The legendary acid-noir novel of the rave era returns in a long-awaited new edition.
In 1989, I found a curious-looking book package in a Manchester shop and – being a sucker for novelty items – I quickly handed over my cash. Trip City came as a hardcover book and accompanying soundtrack cassette by A Guy Called Gerald, housed in a flimsy, guaranteed not to last forever plastic case, and was hyped as the first acid house novel – the soundtrack to Madchester, even if it was set in London.
Trevor Miller’s novel is an acid-noir, the sort of literary subculture tale that was already a thing of the past in 1989 and is now ancient history, and the soundtrack was the ideal accompaniment to what was often a dark tale of drugs and decay. No one else I knew at the time had heard of it – whatever cult status the novel acquired didn’t make it into the transgressive culture scene – but over the years, I’ve seen the odd mention of the book here and there, with stories of failed attempts to film it by variously unlikely names and the question of just who Trevor Miller was and what else had he done never quite answered by online searches.
As we sit on the verge of what might be a new age of decadence – because God knows, once the pandemic is finally done with, we surely need the purse-lipped puritanism of the last decade to give way to a new roaring Twenties rather than more tutting miserablism – the time seems right for a new edition of Trip City, and so it has come to pass, with Velocity Press offering an updated edition, alongside a vinyl version of the soundtrack. It’s out in June, but you can pre-order here: https://velocitypress.uk/product/trip-city-book/
We’ll be running a full review once the new edition is available.
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Trip City was a groundbreaking novel, which I read with the lights down and the A Guy Called Gerald cassette playing…