise again of vinyl DJ culture.

As first a punter at the early ‘90s raves, then DJ / Promoter / Producer during the heyday of clubland and the explosion of Electronic Music into festivals and stadiums he has stayed the course.

Co-producing Sydney’s “party of the year” in 1999, and DJing at Berlin’s Tresor nightclub and Love Parade in 2000, the author has experienced some incredible highs. Being Registered Officer/Party Agent for the anti-lockout political party Keep Sydney Open in the 2010s, he has lived through — and helped fight — the extreme lows.

Darlinghurst has always been his base and that’s because Eastside Sydney in general — and Darlinghurst in particular — have always been safe and welcoming places for queers, bohemians, and misfits alike: a community understanding of differences and clubs within which to congregate and dance anonymously.

That’s how Steph found Darlinghurst in 1991.

From the very first moment, he knew it was his home.