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christopherc 's review for:
Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
by Simon Reynolds
Simon Reynolds is a British music journalist (born in 1963) who has covered several different genres of popular music, but experiences in clubs, raves and with the drug Ecstasy have made a powerful impact on his life. Energy Flash is a voluminous survey of electronic dance music (EDM) and the culture (style, drugs) surrounding it since its start in the 1980s. The first edition of the book (titled Generation Ecstasy in the United States) appeared in 1998, but a second edition describes later developments up to 2007.
While Reynolds focuses mainly on the British scene, there is ample coverage of US developments. Besides starting his history with the Detroit techno and Chicago house movements without which the UK would have never had acid house and everything after, Reynolds also dedicates an entire chapter to US raves, highlighting the very different vibe there compared to Europe. The German scene is also covered, but in considerably less detail than the UK or US.
Through each evolution in EDM, Reynolds mentions iconic tracks of the era. Take, for instance, this bit on “Voodoo Ray” by A Guy Called Gerald:
When the first edition of this book was published in the 1990s, readers must have felt somewhat frustrated by these vague verbal descriptions, which don't really impart what the track really sounds like. However, we now live in the age of YouTube, when readers can easily hear nearly every track mentioned in Energy Flash. Much of the book's value lies in walking you through classic tracks that you can go on to download yourself.
What seriously undermines Energy Flash, however, is a lack of fact-checking and an inability to distinguish opinion from fact. As Reynolds makes clear in the introduction, his preference is a genre of aural assault and chemical saturation, where the names of the producers of tracks or even DJs is irrelevant, the dancers in a club living in the moment. For him, this is the truly revolutionary music of the era. He sees notions of “progressive house”, “intellectual dance music” and “home listening” as throwbacks to established music genres.
Of course it’s fine to have an opinion, and any reader is likely to find some strands of EDM more worthwhile than others. However, Reynold can't help making snide comments like “No one listens to The Future Sound of London any more” (my paraphrase), but a glance at FSOL's LastFM artist page reveals that over half a million people still do, with younger audiences continually discovering them and leaving ecstatic comments on the wall. Even the progressive rock that Reynolds feels progressive dance music follows into historical oblivion has shown considerably staying power if one simply looks at its internet presence.
There are also readily spottable factual errors in e.g. dates: the “Battle of Beaulieu” between trad and modern jazz fans happened at the 1960 festival, not the 1961 one; the 1992 hardcore scene wasn't inspired by Playstation games because that console was not released until two years later. We get misspellings like “Liz Frazer” for the chanteuse of Cocteau Twins (whose last name is in fact Fraser) and outright misrememberings like “Trevor Seaman” for “Dave Seaman”. Mistakes like these lead one to doubt the overall reliability of Reynolds’ history.
While Reynolds focuses mainly on the British scene, there is ample coverage of US developments. Besides starting his history with the Detroit techno and Chicago house movements without which the UK would have never had acid house and everything after, Reynolds also dedicates an entire chapter to US raves, highlighting the very different vibe there compared to Europe. The German scene is also covered, but in considerably less detail than the UK or US.
Through each evolution in EDM, Reynolds mentions iconic tracks of the era. Take, for instance, this bit on “Voodoo Ray” by A Guy Called Gerald:
With its undulant groove and dense percussive foliage, its glassy, gem-faceted bass-pulse and tropical bird synth-chatter, ‘Voodoo Ray’ looks ahead to the polyrhythmic luxuriance of Gerald’s mid-nineties forays into jungle, as do the tremulous whimpers and giggles of the blissed-out female vocal.
When the first edition of this book was published in the 1990s, readers must have felt somewhat frustrated by these vague verbal descriptions, which don't really impart what the track really sounds like. However, we now live in the age of YouTube, when readers can easily hear nearly every track mentioned in Energy Flash. Much of the book's value lies in walking you through classic tracks that you can go on to download yourself.
What seriously undermines Energy Flash, however, is a lack of fact-checking and an inability to distinguish opinion from fact. As Reynolds makes clear in the introduction, his preference is a genre of aural assault and chemical saturation, where the names of the producers of tracks or even DJs is irrelevant, the dancers in a club living in the moment. For him, this is the truly revolutionary music of the era. He sees notions of “progressive house”, “intellectual dance music” and “home listening” as throwbacks to established music genres.
Of course it’s fine to have an opinion, and any reader is likely to find some strands of EDM more worthwhile than others. However, Reynold can't help making snide comments like “No one listens to The Future Sound of London any more” (my paraphrase), but a glance at FSOL's LastFM artist page reveals that over half a million people still do, with younger audiences continually discovering them and leaving ecstatic comments on the wall. Even the progressive rock that Reynolds feels progressive dance music follows into historical oblivion has shown considerably staying power if one simply looks at its internet presence.
There are also readily spottable factual errors in e.g. dates: the “Battle of Beaulieu” between trad and modern jazz fans happened at the 1960 festival, not the 1961 one; the 1992 hardcore scene wasn't inspired by Playstation games because that console was not released until two years later. We get misspellings like “Liz Frazer” for the chanteuse of Cocteau Twins (whose last name is in fact Fraser) and outright misrememberings like “Trevor Seaman” for “Dave Seaman”. Mistakes like these lead one to doubt the overall reliability of Reynolds’ history.