Rave On: Global Adventures in Electronic Dance Music

A well researched and wonderfully written account on the past and present scene in electronic dance music. The breadth and professionalism of the writing is quite rare for this corner of the music scene. It also brings some great accounts from rarely spoken of corners of the world, such as South Africa and Georgia which many may find refreshing.All of you old ravers, doofers and party fiends (and those still involved) who still have an interest in the scene, and the time to commit will revel in the accounts.

This book is supposed to be a history of rave culture, so one might very well think that the story would start with the underground parties of Detroit/Chicago and climax with the large scale festivals that now litter the globe. As such, it would be a "rise of the rave" kind of tale. But Matthew Cullen is apparently a lot more interesting than that. The story certainly does start in Detroit and Chicago, and Cullen has a lot of one of kind interview information with some of the scene's most important artists. He then tells the necessary tales that pass through Ibiza and Berlin, and your half way through the book when you appear to be at the climax: Skirllex waving a flag over the Electric Daisy Carnival. Half way through the book, you ask? Then what else is there to say?Well, that's when the book become fascinating. To Cullen, EDM has an underground core which is the real story of rave culture. Cullen isn't a theorist, but he certainly has a vision of where you need to go to see what is really going on in EDM, and the book reads like an ethnography of his studies. Contemporary rave culture comes out of two strains: one is certainly Detroit-led, but there is also the river that comes out of Goa India, and which resulted in the trance movement. Both of these scenes had similar features that are essential for rave: drugs, marginalized populations, and an audience searching for an experience in which they lose themselves. Cullen follows these same rivers today through the second half of the book, following them to the future of rave. South Africa, China, Bahrain, Rumania ... keep your Soundcloud next to you, and you can listen along to some of the most interesting beats happening today. As such, this is not a story of the rise of a movement that we can now understand and put in a museum, but instead the story of an ore with veins whose depths we have yet to fully mine. This is reporting at the edge of new discovery at the depths. It's a story just getting started ... and still making trouble.

Great journey around the world that captures the cultural intricacies on each scene; a very good ethnographic account; very up to date.

Yup

rien à redire

Eines der Bücher, die man als Raver gelesen gaben sollte. Gleichzeitig ein gutes Sprachtraining, weil in englischer Sprache...

Good read but alot more 90s stories than expected from the summary. Expected stuff from the last 5-10 years really...