Review: Headspace

What is the purpose of Headspace and for whom has it been designed? Pity the critic who’s been assigned to cover this documentary and has never spent the night looking for a rave, dropped countless tabs of X in one night, grooved to music with glowsticks in hand, breathed VapoRub to augment their highs, or sucked on a pacifier so they wouldn’t have to make out with every cute boy and/or girl in sight. For the critics who have, is it meant as a nostalgia kick or something more elaborate? Jethro Senger traveled to the world’s electronic hot spots over the course of several years, recording kids trying to find the locations of warehouse parties, dreary Germans tending to the Fuck Parade (a less commercial alternative to the Love Parade), people tripping the light fantastic, and no-name DJs ruminating on the music scene. Information is presented to us in the form of a collage, images warped and colored, perhaps for the satisfaction of anyone at home who may be high on a leftover microdot they found in one of the pockets of their raver pants after cleaning out the garage last week. If you, like one talking head, are so over raving, Headspace appears to get at the reality that the electronic music scene is very much a way of life, but it is not so deep as to illuminate the stupid prep time it takes to be part of the culture, though it does acknowledge in one funny interview bit how the music has a salving effect for anyone troubled by war and shit (those digital doves that fly across the screen are, like, the bomb—both figuratively and literally). Senger reveals the contrarians within the scene, as well as its poseurs and pretentious fucks, and though he understands that drugs are necessary for some to appreciate the intelligence of electronic music, he seems unable to separate the music from rave culture. It’s been years since I’ve been to a rave but I still love the music and Headspace makes me feel like an idiot for feeling that way.