Generation Ecstasy : Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture

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.

'Energy Flash' is an early hardcore track and this title captures the ideas and spirit of Reynolds' book.

Those who come to this book looking for a history of ecstasy and the pseudo-hippie 'idealogy' behind rave may be misled by the U.S. title.

I also don't think the criticism that Reynolds is biased makes any sense. We read music criticism to hear others views and Reynolds' are well-thought-out and coherent. I respect that, even when I don't always agree with him.


From the "Second Summer of Love" to the "Post-Rave Diaspora"   January 2, 2005
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Despite its limitations, this is still the best empirical book about the history of rave culture to date. Reynolds is an English dance music journalist who positions himself at the popular/danceable wing of the dance movement in contrast with its elitist/"intelligent" sections. (My sources in Ibiza/UK, though, tell me that he in fact belongs to London's clubbing elite...).

The bulk of the book consists of a long series of interweaved magazine articles that Reynolds published throughout the years. He describes dance music subgenres, artists/promoters/clubs, and how music changes. He also connects rave culture with the rise of harsh neoliberal capitalism in 1980s UK and US. However, Reynolds hyperventilates in excessive descriptions of sounds and theis effects in the communal experience of 'raving' that bonds the "generation ecstasy".

Despite the emphasis on musical descriptivism and on the British case, the book demonstrates how dance movement develops in general: in relation to the social tension between the underground and the mainstream, to the repressive action of the neoliberal state, and to the development of a global dance subculture: from the Second Summer of Love (1988) to what he aptly terms as "post-rave diaspora" (since 1997).

In the "post-rave diaspora", Reynolds notes that ecclectic experiments have gotten stuck in formal conventions of House, Techno and DnB, and that nobody knows where Techno movement will lead to. (As an example of this claim, see my review of album "Creamfield" by Paul Oakenfold).