Friday, February 22, 2008

BIBLIOGRAPHY TO ENERGY FLASH a.k.a. GENERATION ECSTASY

For space reasons the bibliography has been left out of the updated/expanded 2008 edition of Energy Flash. For those who feel the absence here it is, with the addition of a section at the end on significant and useful books and articles on rave/techno/electronic music that have been published in the ten years since Energy Flash/Generation Ecstasy first came out. This is a work in progress and will be added to regularly. Suggestions for books, magazine articles, and online work/resources/etc are welcomed.


ADORNO, THEODOR W.
"On The Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening". In Arato, E & E. Gebhardt eds. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978.
"Perennial Fashion--Jazz". In Prisms, trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1981.

ATTALI, JACQUES.
Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Trans. Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.

BEADLE, JEREMY J.
Will Pop Eat Itself?--Pop Music In The Soundbite Era. London: Faber & Faber, 1993.

BECK, JEROME and MARSHA RONSENBAUM.
Pursuit of Ecstasy: The MDMA Experience. State University of New York Press, 1994.

BENNEY, PAUL.
Jeff Mills interview. Jockey Slut, June/July 1996.

BETTELHEIM, BRUNO.
The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of Self. New York: The Free Press, 1967.

BEY, HAKIM.
T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia, 1991.

BLOOM, HAROLD.
Omens of Millenium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection. New York: Riverhead, 1996.

BOWIE, MALCOLM.
Lacan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991

BROUGHTON, FRANK.
"Chicago: Still Rockin' Down The House". iD, April 1995.

BUFORD, BILL.
Among The Thugs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1992.

BUKATMAN, SCOTT.
Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject In Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, North Carolina and London: Duke University Press, 1993.
"The Artificial Infinite". In Cooke, Lynne and Peter Wollen ed. Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995.

CHAMPION, SARAH
ed. Disco Biscuits. London: Sceptre/Hodder & Stoughton. 1997.

COLE, BETHAN.
"Trance Tripping" [Goa trance]. In iD, The Real Issue, 1996.

COLLIN, MATTHEW, with JOHN GODFREY.
Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. London: Serpent's Tail, 1997.

CUTLER, CHRIS.
"Plunderphonics". In Musicworks/60, Fall 1994.

DELEUZE, GILLES, and FELIX GUATTARI.
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

ECHLIN, HOBEY.
"The History of Detroit Techno Part One" and "Part Two". In Detroit Metro Times, May 17-23 and May 24-30, 1995.

EISENBERG, EVAN.
The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture From Aristotle to Zappa. London: Picador, 1988.

ENO, BRIAN.
Dialogue with Kevin Kelly, in Wired, May 1995.

ESHUN, KODWO.
Carl Craig profile. iD, April 1995.

FRITH, SIMON.
Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996.

GIBSON, WILLIAM.
Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984.

GILROY, PAUL.
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.

GODFREY, JOHN.
"The Amnesiacs/Happy Daze Are Here Again". [Balearic and Acid House]. In iD, The Body Issue, 1988.

GOODWIN, ANDREW.
"Rationalisation and Democratisation in the New Technologies of Popular Music". In Lull, James, ed. Popular Music and Communication. Sage 1992.

GRACYK, THEODORE.
Rhythm And Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1996

GRAY, CHRIS HABLES
ed. The Cyborg Handbook. New York and London: Routledge, 1995.

GREENFELD, KARL TARO.
Speed Tribes: Days and Nights With Japan's Next Generation. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

GRINSPOON, LESTER, and PETER HEDBLOM.
The Speed Culture: Amphetamine Use and Abuse in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975.

GROSSBERG, LAWRENCE.
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture. London: Routledge, 1992.

GUATTARI, FELIX.
"Millions and Millions of Potential Alices". In Guattari, Felix. Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics. trans. Rosemary Sheed. London: Penguin, 1984.

HEBDIGE, DICK.
Cut 'n' Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music. London: Comedia, 1987.

HENRY, STUART and MIKE VON JOEL.
Pirate Radio: Then and Now. Poole, Dorset: Blandford Press, 1984.

HILLS, GAVIN.
"Wonderland U.K." [Drug excess/ennui] in The Face, January 1993.

HUGHES, WALTER.
"Feeling Mighty Real: Disco as Discourse and Discipline". In Village Voice Rock & Roll Quarterly, Summer 1993.

JAMES, WILLIAM.
The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Mentor, 1958.
"Subjective Effects Of Nitrous Oxide". In Mind, Vol. 7, 1882, pp. 186-208. Reprinted in Tart, Charles T. ed, Altered States of Consciousness. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

KEIL, CHARLES, AND STEVEN FELD.
Music Grooves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

KEMPSTER, CHRIS
ed. History of House. London: Sanctuary, 1996.

