I just finished reading Generation Ecstasy, Simon Reynolds’ history of electronic music and rave culture during the ‘80s and ‘90s. At this moment, it’s fairly sad to immerse oneself in the alternate universe where people crammed into crowded spaces and danced together, but the book is nonetheless fantastic, spanning from the music’s origins in Detroit and Chicago to late-90s drum and bass (the book was published in 1999). One thread that runs through the narrative is the dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow culture, and critics’ tendency to overemphasize the former and neglect the latter. Much electronic music, of course, is club music, a functionalist complement to a specific milieu, ephemeral support for having the best possible time rather than self-conscious “art,” and at times closer to engineering (especially as the tracks got harder and faster), a “cool hallucinatory culture of special effects personalities moving at warp speed to nowhere” (to quote technology theorist Arthur Kroker). Throughout the book, Reynolds reckons with his own “rockist” bias, which he overcame in order to embrace this music: “Before I experienced rave culture on its own terrain and terms, I accordingly celebrated groups like 808 State, the Orb, and the Shamen on the grounds that their music made sense at home and at album length.”
#122: Energy Flash
#122: Energy Flash
#122: Energy Flash
I just finished reading Generation Ecstasy, Simon Reynolds’ history of electronic music and rave culture during the ‘80s and ‘90s. At this moment, it’s fairly sad to immerse oneself in the alternate universe where people crammed into crowded spaces and danced together, but the book is nonetheless fantastic, spanning from the music’s origins in Detroit and Chicago to late-90s drum and bass (the book was published in 1999). One thread that runs through the narrative is the dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow culture, and critics’ tendency to overemphasize the former and neglect the latter. Much electronic music, of course, is club music, a functionalist complement to a specific milieu, ephemeral support for having the best possible time rather than self-conscious “art,” and at times closer to engineering (especially as the tracks got harder and faster), a “cool hallucinatory culture of special effects personalities moving at warp speed to nowhere” (to quote technology theorist Arthur Kroker). Throughout the book, Reynolds reckons with his own “rockist” bias, which he overcame in order to embrace this music: “Before I experienced rave culture on its own terrain and terms, I accordingly celebrated groups like 808 State, the Orb, and the Shamen on the grounds that their music made sense at home and at album length.”