Books

The story of dance music told by the people who made it happen. Bill and Frank come correct with in-depth interviews with almost 50 of history's most significant DJs, largely previously unpublished. Like the ones you've read on DJhistory, these are intriguing meetings – honest and revealing portraits, funny too. Plus memorabilia, discographies and great photos of all the DJs as young firebrands.

With reviews of every disco record worth knowing about, weekly reports from New York’s club scene, classic magazine articles and 800 contemporary club charts, this is the definitive chronicle of disco. It's the personal memoir of Vince Aletti, the very first writer to cover the emerging scene, bringing to life the clubs, the characters, and above all the music. The first book from DJhistory.com

Bill and Frank’s classic chronicle digs deep to find DJing started in 1906, the Nazis invented clubbing. Arguing that DJs not musicians are pop music’s true revolutionaries, it details with love all the scenes that matter. The new edition is beefed up with entirely new chapters covering techno, acid house, Ibiza, jungle, UK garage and cosmic disco

Whether it be writing on opium in London's fin-de-siecle East End, or the works of Timothy Leary, Ken Keesey or any of America's other psychedelic fuelled merry pranksters, Marcus Boon charts a path less trodden through great and not so great works of literature written on, or about drugs. Whilst the scholars point to the romance and the literary genius of the Canon, Boon points to writers high on speed writing non-stop for days and the fact that Coleridge may be considered one of the great poets, he was also partially to the odd draft of opium.

The Vocoder started life as a phone scrambler for Churchill – five tons of valves and some self-destruct double decks, went on via late funk, early electro, Kubrick, Stalin and the Muppets – and ended up as the autotune chip that powers X-Factor and wibbles out of every sodcaster’s mobile. A fabulous story, but an exhausting read – as if in tribute to his subject Tompkins writes so obliquely you have to decode every sentence.

The 1994 original was issued to Japanese fashion students at the UK border. Now this classic spotters’ guide to ye olde street tribes of England is repacked and beefed by the lovely folk at PYMCA. Insightful essays about the evolution and importance of street fashion, and stacks of brilliant pics. Thanks to Ted Polhemus all Japanese cities now have a shopping mall crew for each chapter of the book.

The reason Ewan Pearson makes such great dance music is because he’s thought about it really HARD, and along with his blog, this book is proof. Like Stephen Hawking dissecting time, it gets philosophical on the dancefloor, musing on how dance music gets thought of and written about, whether it’s even possible to do so, and why it raises so many issues of politics, gender and identity. It's all wrapped up in critical theory and given a good hard Foucault-ing.

Leloup has the perfect name for the job, and a spiffy line in extended metaphors, so marvel at his “swirling magma” of music, DJs, producers and listeners. He reckons today’s electronic music – virtual, networked, playlisted and raved to – is a handy guide to how we’ll do everything in future. Hard to deny, really. If you like flowery academic language this is for you; if you decode it you’ll realise he’s not actually saying anything very radical. David Toop’s intro is nice.

Every sub-culture has its drug of choice. In fact some have a load more than just the one. For ravers the drug of choice was E. It fuelled a revolution of happiness and togetherness, it made being nice cool again. But the history of MDMA is not solely linked to dungarees and smiley Ts. Pilcher tells of the chemical, its history as well as the social impact of E: 'Are you sorted'?