Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House

by Matthew Collin

Overview

“I can’t recommend this marvellous piece of work enough.” —Irvine Welsh

Altered State—now updated—is the definitive text on ecstasy culture, using a cast of characters to track the origins of the scene through psychedelic subcults, underground gay discos, and the Balearic paradise of Ibiza. It examines the ideologies and myths, documenting the criminal underside to the blissed-out image, and shedding light on the social history of the most spectacular youth movement of the twentieth century.

Matthew Collin is the author of Guerrilla Radio and The Time of the Rebels. He now reports for Al Jazeera from Tbilisi in Georgia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781846687136
Publisher:	Serpent's Tail Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	04/01/2010
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	538,505
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Matthew Collin is the author of the critically acclaimed books Guerrilla Radio, and The Time of the Rebels. He has worked for the BBC from Georgia and has written for a wide range of newspapers and magazines. He now reports for Al Jazeera from Georgia.

Interviews

Before the live bn.com chat, Matthew Collin agreed to answer some of our questions.

Q:  What are your major literary influences?

A:  Well, there were two very specific influences for this book. One was Jon Savage's England's Dreaming -- I think the most complete book on British music and culture. The other was Jay Stevens's Storming Heaven, about the psychedelic movement in the '60s and how it was shaped by political and social conditions in America.

Q:  Do you have any favorite contemporaries?

A:  I don't have an answer for that. I'm just a journalist; I don't consider myself part of the literary realm.

Q:  What are your favorite films?

A:  Besides the usual films that anyone from my generation is going to say, like "Apocalypse Now," I'm a great admirer of the Czech director Jan Svankmajer, the last surviving Prague surrealist. He makes these incredible films about dreams and twisted desires.

Q:  Do you have a favorite place you've been?

A:  Bosnia -- the former Yugoslavia in general -- has affected me most deeply. It calls into question all the pathetic little problems in your life. It also causes one to question the so-called unified Europe.

Editorial Reviews

"This well-written social history will become a standard for those wanting to understand British youth culture and music" -Library Journal "An astute blend of media reportage and oral histories into a tale as irresistible as the culture that inspired it." - Wired "Altered State is not just timely; it was crying out to be written." -Independent

From the Publisher

The Barnes & Noble Review
August 1997

It happened in the 1960s: The rebellion of American youth against their parents' cold war/anticommunist beliefs and against the war in Vietnam served as the impetus for the psychedelic movement. We saw that rebellion again in the latter part of the 1970s, when British youth and, to a certain degree, American youth rebelled against conformity and the complacent establishment, which gave rise to the violent catharsis that was the punk movement. In both cases, it was music that served as a sort of weapon for young people to wield at what they perceived to be the social and political injustices of the time. Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, by Matthew Collin and John Godfrey, offers a detailed account of this phenomenon as it occurs once again, in the 1990s.

British youth culture during the last decade is clearly understood by Collin. He is not an outsider making intellectual observations; this culture has defined his life over the past ten years. He and Godfrey begin their tale by introducing us to the two factors at the core of this culture: the mechanized dance music known as acid house and the designer drug Ecstasy. They then describe the migration of unemployed, distraught British youths to Ibiza, an island off the coast of Spain, and how the culture took form and eventually worked its way back to England.

Acid house and Ecstasy spread rapidly once they became established in Britain. At large dance parties called raves, young people could vent all of the rage, hostility, and frustration they were feelingtowardthe conservatism of England. However, like the other social/political upheavals that manifested themselves in the form of musical rebellion, this counterculture was doomed. Violence and the abuse of Ecstasy were painful indicators of the fact that sometimes to be merely iconoclastic is not enough; there must be a replacement for the beliefs you are attempting to destroy. Commercialism also had a hand in the downfall: This nihilistic dance culture has become a billion industry.

Altered State is much more than just an esoteric tale of a disillusioned era of young people caught up in drugs and music. It is a social document of considerable significance, because it defines how a whole generation in Britain grew up. Although in America "the movement was more selective and diffuse," the book shows us that young people, even if foolish or misguided, can be a powerful force for change.

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)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Journalists Collin and Godfrey have written a fascinating, compelling account of youth culture in conservative Britain during the last decade. They begin with a brief history of the dual elements at the center of the culture: the spacy version of disco known as acid house and the drug Ecstasy. After setting the stage, they describe the migration of unemployed British youths to the island of Ibiza off Spain, where the culture began, and the transplanting of the Ibiza experience to British clubs. Chronicling the spread of acid house and Ecstasy through large parties called raves, the authors explain the movement as a reaction of disillusioned, lower-class youths against a conservative British mainstream. Collin and Godfrey examine the downfall of the drug-based counterculture owing to gang-police violence and Ecstasy-induced deaths and discuss the mainstream commercialization of the hedonistic dance culture into a 1.8 ($2.8) billion industry. This well-written social history will become a standard for those wanting to understand British youth culture and music.David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Library Journal