Richard Norris – one half of electronic act The Grid (with Soft Cell’s Dave Ball) and Beyond The Wizards Sleeve (with DJ Erol Alkan) – is probably not a household name in his own right. But, as Strange Things Are Happening makes clear, he’s a creative node, a countercultural lodestone, the thread that links musicians as disparate as Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P-Orridge, Robert Fripp of King Crimson, Joe Strummer, Sun Ra, Damon Albarn, Shaun Ryder and Andrew Weatherall.

The book tracks Norris’ career from postpunk upstart in the Innocent Vicars, through the life-changing discovery of electronic music and on to a bewildering plethora of collaborations and remixes. Most evocative is his portrait of the nascent acid house scene in 1980s London, especially a first trip to Shoom, electrically charged with excitement at a new world of possibilities opening up.

Unusually for a memoir, introspection is almost entirely absent – perhaps because Norris is conscious that readers are more likely to be engrossed by eyewitness testimony than inward reflection; perhaps because he’s always lived life in the moment, caught up in the whirl, as suggested by the judicious stylistic decision to employ the present tense throughout. Ultimately, the book stands as an iridescent monument to an avowed belief in music’s magical transformative power and “universal energy”.