KENT, NICK.
"The Mancunian Candidates: Happy Mondays and Stone Roses". In Kent, Nick. The Dark Stuff. London: Penguin, 1994.

KROKER, ARTHUR.
The Possessed Individual: Technology and the French Postmodern. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992
Spasm: Virtual Reality, Android Music and Electric Flesh. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993

KROKER, ARTHUR, and MICHAEL A. WEINSTEIN.
Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

LUDLOW, FITZ HUGH.
"The Hasheesh Eater: being passages from The Life of a Pythagorean". Extract reprinted in Strausbaugh, John and Donald Blaise ed. The Drug User: Documents 1840-1960. New York: Blast Books Inc, 1991.

MARSHALL, JULES.
"Harder Than Hardcore" [Gabba]. In iD, The Europe Issue, 1993.

MCKAY, GEORGE.
Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties. London: Verso, 1990

MCKENNA, TERENCE.
Food Of The Gods: The Search For The Original Tree of Knowledge. A Radical History of Planets, Drugs and Human Evolution. New York: Bantam, 1992.

MELECHI, ANTONIO.
"The Ecstasy of Disappearance". In Redhead, Steve, ed. Rave Off.

METCALFE, STUART.
"Ecstasy Evangelists and Psychedelic Warriors". In Melechi, Antonio, ed. Psychedelica Britannica: Hallucinogenic Drugs In Britain. London: Turnaround, 1997.

METRAUX, ALDRED.
Voodoo In Haiti. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. In

MILLER, PAUL D.
"Yet Do I Wonder". Village Voice, February 8th, 1994.

MOORE, JOHN.
Anarchy & Ecstasy: Visions of Halcyon Days. London: Aporia Press, 1988

NEWCOMBE, DR RUSSELL.
"Raving and Dance Drugs: House Music Clubs and Parties in North-West England". Liverpool: Rave Research Bureau paper, 1991.

O'HAGAN, ANDREW.
"Passing Poison" in Observer Life magazine, 9th October 1994.
Reprinted in Kureishi, Hanif and Jon Savage ed. The Faber Book of Pop. London: Faber & Faber, 1995.

OWEN, FRANK.
"Feel The Noise-- Techno Kids: The Working-Class Avant-Garde" [New York hardcore]. Village Voice, September 24, 1991.
"Paradise Lost" [Paradise Garage/Larry Levan]. In Vibe, 1993.
"The King of Ecstasy" [Lord Michael]. Village Voice, April 1, 1997.

PENMAN, IAN.
"Black Secret Tricknology" [Tricky]. The Wire, March 1995.

PRINCE, DAVID.
Interview with Brian Eno, in Request, November 1995.

PRINCE, DAVID, and MATT ADELL.
Interview with Terence McKenna. Reactor, March 1993.

ROSE, TRICIA.
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1994.

REDHEAD, STEVE.
Football With Attitude. Manchester: Wordsmith, 1991.
ed. Rave Off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture. Aldershot, Hampshire: Avebury, 1993.

RIETVELD, HILLEGONDA.
"Living The Dream".In Redhead, Steve, ed. Rave Off.
"The House Sound of Chicago". Working Papers In Popular Cultural Studies No. 8. Manchester: Manchester Institute For Popular Culture, 1993.

RUSHKOFF, DOUGLAS.
Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace. HarperCollins, 1994.

SAUNDERS, NICHOLAS.
E For Ecstasy. London: Nicholas Saunders, 1993
Ecstasy and The Dance Culture. London: Nicholas Saunders, 1995.

SCHAFER, R. MURRAY.
The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1994.

SHAPIRO, HARRY.
Waiting For The Man. The Story of Drugs and Popular Music. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1988

SHAPIRO, PETER and RACHAEL PHILIPPS.
"Something For The Blunted" [Coldcut and Ninjatune]. The Wire, May 1996.

SICKO, DAN.
"Techno Rebels: Detroit's Agents of Change". In Urb no. 50, August/September 1996.

SILVERMAN, KAJA.
The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Bloomington and Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.

SMITH, RICHARD.
"Us Boys Together Clinging: One Night in a Gay Club" in Smith, Richard. Seduced and Abandoned: Essays on Gay Men and Popular Music. London: Cassell, 1995.

SONTAG, SUSAN.
"The Basic Unit of Contemporary Art Is Not The Idea, But The Analysis of and Extension of Sensations". In Stearn, Gerald Emanuel ed. McLuhan: Hot & Cool. New York: Signet, 1969.

