Altered State
The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From its first publication in 1997, Altered State established itself as the definitive text on Ecstasy and dance culture. This new edition sees Matthew Collin cast a fresh eye on the heady events of the acid house 'Summer of Love' and the rave scene's euphoric escalation into commercial excess as MDMA became a mass-market narcotic. Altered State is the best-selling book on Ecstasy culture, using a cast of memorable characters to track the origins of the scene and its drug through psychedelic subcults, underground gay discos and the Balearic paradise of Ibiza, to the point where Tony Blair was using an Ecstasy anthem as an election campaign song. Altered State critically examines the ideologies and myths of the scene, documenting the criminal underside to the blissed-out image, shedding new light on the social history of the most spectacular youth movement of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
