Unlike his literary peers who focused their science fiction tales on laser-toting lycra-clad spacemen in galaxies far, far away, Ballard’s novels The Atrocity Exhibition (‘70), Crash (‘72), Concrete Island (‘74) and High-Rise amplified the harsh realities of modern urban life. Once heralded as utopian “streets in the sky”, poor maintenance and rampant anti-social behaviour had transformed many of them into nihilistic “slums in the sky”.Īs “the sick man of Europe” made uneasy strides towards post-war modernity, Ballard spotted the potential pathological and sociological dangers of vertical living, and created a story about a block of flats whose residents turn feral after the building’s facilities begin to break down. The reputation of the government’s futuristic Brutalist tower blocks were changing for the worse, too.

The country was in the chokehold of a double dip recession industrial unions held the economy to ransom and the IRA was indiscriminately blowing up coaches, hotels and pubs on the English mainland. When High-Rise was first published in 1975, the UK resembled a dystopian wasteland itself. While mainstream film homages to Ballard’s books have been few and far between – the last one was David Cronenberg’s Crash in 1996, and before that Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun in 1987 – the late author’s influence on contemporary music culture has remained consistent and thrillingly diverse since the early 1970s. In March, Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of JG Ballard’s High-Risehit our cinemas, featuring Clint Mansell’s most haunting score since Black Swan, a chilling cover of ABBA’s “SOS” by Portishead, and a soundtrack peppered with CAN, Amon Düül, The Fall and Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. This article is taken from the first print issue of Rough Trade Issue 1, out in all Rough Trade stores now.

Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard