Product Description

In the early nineties, rave culture exploded with the availability of cheap computers and sampling technology, causing a punk-style do-it-yourself revolution. The resulting upsurge of independent labels and home studio-based artists spawned a legion of subgenres: hardcore, trance, jungle, ambient, gabba, big beat, and many more. Today, DJs and producers such as Fatboy Slim, Prodigy, Goldie and The Chemical Brothers have huge followings, while mainstream artists like Madonna and Bjork have turned to rave's offspring for artistic rejuvenation.

In Generation Ecstasy, Simon Reynolds takes the reader on a guided tour of this end-of-the-millenium phenomenon, telling the story of rave culture and techno music as an insider who has dosed up and blissed out. The first critical history of techno music--and the drug culture that accompanies it--Generation Ecstasy traces rave's origins in Detroit techno and Chicago house, then shows how these black American genres were transformed by British and European youth. Here is everything you ever wanted to know about the artists and the DJs who created dance culture, the fans for whom it is a way of life, and the dance club and outdoor rave scenes that brought it both fame and infamy.

A celebration of rave's quest for the perfect beat and the ultimate rush, Generation Ecstasy is the definitive chronicle of rave culture and electronic dance music.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296065 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 504 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"I finally grasped viscerally why the music was made the way it was; how certain tingly textures goosepimpled your skin and particular oscillator riffs triggered the E-rush.... Finally, I understood ecstasy as a sonic science. And it became even clearer that the audience was the star." British-born Spin magazine senior editor Reynolds (Blissed Out; coauthor, The Sex Revolts) offers a revved-up, detailed and passionate history and analysis of the throbbing transcontinental set of musics and cultures known as rave, covering its brightly morphing family tree from Detroit techno and Chicago house to Britain's 1988 "summer of love," on through London jungle and the German avant-garde to the current warehouse parties and turntables of Europe and America. One chapter explains, cogently, the pleasures and effects of the drug Ecstasy (MDMA, or "E"), without which rave would never have evolved; others describe the roles of the DJ, the remix and pirate radio, the "trance" and "ambient" trends of the early 1990s, the rise and fall of would-be stars, the impact of other drugs and the proliferation of current club "subsubgenres." Assuming no prior knowledge in his readers, Reynolds mixes social history, interviews with participants and scene-makers and his own analyses of the sounds, saturating his prose with the names of key places, tracks, groups, scenes and artists. Reynolds prefers and champions the less intellectual, more anonymous and dance-crazed parts of the rave galaxy, "from the most machinic forms of house... through... bleep-and-bass, breakbeat house, Belgian hardcore, jungle, gabba, street garage and big beat." If you don't know what those terms mean, here's how to find out. Two eight-page b&w photo inserts and a discography.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The Washington Post
While disappointed that Reynolds doesn't mention the unofficial raver credo of PLUR (peace, love, unity, respect), I appreciate that Generation Ecstasy is a labor of love.

From Booklist
The title refers to the drug of choice at the multimedia events typical of Reynolds' subject: the "rave" scene, in which impressionable youngsters congregate in such roomy venues as pastures and warehouses to be musically entertained while under the influence. Rave music includes techno and several other strains, all of them electronic. Reynolds traces it from the German group Kraftwerk's "Krautrock" to disco and funk to the many rave-friendly formats extant today. Besides this music history, Reynolds discusses the panoply of rave-worthy drugs and proper rave attitude and deportment. His occasionally hyperventilating prose may discourage nonfan readers, yet this is a neat history of a cultural anomaly--a strain of pop music with a large audience but nearly no presence in the regular pop music media. And as a special bonus, Reynolds reveals why nitrous oxide is called "hippy crack." A solid addition for pop music collections and perhaps a source of ideas for an in-library festival (well . . . maybe not). Mike Tribby

Customer Reviews

Great but greatly flawed
Generation Ecstasy is probably the best book-length study of electronic music available right now. It is comprehensive and discusses just about every sub-genre of elctronic out there. Reynolds even makes a few categories to suit his own critical purposes. While certainly well worth the read, the book has serious flaws.

