cover image Altered State (Old Edition)

Altered State (Old Edition)

Matthew Collin. Serpent's Tail, $16.99 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-85242-377-3

The clubs, deejays and bands mentioned in Altered State may be of little significance to even the most meticulous music listener, but that's the idea. In America, anyway, no musical subculture has ever maintained its underground profile as long as acid house, a synthesizer-based dance music characterized by electronic bleeps and squelchy runs. Collin pursues the history of house music from computerized disco music in the '70s to Chicago deejays to London to the small Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Initially, Britain's club kids considered Ecstasy culture, with its combination of house music and drugs, an effortless escape from Thatcher-era conservatism. Ecstasy's cushy, hallucinogenic release offered a customized accompaniment to the bracing electronic beats emanating from a quickly dying New Romantic music scene. The bands New Order and Happy Mondays found small commercial followings, but it was deejays schooled in American disco and cut-and-paste production that would eventually rule house music. Collin (The Face; Wired) goes on to acknowledge the British scene's debt to tiny American record labels such as Chicago's Trax. If his prose occasionally slinks into the hyperbole for which British pop journalists are infamous, Collin's insider knowledge reveals a genuine understanding of all the scene's benevolent affectations. (June)