STRAW, WILL.
"The Booth, The Floor and The Wall: Dance Music and the Fear of Falling". In Public, No. 8, 1993.

THEBERGE, PAUL.
Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1997.

THORNTON, SARAH.
Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover, New Hampshire: Weslyan University Press, 1996.

TOFFLER, ALVIN.
Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1970.
The Third Wave. New York: Bantam, 1981.

TOOP, DAVID.
Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London: Serpent's Tail, 1995.
"Behind The Groove". [Early Eighties New York DJ's] In Collusion, September 1983. Reprinted in DJ, March 11, 1994
Giorgio Moroder interview. The Wire, April 1992.

VIRILIO, PAUL.
Aesthetics of Disappearance. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.

VIRILO, PAUL, and SYLVERE LOTRINGER.
Pure War. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.

WELSH, IRVINE.
The Acid House. London: Jonathan Cape, 1994 and New York: Norton, 1995.
Marabou Stork Nightmares. New York: Norton, 1996.

WILLIAMS, DONNA.
Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic. London: Doubleday, 1992, and New York: Times Books, 1992.


^^^^^^^

A SELECTION OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES PUBLISHED AFTER ENERGY FLASH'S ORIGINAL RELEASE

1/ BOOKS


Mireille Scott, Rave America: Inside Club Culture (ECW Press, 2000)

Entertaining and well-researched history of rave culture in North America. Journalistic rather than theoretical/critical, it does for the New World what Matthew Collin's Altered State did for Blighty. The 'North America,' as opposed to USA, is a crucial distinction, as one of the best chapters is on the nuttily Anglophile scene in Toronto, long this continent's bastion of all things ardkore and jungalistic.

Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, October 2003)

Fascinating and highly detailed history of the 1970s disco underground-- house music's prehistory, in other words. Look out also for Lawrence's forthcoming critical biography of Arthur Russell.

Peter Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco (London: Faber & Faber, 2006)

A good complement to Lawrence's scholarly and New York-centric book, with which it overlaps somewhat, Shapiro's chronicle is broader-ranging both geographically and timespan-wise (e.g. fascinating stuff on the early 80s Northern Italy 'cosmic' scene) and is also more vividly written while being no less authoritative and trainspotter-friendly in terms of esoteric facts.


Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (New York: Grove, 2000; revised 2006)

B&B are house bods, so you don't get much on rave or indeed techno in this volume (it's like Energy Flash inverted, in fact). But this a knowledgeable, entertaining and affable history of the disco-house continuum, particularly strong on club culture before Ibiza-acieeed-XTC.(Exhaustively strong, with a long collection of famous DJ fave track playlists from various legendary NYC clubs of the 70s and early 80s). Brewster & Broughton also wrote a useful manual on the craft of deejaying, How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records (Grove, 2003), if this had come out before we had kids I might even have taken the plunge and bought a second Technics…


Dave Haslam, Adventures on the Wheels of Steel: The Rise of the Superstar DJs (London: Harper UK 2002)

Useful book about the rise to hegemony of deejays in UK pop culture by Hacienda deejay and author (see also his Manchester, England history which naturally covers Madchester and baggy with an insider's perspective)


Peter Shapiro (editor) Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound. (New York: Caipirinha Productions/D.A.P, 2000.)
Spanning the genrescape from musique concrete to trip hop and all points in between, an attractively designed compendium of essays by David Toop, Kodwo Eshun (a particularly good one, on house music), Rob Young, Tony Marcus, Kurt Reighley, Mike Rubin, Chris Sharp, yours truly (on Krautrock), and editor Peter Shapiro. "Throbbing" might be a bit strong but a jolly good read nonetheless.


Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson,Discographies: Dance Music Culture and the Politics of Sound (London: Routledge, 1999)

The best academic treatment of techno and rave culture I've come across--wide-ranging, theoretically probing, and lively and approachable in style. Pearson incidentally went on to prove equally adept at praxis as theory, becoming a well-respected deejay and remixer and in 2007 released his very fine contribution to Fabric's series of dj mix-CDs (Fabric 35).


Michel Gaillot, Multiple Meaning: Techno: An Artistic and Political Laboratory of the Present (Editions Dis Voir).

Thought-provoking and elegantly written… monograph, I think you'd have to say (121 pages)by philosopher and art critic Gaillot, whose basic argument, crudely simplified, is that rave culture is not apolitical so much as pre-political, a reversion to primordial forms of sociality that only works because people check their ideologies at the door along with their coats.


Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (Quartet, 1997).

