La Petite Mort: Techniques of Orgasm in Electronic Dance Music

Portrayals of sexualized narratives are rife in ethnographic accounts of Electronic Dance Music (EDM), where the visceral musical and haptic experiences of dancing to club music are intertwined in a tantalizing symbiosis. This is music that is habitually understood through erotic semiosis: protracted build ups of stimulation and intensity, layer upon layer of musical repetition being added in service of arousal, and a teasing denial of harmonic and sonic resolution are expanded and amplified, until there is a final fulfilment granted by the DJ at the moment of the “drop”. Bringing together musicological discussions of climax with socio-psychological and neurological research on the orgasm, this article explores the manifold ways in which technologies of arousal in dance music mediate the sexual space of the dancefloor and consider how metaphors of pleasure and fulfilment are actualised in EDM in ways which destabilise the prevalent body of heteronormative, male-focussed narratives around stimulation and arousal.