Dance music historian Michelangelo Matos has announced the release of his new book, The Underground Is Massive, via HarperCollins.
The new work draws connections between the renegade days of early US rave culture and the outsized DJ fees and youth culture domination of the current EDM scene. A press release says: "Matos reveals how EDM blossomed in tandem with the nascent Internet—message boards and chat lines connected partiers from town to town. In turn, these ravers, many early technology adopters, helped spearhead the information revolution." The blurb also hints at the the book's attention to a chemical narrative previously laid out in Simon Reynolds' Energy Flash: "As tech was the tool, Ecstasy—(Molly, as it's known today) an empathic drug that heightens sensory pleasure—was the narcotic fueling this alternative movement."
Matos, a former RA writer, conducted hundreds of interviews, gathering ephemera from the rave era in his quest to document a history that's been largely informal up to this point. The hard numbers behind today's EDM success story could be gathered in part from traditional financial sources—SFX Entertainment, a business with holdings in festivals and superclubs, is a publicly traded company.
The Underground is Massive will be available via HarperCollins on March 10th, 2015.