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The Roland TB-303
Welcome to a day devoted to acid house. The best acid house music can best be understood as a very pure and intense form of psychedelia, one that conjures up an army of brain-bending phantasms simply by twisting the knobs on a little silver box. This post will explain some of the genre’s history and provides you with a few examples of significant acid records. There are some who would have it that all the good acid came out of Chicago in 1988, but maybe this post will persuade you otherwise. Acid spans cultures, continents and eras. See what you think, and don’t be afraid to jack your body…
The Genesis of Acid
The Roland TB-303 Bass Line is a bass synthesizer with built-in sequencer manufactured by the Roland corporation from late 1981 to 1984 that had a defining role in the development of contemporary electronic music. The TB-303 (short for “Transistorized Bass”) was originally marketed to guitarists for bass accompaniment while practising alone. Production lasted approximately 18 months, resulting in only 10,000 units. It was not until the mid- to late-1980s that DJs and electronic musicians in Chicago found a use for the machine in the context of the newly developing house music genre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TB-303
Tadao Kikumoto
Roland engineer Tadao Kikumoto’s machine is a happy accident: not great at doing what it was designed to do (simulate the sound of a bass guitar), but brilliant once it got into the right (wrong) hands. Production stopped in 1984 because the target audience was disappointed with the lack of realism. But its thrilling, squelchy, endlessly tweakable sound was perfect for the emerging house and techno scene – check Phuture’s Acid Tracks from 1987 – it could only have been written on a machine.
Phuture
Phuture –Acid Tracks is surely up there with the most influential records ever made, to be filed away alongside your Velvets and your Pistols in the big canonical magazine lists. This inspired misuse of technology is where it all began.
DJ Pierre: ”Phuture was me and two other guys, Spanky and Herbert J. 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 (Music Box DJ) 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 it?’ 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.”
http://www.squidoo.com/chicago_house
Bassline Baseline is a video essay that investigates the invention, failure and subsequent resurrection of the mythic Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine in the last two decades of the 20th century. The narrative seeks to invite thoughts on technological mediation within product innovation and creative expression. The dead-panned ‘documentary’ video attempts to explore how and why creative tools fail and how increasingly more options, parameters or intermediaries devised during a tool’s research and development phase don’t necessarily lead to increased expressivity or virtuosity during the tool’s lifetime of actual use, unless the super-structure of its cultural context is dramatically reconsidered.
http://www.archive.org/details/NateHarrisonBasslineBaseline/
A few examples of canonical acid house records:
Sleezy D – I’ve Lost Control
With the incessant burbling of the Roland TB 303 bass synthesiser underpinning a heavily treated vocal, this Marshall Jefferson production helped to define the intense acid sound. An uncannily accurate depiction of a bad trip, it ushered in a new age of dark side psychedelia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/apr/20/electronicmusic.clubs1
Bam Bam – Where’s Your Child
Review by J-TEC: “Where’s Your Child” is a classic acid track with some verry nice and scary vocals in it. The original version is very strong, minimalizing the Track on its instrumental basics + a nice acid base line and adding a really “deep” flair. Recommended if you like the Acid 😉
http://www.discogs.com/Bam-Bam-Wheres-Your-Child/release/43506
Jaquarius – Love Is Happiness (Acid Rain)
Kenny sent this to me yesterday, and my mind has not yet fully recovered. From 2:50 to 3:15 is pure insanity! Also feeling that ROCKING logo.
http://duskcollective.com/?p=342
Armando Gallop
If you lived in Chicago in the 1990s, you couldn’t get away from Armando Gallop. As a DJ, producer and promoter, he was everywhere in this town. From his “School Daze” parties at the Hummingbird on 86th and Ashland, to Medusa’s and the Warehouse up north, where people from all races came together, he absolutely owned it. Internationally, he was an almost mythical figure: a single name on a slab of vinyl with the sickest beats and a 303 sound that has never been duplicated.