Named after the sample in Origin Unknown's "Valley of the Shadows" aka "Long Dark Tunnel"!!! I have plenty of disagreements with Eshun's stance (see reviews here -- and I do think it's problematic that he never defines the "blackness", even the "post-essentialist blackness", that flickers in and out of the argument like a sort of spectral-rhetorical presence that conjures a vague counter-hegemonic edginess). But there's no denying that this is a supremely potent countervision to the sociohistorical approach nearly everybody else takes, mashing down all opposition less through argument than through the delirial intensity of the prose. Strong stuff.


Some of the most provocative and intoxciating work in a post-K.Eshun vein was done by the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, aka CCRU, who aimed to do for crit theory what breakbeat science did for rhythm. Deleuze goes darkside, their uncontrollable textual spew--monographs, pamphlets, essays, prose poems, fictions--are probably impossible to get hold of in hard-copy form, but check out the CCRU website and the cluster of sites connected from it. In fact go here for the digital versions of pieces in their Abstract Culture journal series.

O[rphan] D[frift>], Cyberpositive.

Self-published book of prose-poetical theory-delirium exploring intermeshcape between cyberpunk and technokulture, sampling heavily from appropriate philosophers and allies like Sadie Plant and Nick Land (of CCRU fame) weaving that with their own sadomasochistic evocations of extreme experiences at the cutting edges of the drug-tech interface. More info here

Also on the web, Drew Hemment's unpublished thesis Microgroove: simulation/amplification/intoxication , recommended by Jeremy Gilbert as
"the best example of a thoroughgoing Deleuzian study of dance music"

Jeremy also recommends Maria Pini's Club Cultures and Female Subjectivity (Palgrave 2001)-- which is available online here and Alexander Weheliye's Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-modernity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005) which as the title suggests is some black sonic fictionalist biznizz in a post-KEshun style.

Arun Saldanha, Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007)

Only just got this so not had time to do more than flick'n'skim, but having spoken at length with the author--a professor of geography at the University of Minnesota--when I was over for the Spark electronic music festival in Minneapolis, this looks to be a fascinating and provocative study of psy-trance and the phenomenon of rave tourism, based on field research in Goa, pursuing lines of analysis both postcolonial and DeleuzoGuattarian, and containing some shocking revelations about trancepackers and their exploitative relations with the local people.


Richard Benson (ed). Night Fever: Club Writing in The Face 1980-1997. London: Boxtree, 1997.

Useful compendium of journalistic reports and opinion pieces on club culture and dance music from the style Bible, albeit with not that much on rave (the Face's idea of dance culture was always geared to the Eighties nightclub ethos), but lots of good pieces including stuff by the late great Gavin Hills, whose own writings can be found in Bliss to Be Alive: The Collected Journalism of Gavin Hills (a posthumous anthology from 2000).

Tobias Rapp, Lost and Sound: Berlin, Techno und der Easyjetset Suhrkamp (Frankfurt und Main, 2009).



A fascinating study of the phenomenon of raver tourism in Berlin. Ultra-cheap air fares from Easyjet and Ryan Air et al have created this sort of Euroraver class, who fly into Berlin, don't bother with booking a hotel because they're not planning on doing any sleeping, and instead spend the money they save on partying hard . An entire micro-economy has sprung up to cater to these weekend warriors flying in from every corner of the Continent. As yet available only in German, although it looks likely there will be an English translation.

Graham St John e.d., FreeNRG: Notes from the Edge of the Dance Floor (Melbourne: The Humanities)
"Frontline communiqués on technotribes, contemporary musical practices and dance culture. Captures the spectrum of youth phenomena at the edge of the dance floor."

Graham St John, Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox, 2009)

More information here.

Graham St John (ed) Rave Culture and Religion (London, New York: Routledge, 2004)

Tara Rodgers, Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound (2010: Duke University Press)
Interesting collection of interviews with 24 female electronic musicians from Pauline Oliveros to Mira Calix via Maggi Payne, Jessica Rylan and Blevin Blectum, conducted by the founder of Pinknoises.com




More information here



2/ ARTICLES

A vast area. First tentatative toes in the ocean:

Philip Sherburne, Microhouse feature, The Wire, September 2001

Tricia Romano, The Next Brooklyns: New York's DJs flee overseas to Berlin and Barcelona. Village Voice, July 28, 2004. Read it here.


3/ WEB

Dancecult, a new international journal of academic and para-academic writing about electronic dance music culture, edited by Graham St John. Issue #1 contains a couple of pieces elaborating on the hardcore continuum seminar at UEL in 2009, and Issue #2 has a couple more on the whole debate, including by me.

DJHistory -- Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster's web site related to their books and chock full of articles, interviews, and so forth, with classic pieces soon to be added by guest writers like David Toop, Sheryl Garratt, Dom Philips and so forth.

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