In an effort to disavow his own bourgeois status as music critic and conoisseur, Reynolds routinely sides with the more "populist" sub-genres out there. Jungle and gabba are good. Trip-hop and IDM are snobby. Hardcore and house get the thumbs up, 'intelligent drum and bass' and illbient get the thumbs down. While he often has a point, this siding with what 'moves the masses' turns too easily into apologetics for the culture industry (the mass manufacture and consumption of musical cliché). Under the misguided notion that if a certain class or ethnic group consumes a certain type of music it must be good stuff, Reynolds gets pulled into the knee-jerk dismissal of more "marginal" creativity. At certain points in his book I get weird echoes of Edmund Burke attacking the French Revolution and insisting on the necessity for incremental change within the hallowed lines of tradition. Whatever happened to radical criticism? Reynolds should know that "what sells" is not necessarily the destiny of a genre. The future of music is often (but admittedly not always) heard in its avant-garde. I think Reynolds' pseudo-populism goes hand in hand with his annoying habit of tracing electronic music back onto the grids of music he already understands. Witness just one of many: "If rave is heavy metal (rowdy, stupefying, a safety valve for adolescent aggression) and electronic is progressive rock (pseudo-spiritual, contemplative), Digital Hardcore is punk rock: angry, speedy, 'noise-annoys'-y." Analogies like this create a false sense of illumination and profundity. What has he really said by rave=metal, electronic=prog rock, hardcore=punk? The effect of such equations is to call us back to the familiar and to erase the historical specificity of electronic music. Rave is NOT just the repetition of metal with synthesizers, etc.

Take these caveats with a grain of salt--the book is still a great pleasure to read.

Knowledge/fandom limits ability for critical dialogue
Having just worked my way through the UK publication of this book, alternitavely titled "Energy Flash", I must say that I have been given a decent working history of movement that has become a dominant part of youth culture over the last ten years. But as the author remains a fan (one might even say preacher for) of one particular sub genre of these varied strains of music, his analysis and interpretation often fails to deliver the goods. If Mr. Reynolds were not desperately searching for a modern day incarnation of the late 60's hippy attempt to redefine society through a common musical affinity, he might be willing to accept genres such as ambient, prog. House and the like as valid artistic fields. But since all music must satisfy his need for underground consciousness raising revolt(in this case through a culture that drops out of the mainstream completely a la expressionists of the nineteen twenties)he finds it difficult to accept a music that is merely intended to entice and provide pleasure or rediefne the way we think of musicality. The resulting rejections and arrogant denials of alternatives to the dance till you lose yourself 'ardkore ultimately remain self indulgent and tainted by his wishful myth formation. The further inability to critically question the prescribed goals of this 'ardkore also leaves a strong desire for more discussion. However this is where the text is also the most intriguing. Reynolds with his solid knowledge of the genre manages to pique interest and in my case have led to a renewed desire to search out a truly intelligent discourse on the movement and its consequences. On a final note the obsessive UK-centric approach to the music also wears thin, denying foreign countries their due until they begin to affect the UK scene.

Interesting, but unsatisfying
First off, the title is a bit misleading - this book is about the history of rave culture (primarily in England), and has very little to do with psychedelic/ecstasy culture and its philosophy.

The historical aspect of the book is a good overview, but extremely biased towards the hardcore and related genres of techno. In particular I was offended by the author's suggestion that 'Intelligent Dance Music' was virtually racist because it avoided the use of black hip hop beats while those beats were getting a lot of play in clubs and at raves. The author presents himself as an outsider at the beginning of the book, but he was clearly part of and influenced by the hardcore scene. That isn't bad in of itself, but in this author's case it means that ever other niche is compared to the original hardcore scene (as well as its closely related genres) in a negative light; the author insinuates that the other genres simply don't get the point. Frankly, I think the author is the one who is unable to get any of the other genres.

All of this aside, I give this book four starts because it is a truly excellent resource for techno music fans, as well as anyone who is interested in learning more about the different genres of techno. Each section of the book presents (biased) descriptions of leading artists in each genre, and there is an excellent list in the appendix of tens of genres of technos with several album recommendations for each genre. This makes it an excellent reference for anyone interested in learning more about the different genres of techno.