And then one day he was gone. Tragically, Armando was taken away from us at the age of just 26 – usually, an age when a young artist is just getting started.
http://www.5chicago.com/armando/armando-gallop-tribute.html
Armando – Pleasure Dome
Taken from the New World Order LP on Trax Records 1994 Armando Gallop was one of the original Chicago pioneers of acid house and sadly passed away in 1996 aged 26, RIP Armando!!!
http://7sundathestairz.tumblr.com/
Marcus Mixx – You’ve Got No Right
Review by Chilli_Fingers: My House Music Holy Grail. When *IS* this gonna be pressed up again or the un re-released tracks made otherwise available. You’ve Got No Right must be one of THEE best Acid Trax EVER and Shake That Thing is just a work of utter brain-melting genius (not reflected on that rather pointless European remix 12″). The Armando track was put out on some Chicago comp 12″ a few years ago and other tracks came out on that ‘Underdog’ bootleg but , alas, not the two above. Along with Larry Heard & DJ Rush, Marcus Mixx I truly feel is another artist who took house into another area never replicated and has never received the acclaim he should.
http://www.discogs.com/Various-Volume-2/release/237959
James ‘Jack Rabbit’ Martin – Only Wanted To Be (Acid Mix)
The title of the release is ‘There Are Dreams And There Is Acid” and both tracks features a very high level of sound quality and production compared to other acid house records of the time, with individually effected drums – heavily flanged hihats, and reverbed claps. ‘Only Wanted To Be’ has a dark evolving acid line, ethereal howling voices and a pitched-down melancholy spoken vocal. Whereas a lot of acid tracks are just quick jams knocked out in an afternoon (and it’s true that if you gave 100 monkeys 100 TR808s and 100 TB303s, you’d probably get more than 70 decent acid tracks) this track stands out as a seriously thought-out song with fantastic sounds and structure.
Ed DMX, 20 best: Acid House: http://www.factmag.com/2009/09/22/20-best-acid-house/
Some pre-acid acid
In recent years, record diggers have unearthed some examples of 303 usage that predate Phuture’s seminal Acid Tracks:
In 1982, (Charanjit) Singh did something unusual. Inspired by the sound of disco imports from the west making waves among Bombay’s hipster cognoscenti, he went into the studio with some new kit – a Roland Jupiter-8 keyboard, a Roland TR-808 drum machine and a Roland TB-303 – and decided to make a record that combined western dance music with the droning ragas of Indian classical music. Recorded in two days, Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat garnered some interest, excerpts finding their way on to national radio, but it was a commercial flop and was soon forgotten.
In 2002, record collector Edo Bouman came across Ten Ragas in a shop in Delhi. “Back at my hotel I played it on my portable player, and I was blown away. It sounded like acid house, or like an ultra-minimal Kraftwerk.” But it was the date on the record that shocked Bouman. Released 1982, it predated the first acid house record – often regarded as Phuture’s Acid Trax – by five years. Bouman tracked down Singh to Mumbai. “He was most friendly and surprised I knew the album. I remember asking him how he got to this acid-like sound, but he didn’t quite get my point. He didn’t realise how stunningly modern it was.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/10/charanjit-singh-acid-house
Barry Mason
William Bennett of Whitehouse on record collecting:
Archaeology in music seems to me shamefully under-researched. I see the concept as the recognition of specific themes or motifs… followed by a retrospective exploration into their origins. One that I became fascinated with was the electronic acid sound, when I began collecting underground house 12″‘s whilst visiting Chicago in 1986 and 1987 – at a time when very few people in the States (let alone Europe) were familiar with the whole thing (of course that changed quickly from ’88 onwards). Once again, there was precious little information about this, even though I heard an interview that said DJ Pierre (of whom I had a couple of fantastic maxis) claimed to have invented the sound accidentally whilst (mis)using a Roland TB-303 – then I wondered who used the term first, on what record, and especially, who used this special sound first? Later I made the incredible discovery of earlier examples of this sound on Italo disco records from as early 1983, in one case by Alexander Robotnick, but then also by Barry Mason on the extraordinary ‘Body! (Get Your Body)’ which clearly, to my ears, not only contains a middle eight with the acid sound, but the singing and piano too must have influenced Marshall Jefferson (‘Move Your Body’) and others on the early house records. It now seems unlikely that highly obscure Italian electronic music could have been so influential, but remember that disco (thanks to the deep conservatism of rock music) had become pretty much taboo in the USA in the early eighties and many gay nightclubs and black disco DJs had to import music from Europe, where the scene was still vibrant.
“www.macba.cat/uploads/20110330/Memorabilia_Bennett_eng.pdf
The acid sound would eventually spread to Holland.
