Industry of Magic & Light

Keenan makes serious magic with this kaleidoscopic crowd of shamans and showmen, this host of flawed, unexpected, brilliant characters. Industry of Magic & Light is a spell-binding inventory of 1960s culture and a glorious, thrilling, funny reading experience. It’s Keenan in excelsis: transcendent, violent in intensity, full of joy and utter wonder * Wendy Erskine *
Brilliant - pure undiluted Keenan in crystalised form. Less a book and more of a passport, Industry of Magic & Light is nothing like you expected but everything you hoped for * John Higgs *
Keenan threads these votive objects into a tapestry as delirious and hallucinogenic as a John Cippolina guitar solo … This is Memorial Device was searing and brilliant and totally made up. Don’t tell me Keenan has done it again … Keenan is showing us how even in Airdrie - perhaps especially in Airdrie - the possibilities were infinite. And maybe, just maybe, he’s written another classic * The Scotsman *
There are some writers whose books disrupt you so profoundly that to encounter them is to survive a life event. David Keenan is one of these beasts. Read him * Lara Pawson *
The only thing I didn’t love about Industry of Magic & Light was the nagging feeling you’d been born with an enfeebled imagination when putting it down * Lias Saoudi *
I cracked open my copy of Industry of Magic & Light and within two pages had laughed out loud twice, nodded furiously once and was totally ensnared. Keenan captures the literal magic of your local scene’s hidden reverse * John Doran *
Industry of Magic & Light does something that is depressingly rare … it cracks open the majesty, the poetry and the strange high magic that is present in working class communities, if only we could be bothered to look * Keiran Goddard *
This is Memorial Device was my favourite book of the last decade, an imagined history of a local music scene that I found more genuinely evocative of growing up in and around bands than most reality-based histories. With Industry of Magic & Light David has spread this hallucinated universe out, and back in time, to create a prequel that fills out and colours in the edges of his characters in a way I found beautiful and life affirming * Andy Bell *
Keenan makes serious magic with this kaleidoscopic crowd of shamen and showmen, this host of flawed, unexpected, brilliant characters. Industry of Magic & Light is a spell-binding inventory of 1960s culture and a glorious, thrilling, funny reading experience. It’s Keenan in excelsis: transcendent, violent in intensity, full of joy and utter wonder. * Wendy Erskine *
Brilliant - pure undiluted Keenan in crystalised form. Less a book and more of a passport, INDUSTRY OF MAGIC & LIGHT is nothing like you expected but everything you hoped for. * John Higgs *
Keenan threads these votive objects into a tapestry as delirious and hallucinogenic as a John Cippolina guitar solo… This is Memorial Device was searing and brilliant and totally made up. Don’t tell me Keenan has done it again… Keenan is showing us how even in Airdrie - perhaps especially in Airdrie - the possibilities were infinite. And maybe, just maybe, he’s written another classic. * The Scotsman *
There are some writers whose books disrupt you so profoundly that to encounter them is to survive a life event. David Keenan is one of these beasts. Read him. * Lara Pawson *
The only thing I didn’t love about INDUSTRY OF MAGIC & LIGHT was the nagging feeling you’d been born with an enfeebled imagination when putting it down. HAIL KEENAN. * Lias Saoudi, Fat White Family *
I cracked open my copy of INDUSTRY OF MAGIC & LIGHT and within TWO pages had laughed out loud twice, nodded furiously once and was totally ensnared. Keenan captures the literal magic of your local scene’s hidden reverse. * John Doran, editor of The Quietus *
INDUSTRY OF MAGIC & LIGHT does something that is depressingly rare… it cracks open the majesty, the poetry and the strange high magic that is present in working class communities, if only we could be bothered to look. * Keiran Goddard *
This is Memorial Device was my favourite book of the last decade, an imagined history of a local music scene that I found more genuinely evocative of growing up in and around bands than most reality-based histories. With INDUSTRY OF MAGIC & LIGHT David has spread this hallucinated universe out, and back in time, to create a prequel that fills out and colours in the edges of his characters in a way I found beautiful and life affirming. * Andy Bell, Ride *

David Keenan is the author of six critically-acclaimed novels; the cult classic This is Memorial Device, which won the London Magazine Prize; For the Good Times, which won the Gordon Burn Prize and was shortlisted for the Encore Award; The Towers The Fields The Transmitters, Xstabeth, which was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, Monument Maker, which was a Rough Trade Book of the Year and Industry of Magic & Light. He is also the author of England’s Hidden Reverse, a history of the UK’s post-punk and Industrial music scenes. He has been writing about music since he was seventeen years old, most consistently for The Wire, and between the years 2004-2014 he co-ran the cult Glasgow record shop Volcanic Tongue. His selected music writing was published in 2025 as the collection Volcanic Tongue.

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