ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that rave music, especially techno differs so basically from rock and roll as regards its musical structuration that old models for explaining how popular music interacts with society may need radical revision. This presentation is polemical rather than authoritative or scholarly: it simplifies and polarises issues that will definitely require further discussion and investigation. The chapter falls into two interlinked parts: a critique of the 'rockologist' rationale of individuality and a tentative enumeration of rave music's main structural traits. All rave music has certain stylistic and generic common denominators. Generically, rave is intended for energetic individual dancing in discos or at rave parties. Sung vocals are the only tracks in rave mixes that seem to be consistently given much echo, usually in the form of quite a generous reverb with Echoplex delay effects added at suitable junctures.
