Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:53:21.464Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dancefloor-driven literature: subcultural big bangs and a new center for the aesthetic universe1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2016

Simon A. Morrison
Simon A. Morrison*
Affiliation:
109 Porter's Lodge, Warrington Campus, The University of Chester, Crab Lane Warrington Cheshire WA2 0DB E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper sets coordinates squarely for Holleran's ‘aesthetic center of the universe’ – venturing towards the black hole of the nightclub dancefloor. Further, it will investigate those writers determined to capture the electronic essence of this at times alien dance music culture within the rather more earth-bound parameters of the written word. How might such authors write about something so otherworldly as the nightclub scene? How might they write lucidly and fluidly about the rigid, metronomic beat of electronic music? What literary techniques might they deploy to accurately recount in fixed symbols the drifting, hallucinatory effects of a drug experience? In an attempt to address these questions this paper will offer an altogether outerspace overview of this subculture and its fictional literary output.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 36 , Special Issue 1: The Critical Imperative , January 2017 , pp. 43 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

In the spirit of musico-literary intermediality, please visit https:www.mixcloud.com/nhussey/life-after-zero-mixed/ and hit play, for a sonic soundtrack to accompany the reading of this paper.

References

References

Baron, J. 1989. ‘Tripping yarns’, in NME, 22 DecemberGoogle Scholar
Baudrillard, J. 1990. Fatal Strategies (New York, NY: Semiotext(e)) Google Scholar
Beeler, S. 2007. Dance, Drugs and Escape: The Club Scene in Literature, Film and Television Since the Late 1980s (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.)Google Scholar
Benson, S. 2006. Literary Music (Farnham, UK: Ashgate)Google Scholar
Brown, C.S. 1948. Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press)Google Scholar
Calcutt, A., and Shephard, R. 1998. Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide (London, UK: Prion)Google Scholar
Champion, S. (ed.) 1997. Disco Biscuits: New Fiction from the Chemical Generation (London, UK: Hodder & Stoughton)Google Scholar
Collin, M. 2009. Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House (London, UK: Serpent's Tail)Google Scholar
Fernández, J. 2013. The New Puritan Generation (Canterbury, UK: Glyphi)Google Scholar
Hebdige, D. 1978. Subculture – The Meaning of Style (London, UK: Methuen)Google Scholar
Holleran, A. 2001. Dancer From The Dance (New York, NY: Perennial)Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 2006. Reading Pop – Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music (Oxford, UK: OUP)Google Scholar
Miller, T. 1989. Trip City (London, UK: Avernus)Google Scholar
Morrison, S.A. 2014. ‘“Surely people who go clubbing don't read”: dispatches from the dancefloor and clubland in print’, IASPM Journal, 4/2. http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/article/view/735/pdf_17 Google Scholar
Phillips, D. 2009. Superstar DJs Here We Go!: The Incredible Rise of Clubland's Finest (London, UK: Ebury Press)Google Scholar
Redhead, S. 2000. Repetitive Beat Generation (Edinburgh, UK: Canongate)Google Scholar
Scher, S.P. 2004. Essays on Literature and Music (1967–2004) (Amsterdam: Rodopi)Google Scholar
Smyth, G. 2008. Music in Contemporary British Fiction: Listening to the Novel (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan)Google Scholar
St John, G. 2014. ‘Astronauts, Psychonauts and Electronauts’, Dancecult, 6/4. https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/527/493 Google Scholar
Tench, R., and Yeomans, L. 2006. ‘Exploring Public Relations (Edinburgh, UK: Pearson)Google Scholar
UK Government (1994) Criminal Justice and Disorder Act. www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 (accessed 29 December 2012)Google Scholar
Welsh, I. 1994. Trainspotting (London)Google Scholar
Welsh, I. 1996. Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance (London, UK: Jonathan Cape)Google Scholar
Wolf, W. 1999. The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality (Atlanta, GA: Rodopi)Google Scholar

Personal communications

All quotes are from the following interviews unless stated otherwise:Google Scholar
Champion, Sarah, interviewed in person at The Leadstation, Chorlton, Manchester, 29 May 2013.Google Scholar
Miller, Trevor, interviewed in person at The Leadstation, Chorlton, Manchester, 2 August 2013.Google Scholar
Welsh, Irvine, interviewed via phone in Spring 2001; at Molly Malone's pub, Glasgow, 19 February 2012; and via phone, 23 February 2012.Google Scholar

Discography

A Guy Called Gerald. Trip City. Avernus, 1989.Google Scholar
‘Trip City’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIc-zAFIKw4 Google Scholar
‘Trip City Mambo’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSlkXtcEZwE Google Scholar
‘Valentine's Theme’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoCngvcCnrw.Google Scholar
Nick Hussey's ambient mix to accompany this soundtrack can be found at: https://www.mixcloud.com/nhussey/life-after-zero-mixed/ Google Scholar
For a useful discography of vocal samples from astronauts in trance and psytrance music forms please refer to St John (2014).Google Scholar

Filmography

Christopher, Nolan. Interstellar. USA: Paramount, 2014. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/>>Google Scholar