TIME Magazine's June 5 cover story focuses on ecstasy, a designer psychotropic which is the illegal substance of choice among young people on the rave scene. The drug, they say, is the key to appreciating the experience of dancing non-stop for eight hours or more to the mesmerizing, relentless 120 beats-a-minute of the DJ music known as techno. Photographer Scott Houston documented the rave scene in New York and other American cities.

Photographs by Scott Houston/Corbis Sygma for TIME

Music: "Percolator 2000" by Green Velvet, courtesy F-111 Records

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