Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture

Twenty-five years since electronic dance music and ecstasy revolutionized pop culture, Simon Reynolds´ landmark history of rave is available for the first time in America in uncut form. A longtime writer about rock and rap, Reynolds started watching -and partaking in- the rave movement in 1991, experiencing firsthand ecstasy´s sense-heightening and adrenalin-surging effects on the music and the scene. Reynolds goes way beyond straight music history, mixing interviews with participants, DJs, and producers with ultra-vivid descriptions of the ever-changing sounds of the dance underground, social analysis, theory-fueled speculation, and personal reminiscence.
Blending sharply observed reporting, probing research, and passionate opinion, Reynolds guides the reader on a thrilling journey from the birth of house and techno in 1980s Chicago and Detroit, through the druggy daze of Ibiza and Manchester, deep into London´s pirate radio underworld of jungle and drum and bass, then on to the hedonistic chaos of America´s East Coast and West Coast rave scenes. Picking up the story in the twenty-first century, the new chapters added for this edition track the scenes and sounds that have kept electronic music and the vanguard of pop culture, from trance to grime and elector to dubstep.
Now more authoritative and comprenhensive than ever, Energy Flash is the essential document of rave´s quest for the perfect beat and the ultimate rush.