The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America

The Underground Is Massive is the first-ever big picture history of the American electronic dance music underground, viewed through the lens of nineteen parties over thirty years-from the black, gay underground clubs of Chicago and Detroit’s elite teen-party scene through nineties electronica to today’s EDM-festival juggernaut. In telling EDM’s story, Michaelangelo Matos takes in the rise of the Internet and Burning Man, 9/11, and the collapse of the record business-and vividly charts why and how it took nearly three decades after electronic dance music became a global youth soundtrack for it to hit big in the land that birthed it.

Through unparalleled insider access to anecdotes, interviews, and history, Matos expertly surveys the vast diversity of EDM’s musical landscape-from its technologically prophetic yet illicit origins to the morphing of underground raves into fiercely successful music festivals to its legendary artists, from Frankie Knuckles to Moby as well as Diplo, Skrillex, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Tiesto, and Daft Punk.