Needle in the groove

In this astonishing novel Jeff Noon allows the complex rhythms of dance music to infect his language, creating a new kind of writing / liquid dub poetics / in the grooves he discovers a world where the scratches of the stylus cut the body / a dj's samples are melodies of blood / love is a ghost lost in the boom box / and the only remix that really matters is the remix of the heart 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 the band disappears / Elliot's search for the missing musician becomes a wild, fiercely emotional trip into the dark soul of rhythm.