Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture - Softcover

It's a remix! Twenty years since acid house and Ecstasy revolutionized pop culture, here's the expanded and updated version of Simon Reynolds' landmark history of rave. Containing substantial new material covering dance-music developments in the ten years since its original publication, Energy Flash is now even more definitive. Blending vivid reporting, probing research and passionate opinion in the style of his acclaimed post-punk history Rip It Up and Start Again, Reynolds guides the reader on a thrilling journey from the druggy daze of Ibiza and Madchester via London's gritty pirate-radio culture of jungle and garage to the elegantly wasted clubland of contemporary Berlin. From trance to 2step, microhouse to grime, electro to dubstep, Reynolds tracks the scenes and sounds that have kept electronic music at the vanguard of pop culture. Now more essential and authoritative than ever, Energy Flash is the classic chronicle of rave's quest for the perfect beat and the ultimate rush.

Simon Reynolds is the author of several highly acclaimed books about music, including Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 and Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop. He is a freelance contributor to publications including the New York Times , the Observer, Salon, the Guardian, Uncut, and The Wire, and also operates the weblog Blissblog at http://blissout.blogspot.com. Born in London in 1963, he lives with his wife and two children in New York.