We’re building a guide to books about house music and electronic music history, culture and analysis, curated by 5 Mag‘s staff.
It wasn’t too long ago that there might be about a dozen books in the dance music canon and the majority of them had to do with disco or were coffee table books made up of collections of rave flyers or the like.
This is obviously no longer true: hardly a month goes by without a new release worthy of attention — credible stories from talented writers. (Velocity in the UK releases just a huge number of them, and most that I’ve sampled seem exceptionally good.)
I believe Harold Heath first proposed a regular or at least semi-regular section covering books. In our conversations we realized we’d prefer to focus on good books rather than only new ones. A good book is a good book forever. They don’t get played out.
5 Mag members have seen the first two installments of the 5 Mag Book Club. The first selection will be published here tomorrow — Jane Bussman’s Once In A Lifetime: The Crazy Days of Acid House and Afterwards, which Harold describes as “possibly the best book on the UK acid house and rave scene ever written.”
I am unsure if it has been covered yet or is planned to be, but “Assembling a Black Counter Culture” by DeForrest Brown Jr. was an excellent retelling of the history of Techno in Detroit! Super insightful with its political analysis that reaffirms the importance of Detroit Techno.