Raveheart by Graeme Armstrong review – ravers rebel in a Scottish political satire

A veteran techno DJ embarks on a campaign of civil disobedience in this passionate and at times hilarious tale of underground resistance

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.

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.
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