FIFTEEN CANS OF STELLA

»My second, fatally addictive rave-alation occured a few months later at a quadruple bill of top 1991 rave acts – N-Joi, K-Klass, Bassheads and M-People. This time, fully E’d up, I finally grasped in a visceral sense why the music was made the way it was: how certain tingly textures goosepimpled your skin and particular oscillator-riffs triggered the E-rush, the way the gaseous diva vocals mirrored your own gushing emotions. Finally, I understood ecstasy as a sonic science. And it became even more crystal clear that the audience was the star: that bloke over there doing fishy-finger-dancing was as much a part of the entertainment, the tableau, as the DJs or bands. Dance-moves spread through the crowd like super-fast viruses. I was instantly entrained in a new kind of dancing – tics and spasms, twitches and jerks, the agitation of bodies broken down into separate components, then re-integrated at the level of the dancefloor as a whole. Each sub-individual part (a limb, a hand cocked like a pistol) was a cog in a collective ‘desiring machine’, interlocking with the sound-system’s bass-throbs and sequencer-riffs. Unity and self-expression fused in a forcefield of pulsating, undulating euphoria.« – Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash

Update: Quite separately, the Irish government might have also accidentally managed to outlaw heterosexual marriage today.

Ireland is fucking 'avin it!