Rave's aesthetics and its drug culture co-evolved, so a shift toward ecstasy's 'dark side' turned the music darker

Modulations frames a two-way relationship between altered states and rave music rather than simple cause and effect. It claims the evolution of the music over a decade was ‘conditioned by ecstasy’ and by changing drug use: when many UK ravers who had taken ecstasy for years began experiencing ‘the dark side,’ the music turned dark at the same time — a moment the film identifies as pivotal in rave’s mutation into jungle. The teachable idea is co-evolution: the phenomenology of a scene’s altered states and the aesthetic demands of its music shift together, each shaping the other, so genre change can track changes in collective experience.

Examples

UK rave darkening into jungle in the mid-1990s as the shared ecstasy experience soured; the film treats the drug experience and the music as moving together.

Assessment

How does the film explain the transition from euphoric rave to darker jungle, and why does it describe the drug-music relationship as co-evolution rather than one simply causing the other?