Ecstasy Club is a brilliant blend of highs and lows--it's full of doomsday Gen X philosophy and terrifying conspiracy theories, including an observation on the evolution of cults...but all that's countered by the lofty idealism of 1990s rave culture and youthful exuberance for living life to its extremes, experiencing absolutely everything.
The novel follows the exploits of a group of young idealists in San Francisco, whose efforts are not only to create a club for throwing parties--a unique space in which they can live and dance in a sort of cyber-commune meets warehouse rave--but also to "break through" the boundaries of the so-called normal plane of existence through experimental mind manipulation using computer technology, hypnosis, and of course, liberal dosings of a wide variety of illicit chemical drugs, including LSD, DMT, ecstasy, and ketamine.
The Ecstasy Club's core group is made up of: Zach, the book's narrator, a smart Jewish kid and the club's "number two" man, who becomes a less willing participant of the overall social experiment as the book progresses; Duncan, a Brit and illegal immigrant, the cultish leader of the group who ostensibly guides its members towards some kind of spiritual enlightenment while perhaps indulging in his own personal god complex; Lauren, Duncan's grounded girlfriend and the object of Zach's desires; Kirsten, a Dead-head (that's Grateful Dead follower) who Zach hooks up with at the beginning of the book; Peter and Pig, two high-level technologists who experiment in mind-control through computers; plus Brooks, Henry, Tyrone, and a ragtag group of druggies and ravers looking for something "more".
The book rides waves of high art and euphoria and, well, being high, as well as deadly paranoia and conspiracy theories that turn out to be not far from the truth...maybe. Rushkoff's fictional descriptions of the somehwat subconscious development of a religion--cult--are scarily believeable. (Scientology, anyone?) There's a natural evolution that occurs as the group progresses through the events and Duncan, the club's leader, seems to have the intelligence to recognize it happening, but does nothing to stop it. Zach, similarly smart enough to see what's really going on, watches the process with disdain and it distances him from Duncan and the group's lofty original intentions. As the novel develops, the Ecstasy Club finds itself increasingly intertwined in a massive conspiracy that transcends time and space, is connected to historic events and to an established and powerful cult called Cosmotology.
The drug-taking and paranoia increases in intensity and frequency as the events unfold in terrifying and dizzying sequences. Ecstasy Club rides good trips and dark sinister trips with equal treatment--full immersion. For anyone who has ever experienced even the tiniest slice of the culture Rushkoff has captured in this book, it's entrancing. And for those who haven't, it's a novel that offers a glimpse into a strange subculture not unlike the hippie revolution of the 1960s--but with DJs and computers. This is sex, drugs, turntables, and cyber-space.
Ecstasy Club is a book that explores the creation of cults, the 1990s San Francisco rave scene, and that youthful desire to find "it", whatever "it" may be. The book is deftly written--it progresses from the solid, real beginnings of a group of people trying to do something different with their lives, for themselves and for their community, into the surreal, psychedelic and paranoid world of too many drugs and events beyond control. What's real and what's not becomes blurred as the book follows its strange course.

Ecstasy Club is a wild ride and an entertaining read.

The soundtrack:

Caribou - Hannibal
MGMT -
Time to Pretend
Postal Service - Brand New Colony
Chemical Brothers -
Under the Influence
Velvet Underground - Heroin
Shit Robot - Triumph!!!
Chemical Brothers - Devil is in the Beats

Burial - Raver
Daft Punk - Alive
Akufen - Psychometry 3.2
Fatboy Slim - Going Out of my
Head
Plastikman - Koma
Faithless - God is a DJ
Fatboy Slim - Song
for Shelter
Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar
Evil 9 - The Dogs
Plump DJs - System Addict

Caribou - Bowls
FC Kahuna - Bleep Freak
The Streets - Weak Become
Heroes
Stanton Warriors - Out of my Head
Two Fingers - Keman Rhythm
Herbert - Down
Kidstreet - X (Rampue Remix)
Daft Punk - Technologic
Fatboy Slim - Acid Enlightenment
Asian Dub
Foundation - Thacid 9 (dub)
Coldcut - Just for the Kick
Plastikman - Smak/Ovokx
Portishead - Magic Doors
Chemical Brothers - Wonders of the Deep