Needle in the Groove [Paperback]

we make music down there, all the week/and I have to say, away from the club, the band is even better/we make a noise like I've never known, just this one great stripped-raw channel of searching out/for the first time in years, I'm actually playing something/all the smalltown dregs of flair get magnified and yer know what, I can't help falling in love with the whole idea of being brilliant/to be myself at last, lost in the rhythm

Needle In The Groove, Jeff Noon's fifth novel, follows his short story collection Pixel Juice and confirms him as one of the most inventive and exciting of modern British writers. Set, like his previous books, in a slightly futuristic, reimagined Manchester (where, in this novel, streets are named after musicians and bands such as Joy Division, The Fall, 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald), the book follows Elliot Hill, a bass player and ex-junkie trudging the pub-rock circuit, who is invited to join a new band: fusing DJ artistry, voice and rhythm section, the group's hypnotic groove creation is augmented by a startling new recording technology. The band seems bound for success--until one of them vanishes. Elliot's subsequent search draws him into a secret history of music that stretches back 40 years and into his own past.

Noon's admitted affinity for music over literature as a source for inspiration takes concrete form here: the book takes the idea of the remix as it's formal--and thematic--principle. Where William Burroughs, in the 1950s and '60s, looked to collage--to formal innovation in the visual arts--as inspiration for his textual cut-ups, Noon's spur for rethinking modern prose is the revolution in music in the last two decades: the sample, the mix and the manipulation of sound provide the lexicon and grammar for his experiments with language. Although by no means the first to rethink writing in this way (Kodwo Eshun's "conceptual engineering" in More Brilliant than the Sun or Simon Reynolds' take on dance music in Energy Flash apply sonic invention and mixology to music criticism), Noon's use of musical techniques genuinely attempts to extend the possibilities of fiction. Love, desire, the metaphoric architecture of literature are all reimagined through his "liquid dub poetics": by taking near-clichés of fiction--the tensions between father and son, the (bizarre) love triangle--and subjecting them to the interference of linguistic experiment, Noon balances a compelling, straight narrative against the warped logic of the mix. It reads like a technologised, nervy version of Modernist stream of consciousness, punctuated by the backslash, that ubiquitous partitioner of URLs and familiar of Web-surfers everywhere. Pulp fiction meets dub? Just get into the groove. --Burhan Tufail --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

After years of playing in two-bit bands, Elliot gets his big chance - he meets a singer, a DJ and a drummer who seem to have everything. But just as their first dance record is climbing the charts, one of the band disappears.

A fictional trip through pop culture.

After years of playing bass in lousy two-bit bands, Elliot finally gets his big chance/he meets a singer, a dj and a drummer who seem to have everything/passion, talent, hypnotic songs and a whole new way of funky seduction/but just as their first dance record is climbing the charts, one of them disappears/Elliot's search for the missing musician becomes a wild, fiercely emotional trip into the dark soul of rhythm/and in the grooves he discovers a world where love is a ghost lost in the boom box/and the only remix that really matters is the remix of the heart.

If music were a drug, where would it take you?

Jeff Noon
Acknowledged as one of the most exciting new authors today, Jeff Noon is the author of five novels: Vurt, Pollen, Automated Alice, Nymphomation, and Needle in the Groove; and a collection of short stories, Pixel Juice. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1995.