Bunker records: Set up in 1992 by three white and Eurasian middle-class nerd punks who had just moved into the squat zone of central The Hague from the suburban new towns of Zoetermeer and Alphen a/d Rijn (where Rude 66 also hails from). Since no label was interested to release the music of Unit Moebius, their (now legendary) ‘acid planet’ squat parties in The Hague, with twelve hours of non-stop comatose acid-house music, no lights but heavy strobes and a very freaked out audience (partially due to the strong and pure LSD sold by one of the Unit Moebius members) of punks, squatters, junkies and patients from two nearby psychiatric institutes, made it possible to release Bunker 001 and 002. The next two releases were paid for with money made from selling LSD (silver surfers!). Soon the fucked up standards for The Hague’s hard, dark and crazy industrial techno music were set and the acid scene exploded.
http://www.discogs.com/label/Bunker+Records
A few contemporary exponents of acid:
Legowelt
Legowelt (real name Danny Wolfers) is a Dutch electronic musician who describes his musical style as “a hybrid form of slam jack combined with deep Chicago house, romantic ghetto technofunk and EuroHorror Soundtrack.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legowelt
James T. Cotton
Following several 12” releases, James T. Cotton makes his first full statement. A psychedelic album in every sense, The Dancing Box pays respects to classic Chicago acid and leftfield Detroit techno, but does so with its own force and verve. Cotton has crafted a sonic maelstrom, at once vibrant and eerily troubling, with the eerie sensation of slowly deepening grooves. The Dancing Box finds the Cotton persona channelling historic jack tracks and late night radio frequency energy to complete his mission.
http://ghostly.com/releases/the-dancing-box
Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being
As minimal techno plunders the ashes of Chicago’s jack track aesthetic, Jamal Moss represents another deviation of the classic house sound. Mentored by Chicago legends Adonis and Steve Poindexter, Moss’ tracks recall the sort of wild experimentation that can only be achieved through limited resources. Armed with little more than a couple drum machines and budget mixers, the typical Hieroglyphic Being 12″ stands in stark contrast to the clinical style of laptop production. Squashed, clipped, noisy, and raw, Moss’ work serves as a reminder that musical evolution can come from unlikely sources.
http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2006/09/hieroglyphic-being-studio
Finally, here’s a few useful online resources. I hope this day’s been an enjoyable one. Happy jacking, everybody!
Explore: Acid House | AllMusic
http://www.allmusic.com/explore/style/acid-house-d505
Acid House on Discogs
http://www.discogs.com/explore?style=Acid+House
Acid-House.net: The Complete Database of Real Acid House:
From the electronic music forum Robouts For Robots:
The big chicago house topic…….chi-house………
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p.s. Hey. ** Joe, Hey, Joe! The Metcalf was in the issue (#9) guest-edited by Gerard Malanga, so he brought it in. My only direct contact with Metcalf was because Little Caesar was a one person operation made back when you had to use typesetting machines and so on to make a issue, extremely labor intensive, and ‘WotP’ was very complicated, format-wise, to replicate, and I wrote to him to ask if the formatting had to be exactly as it was in the mss., hoping he’d say there was a little leeway, and he wrote back to say that, yes, the formatting had to be exactly as in the mss. Urgh. It was tough going get it right, but it was such an honor. Traveling, nice. I read ‘The Recognitions’, yes, a long time ago when I still had the patience to read giant novels. I remember thinking it was really great. Worth the time, as I recall. Weirdly, or I guess not weirdly, my favorite Gaddis is his shortest one, ‘A Carpenters Gothic’. ** Misanthrope, Whoa. I guess I figured you guys already were bfs. The big time. You know I’m wishing you all the luck with that. Congrats to you both! Alcohol just makes me feel sluggish and sleepy. Which is why I only really drank when I did drink to take the edge off the coke or speed. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey! First, there it is up there, restored and repaired, as promised. Thank you from the future, pal. I loved the latest PT. So many total goodies I’d never heard before. I quite especially liked the Dollkraut and The Scary of Sixty and, I think, — it’s hard to match the sounds with the names sometimes — TE/DIS tracks. Nice John Maus pick too. But it was divine sailing the whole route. Thank you, thank you for the head revision. How was Jerry Sadowitz? ** Harper, Hi, Harper. Welcome! I agree with every single word you typed. Beautifully put. Truly, I’m always asking myself ‘how the fuck are doing that’ when I’m reading him. Which is the ultimate fiction effect for me. