Acid house
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the 1994 novel by Irvine Welsh, see The Acid House.
Occurring under the encompassing umbrella of electronic music, and the subsequent smaller grouping of house music, Acid House generally uses simple tone generators and tempo-controlled resonant filters.
The origins of Acid House can be traced back to the 1980s when DJs used the house music that was already popular in Chicago and New York mixed with the “squelch” and deep bass line of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. Eventually Acid House spread across the Atlantic and arrived in the United Kingdom where it would become the central part of the early rave scene. A yellow smiley face is considered an emblem of Acid House.
Contents |
[edit] Further history
Acid house may have started in Chicago, but it quickly moved across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom, where it became the foundation for the early rave scene, which adopted the yellow smiley symbol to represent acid house music and rave culture.[1] Acid house began influencing UK pop music, emerging in a somewhat sanitized form in songs like Bananarama's "Tripping on Your Love" and Samantha Fox's "Love House", and appearing as remixes of pop songs on 12" singles by mainstream acts. It also manifested in the number-one hit "Theme from S'Express" by electronic band S'Express.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, news media and tabloids devoted an increasing amount of coverage to the hedonistic acid house/rave scene, focusing on its association with psychedelic drugs. The sensationalistic nature of the media coverage and its relentless questioning of the meaning of "acid" in "acid house" makes it impossible to gauge the actual prevalence of drugs at early raves and acid house parties. The coverage is widely believed to have ultimately contributed to the banning of acid house, during its heyday, from radio, television, and retail outlets in the United Kingdom.
Musically, acid house eventually moved away from its almost exclusive reliance on the TB-303, but continued to remain true to its roots of repeated sound sequences being shifted and warped by modulation over time.
[edit] Etymology
There are conflicting accounts about how "acid" came to describe this new style of house music.
- It is a celebratory reference to LSD — some feel that early producers of the new style of house music, as well as people at nightclubs where the music was played, enjoyed the drug and its interaction with the music. No citations are available to confirm or deny this explanation. Genesis P-Orridge, principal member of the experimental music collective Psychic TV, is believed by some to be a primary source of this claim. P-Orridge made various claims of responsibility for inventing the term and the style of music, but at least one former member of Psychic TV disputes all of the claims,[2] and in an interview in the 1999 documentary Better Living Through Circuitry, P-Orridge admitted that it was a clerk in a Chicago record shop who used the word "acid" to describe the most experimental, bizarre house records that were on hand and that P-Orridge asked to be shown. In the interview, P-Orridge reported having an epiphany, while listening to those records, that the music was not very psychedelic, except by virtue of its tempo. Afterward, the music and imagery of Psychic TV records was very deliberately influenced by the acid house style and was quite celebratory of LSD in particular. P-Orridge later claimed to have been the first to introduce psychedelic elements to the music.
- It is a celebratory reference to psychedelic drugs in general — some feel that Ecstasy (MDMA) was more popular and prevalent than LSD among musicians and nightclub patrons in the mid-1980s. No citations are available to confirm or deny this explanation. There are many citations of Ecstasy being prevalent in post-Chicago U.S. nightclub and UK rave party scenes of the late 1980s, but acid house had already been named by then.
- It was used in Chicago, at the time, to describe house music in the style of "Ron Hardy's Acid Track". — Before Phuture's "Acid Trax" was given a title for commercial release, it was played at a nightclub by DJ Ron Hardy and was called "Ron Hardy's Acid Track" (or "Ron Hardy's Acid Trax") by some, because it was so "hot" (immediately popular) that it "burned the dance floor like acid". Phuture's title followed, and the term Acid House came into common parlance to describe house music with similar affectations, without regard to possible drug influence. No citations are available to confirm or deny this explanation.[3]
- It was used in Chicago, at the time, to describe house music that contained many samples of other recordings — the use of such samples was considered unscrupulous by some, so it is believed by some that the term "acid" or "acid burning" was merely meant to have a harsh, unpleasant connotation. This explanation, sometimes including aspects of the others, has been widely repeated in the press[4][5] and even in the British House of Commons.[6] However, there are at least two reasons why it may not be true: 1. Early house music producers did borrow sounds from each other's recordings, but the majority of acid house music tended to consist of fully original compositions. 2. In 1991, UK Libertarian advocate Paul Staines wrote, "I made up this explanation at a press conference held to launch the Freedom to Party Campaign at the Conservative Party conference in October 1989. I was attempting to desperately play down the drug aspect in a forlorn attempt to discourage anti-party legislation, reasoning that the British public might accept massive noisy parties, but thousands of teenagers on drugs were definitely not acceptable. This, incidentally, is the most successful lie I have ever told. Japanese music journalists have solemnly repeated it to me in the course of interviews and from MTV to ITN it has been broadcast as a fact. Only once was I caught out, when at a seminar held at the DMC World Disc Jockey Mixing Championships, a DJ from Chicago stood up and told the 1,000 or so people in the hall that I was talkin' a complete load of fuckin' bullshit —which I was."[7][8] However, some feel that Staines, like Genesis P-Orridge, is not a reliable source of information.
- It is a colloquialism intended to suggest that the music itself was enhanced and transformed in a manner suggestive of the effects of LSD. Some believe that the addition of the squelch and deep bass of the TB-303 synthesizer to house music makes it sound like the music itself has been subjected to the effects of LSD, or that it induces LSD's effects in those who listen and dance to it. No citations are available to confirm or deny this explanation.
Once the term acid house was coined and began to appear alongside these varying explanations, many participants at acid house themed events made the psychedelic drug connotations a reality[9][10].[11] This coincided with an increasing level of scrutiny and sensationalism in the mainstream press[12],[13] although conflicting accounts about the degree of connection between acid house music and drugs continued to surface.[14]
[edit] Notable acid house artists
- Phuture - Chicago-based group of acid house pioneers, formed in 1985 and best known for their classic 1987 single Acid Trax, which is considered to be the E.P. which gave birth to the Acid House Movement.
- DJ Pierre, a member of Phuture, released various solo acid house tracks and remixes
- Armando - Chicago acid house musician, for "Land of Confusion"
- Mr. Lee - another Chicago house musician who released several acid house tracks in 1988
- Fast Eddie - another Chicago house musician, for "Acid Thunder"
- Adonis - another Chicago house musician, for "We're Rockin Down The House"
- Lil Louis - another Chicago house musician, for "Frequency"
- 808 State - a Manchester, UK-based group of house/techno musicians, formed in 1988. Their first album, Newbuild, was acid house, and occasional acid house influences appear in later tracks.
- A Guy Called Gerald - 808 State cofounder, for the single "Voodoo Ray"
- The KLF - for "What Time Is Love?" and their self-described "stadium house" sound, which mixes acid house with hip-hop, pop, and stadium rock/chant influences
- The Shamen - Psychedelic techno act formed as a rock band in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1986. One of the first groups to bring acid house and techno into the pop mainstream.
- Psychic TV, released early albums of acid house music in 1988 as fake compilations.
- S'Express - Brought acid house to number one in the United Kingdom
- D Mob - Best known for 1988 UK hit "We Call It Acieed"
- Guru Josh - for the 1989 single '"Infinity (1990s... Time For The Guru)"'
[edit] See also
- Second Summer of Love
- Sunrise/Back to the Future
- Genesis '88
- Madchester
- Free party
- Acid techno
- Rave
- List of electronic music genres
[edit] External links
- Fantazia.org.uk UK, Massive site dedicated to the UK Acid House & Rave scene
- AcidHouse Italia, Italian tribute to the acid movement
- Acid-House.net, acid house fan site
- Jahsonic's History of Acid House
- History of House Article covering the history of house, touching on Acid House
- Electroretro.co.uk, featuring sections on acid house, old skool and electro
- Discussion of Race and Music with specific references to Acid House
- Entertainment & Sports Law Journal Vol 1. No. 3 contains a comparative review of 11 books covering the acid house and early rave scenes
[edit] References
- ^ The Independent, March 3, 1990: ‘Acid House, whose emblem is a vapid, anonymous smile, is the simplest and gentlest of the Eighties’ youth manifestations … non-aggressive (except in terms of decibels)’.
- ^ Giannelli, Fred., in an interview for the Family Ov Psychick Individuals (FOPI) Psychic TV fan club in June 2000.
- ^ Cheeseman, Phil. "The History Of House". DJ Magazine. In the article, Cheeseman writes, "Phuture was me and two other guys, Spanky and Herbert J." remembers Pierre. "We had this Roland 303, which was a bassline machine, and we were trying to figure out how to use it. When we switched it on, that acid sound was already in it and we liked the sound of it so we decided to add some drums and make a track with it. We gave it to Ron Hardy who started playing it straight away. In fact, the first time he played it, he played it four times in one night! The first time people were like, 'what the fuck is this?' but by the fourth they loved it. Then I started to hear that Ron was playing some new thing they were calling 'Ron Hardy's Acid Trax', and everybody thought it was something he'd made himself. Eventually we found out that it was our track so we called it 'Acid Trax'. I think we may have made it as early as 1985, but Ron was playing it for a long time before it came out."
- ^ Rushkoff, Douglas (1994, 2nd ed. 2002). Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace. ISBN 1-903083-24-9. — Let's leave Toon Town for a moment to get a look at the history of this thing called house. Most Americans say it began in Chicago, where DJs at smaller, private parties and membership-only clubs (particularly one called The Warehouse) began aggressively mixing records, adding their own electronic percussion and sampling tracks, making music that — like the home-made vinaigrette at an Italian restaurant — was called "house." The fast disco and hip-hop — influenced recordings would sample pieces of music that were called bites" so (others spell it "bytes," to indicate that these are digital samples that can be measured in terms of RAM size). Especially evocative bites were called acid bites." Thus, music of the house, made up of these acid bites, became known as "acid house." When this sound got to England, it was reinterpreted, along with its name. Folklore has it that industrial (hard, fast, high-tech, and psychedelic) music superstar Genesis P. Orridge was in a record store when he saw a bin of disks labeled acid," which he figured was psychedelic music— tunes to play while on LSD. He and his cohorts added their own hallucinogenic flavor to the beats and samples, and British acid house was born.
- ^ The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (Knowles, Elizabeth [ed], Elliott, Elizabeth [ed]). Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-863152-9. — The word acid here is probably taken from the record Acid Trax by Phuture (in Chicago slang, acid burning is a term for stealing and this type of music relies heavily on sampling, or stealing from other tracks); a popular theory that it is a reference to the drug LSD is denied by its followers (but compare acid rock, a sixties psychedelic rock craze, which certainly was). House is an abbreviated form of Warehouse.
- ^ Bright, Graham, Mr. (March 9, 1990). Quoted in the British House of Commons Hansard, 9 March 1990, column 1111 — "Those who organise such parties, whether reputable individuals and companies or not, object to the term 'acid house party'. The term derives from Chicago slang describing the theft and subsequent mixing of recording tracks played at warehouse parties. But because of its association with drug LSD or 'acid', the promoters prefer to use descriptions such as all-night party, warehouse party, dance party, rave and, I am sure, many other names. I know that one of my hon. Friends may introduce us to some of them later."
- ^ Staines, Paul (1991). "Acid House Parties Against the Lifestyle Police and the Safety Nazis" article in Political Notes (ISSN 0267-7059 ), issue 55 (ISBN 1-85637-039-9). Also quoted in Saunders, Nicholas with Doblin, Rick (July 1, 1996). Ecstasy: Dance, Trance & Transformation, Quick American Publishing Company. ISBN 0-932551-20-3.
- ^ Garratt, Sheryl (May 6, 1999). Adventures in Wonderland: Decade of Club Culture. Headline Book Publishing Ltd. (UK). ISBN 0-7472-5846-5.
- ^ DeRogatis, Jim (December 1, 2003). Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock, 436. Google Print. ISBN 0-634-05548-8 (accessed June 9, 2005). Also available in print from Hal Leonard. — In the summer of 1988, a hybrid sound called acid house evolved, and critics are still debating what the "acid" refers to. Some DJs say the term came from the distinctive buzzing sound of one of the primary technical components, the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer. ("Hear that?" Chicago DJs are fond of asking. "That is the sound of acid.") Genesis P-Orridge of Pyschic TV claimed that he saw the description on a bin in a Chicago record store, was disappointed to find out that it meant acid as in "corrosive," and set about making psychedelic music that actually fit the bill. Paul Staines of England's Freedom to Party Campaign admitted the story he told a fringe meeting at the 1989 UK Conservative Party conference — that acid house came from the Chicago street slang "acid burn," meaning to steal or sample another piece of music — was concocted in a public relations effort to separate the phrase from its psychedelic connotation (no one in Chicago that I know has ever heard of the phrase). But anyone who's been to a rave can tell you that the connection between psychedelic drugs and acid house is certainly no fiction.
- ^ Donnally, Trish. (October 17, 1988). Article published in the San Francisco Chronicle and distributed via the Los Angeles Times Syndicate to other newspapers and published under various headlines. — British youths, mostly younger than 20, are flocking to members-only nightclubs, taking a cheap tab of LSD ($5) or the much more expensive designer drug Ecstasy ($30) and then dancing all night long, sometimes - with the aid of amyl nitrate poppers — until 10 the next morning.
- ^ Foderaro, Lisa. (December 18, 1988). New York Times News Service article, published in various US newspapers under different headlines. — Most striking is the parallel rise at some nightclubs of a new kind of music called "acid house," which is a stripped-down, highly percussive disco sound -- punctuated by television jingles, spoken non sequiturs and high-pitched beeps — whose overall effect is psychedelic. "The music and the drug were made for each other," said a 22-year-old disc jockey from Hawaii wearing a T-shirt that reads A (plus) E (equals) (Smiley Face) — read as a "Acid House Plus Ecstasy Equals Happiness."
- ^ Takiff, Jonathan. (December 14, 1988). Philadelphia Daily News. — The British media, especially the sensationalist Sun and Mirror newspapers, went on a rampage this summer suggesting that Acid House parties were reeking with hallucinogenic drugs. The BBC obligingly banned all records that mentioned acid, though D Mob's "We Call It Acieed" still climbed to No. 1.
- ^ Hochman, Steve. (November 13, 1988). Los Angeles Times. — Acid House's adopted symbol is the bland, innocuous "smiley face" that adorns many patrons' T-shirts. But in Britain much of the press coverage has focused on a not-so-innocent connection with—as the name implies—hallucinogenic drugs. The death of a young woman last month at a London Acid House club has been attributed to the drug known as Ecstasy. Moore, 23, acknowledged that both Ecstasy and LSD have been big parts of the Acid House scene in Britain. … Moore did describe Acid House music and club designs as being intended to create and/or enhance psychedelic experiences.
- ^ Leary, Mike. (November 24, 1988). Philadelphia Inquirer. — All around greater London in recent weeks, there has been a crackdown on acid-house music. The police have been swooping down on underground acid-house parties in vacant warehouses, busting, and sometimes beating, revelers. They have been egged on in semi-hysterical tones by the tabloid press, foremost the Sun, which said the discos were "evil" drug dens, and the dancers' trances the result of ingesting LSD (long known as acid in street slang) and the designer drug Ecstasy, an amphetamine derivative. "Hell of Acid Kids, Pushers Laugh as Teenagers See Terror of Bad Trip Boy," shouted a deck of headlines in the Sun, which is several cuts below America's National Enquirer in quality but enjoys considerable influence as Britain's largest-circulation newspaper. Two deaths were attributed to the dance craze. … Nobody denies drugs have been a part of the acid-house scene, as they have been a part of the disco milieu for years. But after the tabloids reported that Scotland Yard was setting up an "acid buster" team, senior police officials felt compelled to minimize the problem. They said that there was no need for such a team and that the use of LSD and Ecstasy was no epidemic. "The great majority of these parties are simply part of a style of music and dress and don't present a problem at all," said Cmdr. John Robinson, director of Scotland Yard's Public Order Branch. "At most of them, there is no heavy involvement with drugs."
- Additional references
- Collin, Matthew; Godfrey, John. (1st edition, April 1997; 2nd edition, November 15, 1998). Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1-85242-377-3 (1st edition); ISBN 1-85242-604-7 (2nd edition).
- Bussmann, Jane. (1998) Once in a Lifetime: The Crazy Days of Acid House and Afterwards. London: Virgin. ISBN 0-7535-0260-7.
- Shapiro, Peter (ed.), et al. (October 15, 2000). Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound. Charles Rivers Publishing Co. ISBN 1-891024-06-X.
| House |
|---|
| Acid - Ambient - Chicago - Dark - Deep - Dream - Electro - French - Garage - Ghetto - Hard - Hip - Italo - Latin - Minimal - Microhouse - Progressive - Pumpin' - Tech - Tribal |
| Other electronic music genres |
| Ambient | Breakbeat | Dance | Drum and bass | Electronica | Electronic Art Music | Hard Dance | Hardcore | House | Industrial | Synthpop | Techno | Trance |
Hello
