![\"The](\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/the_underground_is_massive.jpg\")
<\/a>America has always had a strange relationship with electronic music. Although house and techno were born in the States, the genre has always been far more successful overseas\u2014to the point where it rules the pop charts while remaining an underground phenomenon in the U.S. There have been fits and starts and periods where it seemed like mainstream America was going to embrace electronic music, but it\u2019s only been in the past few years that the tide has turned. EDM, which just stands for Electronic Dance Music, has pulled the music out of the clubs and into the stadiums. But is EDM such a break from the past, and more specifically, how and why did the landscape change so drastically? Luckily for veterans and newbies alike Michelangelo Matos has tackled those questions in his book The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Music Conquered America<\/i> (Dey Street Books).<\/p>\nThe history of electronic music in America is a mighty Hydra, but Matos wisely keeps the focus tight yet loose enough for diversions. The first thing he does right is to declare straight off the bat what the book isn\u2019t. It\u2019s not a definitive examination of the music and players; it doesn\u2019t try to be a history lesson. It does cover the music and the players, but he\u2019s more interested in the how and why. As he states in the introduction, \u201cThis is the story of a culture forming, taking over every part of the world except its creators\u2019 own\u2014only to rear up and take center stage after mutating into something its creators barely recognized. It\u2019s also about people who took it to audiences it hadn\u2019t reached.\u201d But he\u2019s also well aware of everything that didn\u2019t or couldn\u2019t make the book. It\u2019s not because the omitted stories aren\u2019t important, but at some point capacity was reached.<\/p>\n
Matos frames his book around 18 events, clubs, and parties that anchor the discussion of each chapter. It starts in early 1983 with The Power Plant in Chicago and stretches to Daft Punk\u2019s 2014 Random Access Memories party in LA, with lots of dips in places both great and small. It\u2019s a daunting story when you consider that each scene has multiple players, songs, and circumstances, and that even within a crew there\u2019s going to be multiple takes on the subjects. For all Matos left out, he gets a lot in, not only taking to promoters, producers, and DJs, but also drawing information from the zines, mailing lists, websites, and messages boards from the time. It\u2019s a nice balance of being able to look back clear-eyed and capturing the heat of the moment. He\u2019s fairly deft in juggling all the information, and when it starts to get a bit overwhelming from the sheer amount of information, he makes sure to help reset the context. There\u2019s a bit of necessary jumping around on the timeline even as the chapters focus on one particular period. It helps get across the idea that the path wasn\u2019t exactly linear.<\/p>\n
The strength of The Underground Is Massive<\/i> is that it doesn\u2019t shy away from the failures and less savory aspects of the scene\u2019s movement. But like a math problem, Matos shows the work that went into taking it from dark clubs to arenas. In doing so, he highlights the irony that a future-forward music would still need some of the old-fashioned ethos of rock & roll to break through. While the desire was to have the focus on the music, it would eventually be the personalities that the mainstream would grab on to. Yet, it\u2019s not even that simple, and Matos comes from a number of angles, including how the rise of the internet helped to spread the word. There\u2019s the first attempt of major labels to cash-in and the first independent tours, as well as explanations of the rise of rave and how stars emerged. The book\u2019s scope is fairly expansive.<\/p>\n
Matos is generous in bringing many voices in to tell the story, while staying quietly in the background, so it\u2019s a slight bit jarring when he becomes more of an active\u2014and occasionally snarky\u2014narrator in the later half of the book as it hits more current events. Part of the reasoning seems to be that it\u2019s important to give the history a chance to breathe. However, Matmos feels compelled to comment on the recent events, records, and artists with which he\u2019s more familiar. (He writes for Rolling Stone<\/i>, NPR\u2019s website, and a few other places.) His points of view don\u2019t derail the story, but it\u2019s definitely a notable shift. It makes sense in terms of the narrative, though, as throughout the book you hear from what the fans have to say and then it hits a point where Matos has something to say it\u2019s because he\u2019s a fan himself. Ultimately that\u2019s where the strength of the book lies. It\u2019s academic in focus, but with the love and curiosity of a fan. He even includes a Mixography list of complementary live DJ mixes for each chapter.<\/p>\n
Even for a genre that seemingly rejects it\u2019s history out of hand, The Underground Is Massive<\/i> should be required reading for both new fans and old heads alike. It\u2019s one of the rare books that gets the balance right and also has an excitement and energy to it. Electronic dance music may not have a permanent place in the hearts and stages of mainstream America, but as Matos shows, sometimes it\u2019s only a short step from history repeating. The underground is massive and hard to keep down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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