Simon Reynolds: Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture.(Review)

Hardcover, 1998, ISBN 0-316-74111-6, 454 pages, bibiography, discography, index; Little, Brown and Company, World Wide Web www.littlebrown.com or members.aol.com/blissout/; also available in softcover (1999, ISBN 0-415-92373-5) from Routledge, 29 West 35th Street, New York, New York 10001, USA; telephone (212) 216-7800; electronic mail cserve@routledge-ny.com; World Wide Web www.routledge-ny.com

"This is the age of the engineer-poet, the imagineer." (Simon Reynolds, "Overrated of 1997," http://members.aol.com/blissout/ over97.htm)

Those interested in furthering their knowledge of the genre known as "techno" would do well to read Simon Reynolds's latest book about the rave phenomenon, Generation Ecstasy. Over the past decade, Mr. Reynolds has written some of the most thought-provoking commentary on contemporary popular music. In his first book, Blissed Out: the Raptures of Rock (London: Serpents Tail, 1990) the author explores the concept of "bliss" in pop music while describing its origins, social context, and aesthetic content. Throughout his career, Mr. Reynolds has written dozens of insightful articles for publications such as The Village Voice, Melody Maker, Spin, The Wire, and Rolling Stone. He is one of a few music journalists (Greil Marcus, Kodwo Eschun, and David Toop are others) who comfortably draw from critical sources as diverse as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Roland Barthes, and Johnny Rotten.

In his latest book, Generation Ecstasy, Mr. Reynolds takes on the Herculean task of chronicling the techno/rave movement, which mutates and spins out new tendril-like sub-genres on a weekly basis. It's no easy feat keeping on top of all the music coming out at any given moment; reviewing its brief yet furious history is equally as daunting. Viewing the various scenes in Europe and the United States from a sociological perspective, he often frames his first-hand research in a pharmacological context, one of the petri dishes for this new, synthetic-sounding dance music.

The author sketches in the main timeline of electronic dance music from its inception in Detroit and Chicago in the early 1980s through the fractalized (factionalized) mutations that have spawned in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US. Mr. Reynolds covers the early roots of the American movement by tracing the careers of the techno triumvirate: Derrick May, Juan Atkins, and Kevin Saunderson. Their attraction to the cold mechanical beats of Kraftwerk launched the "Detroit sound" that quickly spread to the UK, was misinterpreted, and mutated into "Acid House." He then leads us chapter by chapter through the underbelly of the subcultures: the rave movement in the UK and the US, the Manchester scene (also known as "rave 'n roll"), the crusty movement (techno hippies), the Detroit scene in the early 1990s, jungle, hardcore, trip hop, drum 'n bass, techstep, ambient, and the post-techno experimental movements emanating from Berlin, Cologne, and Finland.

Mr. Reynolds also touches on the subject of DJ culture and how it fueled the musical deconstruction known as the "remix"--this is of particular importance for anyone wanting to know more about the cultural impact of interpreting or mutating works in order to add new dimensions to them. Of economic interest is how the "use-value" of a remix is (re)projected out into the marketplace, often extending the popularity (read: sales) of a music track. Out of this process and with the availability of cheap audio gear, DJs are able to blur the line between composer and arranger by taking their craft off the dance floor and into their home studios. The tool of choice is the sampler, and by using the technique of sampling, the DJ has the ability to layer other samples taken from different sources (or eras) with the original recording to form a bricolage of cultural references. Precedents had been set by the Surrealists, Dadaists, the "cut-up" work of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and Dub Reggae artists King Tubby and Errol Thompson. Postmodernism had gained a foothold in modern culture where the artist is transformed from being a creator to being a curator. Mr. Reynolds offers some of the ...