Words: Lara Pacillo // Photos: Rug Club
Gilbert Garden and Cameron Pitcher both love to tinker, listen to music, and get into places they’re not meant to go.
It’s doing this that led them to create Rug Club – a collective that rescues old sound system components, turns them into speakers, and (as of this week) hosts parties with them.
“We actually found the first Rug Club speakers while urban exploring, rescuing them from a building mid-destruction,” explains 21-year-old Gilbert.
“They were a beautiful set of four handcrafted speakers we could tell a lot of love went into. Upon pulling apart and reassembling them, we admired the handiwork and decided to give it a go for ourselves. Now here we are.”
Named after the carpeting that lined these very speakers, Rug Club formed in December 2022.
Both Gilbert and 24-year-old Cameron are immersed in Adelaide’s music, events, sound, and lighting scenes. Rug Club is their “love letter to the power of party – party being the borderless, transient and eternal energy, the unquenchable human desire to share and to love and to celebrate life”.
The collective is hosting a free park picnic and dance party at Wirrarninthi/Park 23 on Saturday March 18 to officially launch Rug Club. The exact location will be announced on the day, while the stacked DJ line-up features inspirations to Rug Club, including Modaffodil, Spin Lizzy, Cortex, and Baby Monet, among many others. Rugs, snacks, and an open mind are encouraged, where their custom hand-built sound systems will be booming from 2pm into the night.
Gilbert says there’s a lot of work that goes into restoring the sound systems. It starts off deciding on a speaker to build depending on a desired frequency range, throw distance, and volume. Then it’s finding the key components, usually from old projects or bins. After that, there’s a lot of complex maths, measurement, glue, and power tools – followed by testing, painting, insulating, and everything in between.
“The process is complicated,” Gilbert says. “We recently put ourselves to the challenge to design a mid-sized sound system with good volume and clarity. This was harder than anticipated and we had to teach ourselves lots of new skills to achieve the goal. As we progressed further in the project it became easier because our skills grew with the project – we were delighted with the results.”
Gilbert says inspiration for their projects comes from Jamaican Sound System culture, which dates back to the 1950s involving stacks of huge speakers set up on the streets. But it’s today’s local music scene where they say much credit is also due and these groups form the extended Rug Club family.
“Small City Systems are an unstoppable force of party; Maxim aka Okoshka, is an interstellar kindred spirit, Daria aka Skorpion King – they are pure magic.
“Lewis aka Ratboy aka Nopatience Records of Neat Collective, endlessly empowers and inspires ideas in me.
“Rug Club is an open and evolving group of lovers and friends.”
Gilbert and Cameron refer to strong values through Rug Club. They believe every being and thing to be of equal intrinsic value provoking a fundamental respect and peace making whether it’s working with their environment, others, or their speakers.
Rug Club will be putting their sound systems to action regularly, with events across town lined up in the months ahead, and plans to continue growing their hand-built collection.
They ask those who want to get involved with the speaker construction to get in touch. Or better yet, come along to the party on Saturday.
“We want people to let their guard down and dance their butt off,” Gilbert says.
“We hope for them to meet, listen, and learn about the people and world around them with intrigue and respect.”
Rug Club Sound System Showcase launch party: Saturday March 18 // Wirrarninthi/Park 23 West Terrace Adelaide 5000
Event details // Website // Instagram
