Midway through his firecracker of a debut, 2020’s The Young Team, Graeme Armstrong hurls the reader into an exuberant account of a rave, from protagonist Azzy’s pre-party pharmaceutical prep, through the resulting mystical abandon and euphoria, and on to the inevitable crash back to earth. The description of the anguished comedown is a welcome noughties update of Kingsley Amis’s beer-soaked hanxiety in Lucky Jim. All this, set against a panicky backdrop of juvenile turf wars in working-class Airdrie, near Glasgow, won Armstrong a place on the 2023 Granta best of young British novelists list.
A New Kind of Rebellion
You’d think there’s not much more to say on the subject of illegal raves, but in his second novel he’s doubled down, while jettisoning the social grit for cartoonish political satire. Narrator William Patterson, AKA DJ Turbo, has a regular gig spinning discs for kids at the ice rink, until a new political party sweeps Britain, demanding a return to civilised values and promising to eradicate moral decay. Top of the agenda is a total ban on electronic music and its associated youthful gatherings. Freedom, fun and independent thinking is frowned upon. Suddenly out of work, Turbo becomes Scotland’s least enthusiastic data-input clerk, while secretly plotting rebellion.
Verbal Ingenuity Over Plot
While The Young Team favoured linear prose rendered in vigorous Scots dialect, here verbal ingenuity takes precedence over plot, with digressions, rants, handy guides to street drugs, and pages of dialogue set out like scripts. The cast of characters is presented in list form, with nicknames, lengthy descriptions and favoured soundtracks. Turbo’s lusted-after co-worker Jessica is represented by Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, Strawberry Switchblade’s Since Yesterday and Spellbound by Siouxsie and the Banshees; major scenes come with a suggested techno anthem for aficionados. Real as well as fictional DJs dot the storyline.
The Scottish Techno Pirates
Taking inspiration from Scottish hero William Wallace, Turbo marshals his crew – Fish, Orbit, Section B and, reluctantly, his own “wee brother” Rab – into forming the Scottish Techno Pirates, with wild plans for a campaign of civil disobedience. Other groups quickly form around them, with predictable disputes over methods, specifically the use of violence. The dairy produce-chucking Milkshake Marauders are generally unhelpful, while the Wiccan, Plath-revering Scottish Hardcore Coven can only fitfully be relied on for backup. Rab, meanwhile, is scathing about his brother’s fitness to lead: “oot ae shape, rough as toast, n livin in the fadin glory ae yir young team veteran stories … Yi need tae sort yirsel oot, William.”
Fashion and Melancholy
Though wildly different in its patchwork, accretive structure, there are plenty of common references with the earlier book; we are recognisably in the same world of JPS fags, bottles of “Tonic” (Buckfast tonic wine) and cans of Tennent’s, and meticulously exact style notes. The revolution will be fashionable. To the ubiquitous Rangers and Celtic “taps”, and Berghaus shells against the ever-present Glasgow drizzle, are added “vintage khaki Stone Island smock, baggy cargo pants, n chunky fluorescent Hoka trainers” (for a lassie) and “a 2004-5 salmon pink and black Juventus tracky”.
There’s a melancholic sense of time passing as Turbo reluctantly recognises that he is now in the twilight of his rave career. Like Azzy in The Young Team, he realises that it’s not that the drugs don’t work any more; in your 30s you’re just more aware of mortality and physical damage. Also, “Taste freeze is real. Yir finger slips aff the pulse n new names n faces appear, while you cling on tae the familiar, past things awready done and been.” (That tracky, for example.) “We hud oor time in the sun then, n as soon n magically as it came, the ascension is over n yir hurtlin towards earth, losin altitude, fuselage disintegration, brace fur impact.”
Satire and Sensitivity
There are hilarious passages of invective against hipsters, incomers and posh English students, yet for all the sledgehammer satire, sensitivity suffuses the narrative. Armstrong’s own references include Milton, Dante, the Bible, Apocalypse Now and, of course, Braveheart, with the striking cover art featuring Robert Burns as Che Guevara. Turbo is a less clear-cut character than Azzy, and the plot gets lost in the welter of information, but Armstrong’s passion for the subculture is infectious, even to the uninitiated. Beyond the glow sticks and the beats lies the compelling and universal question of what it means to be fully alive.
Raveheart by Graeme Armstrong is published by 4th Estate (£16.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
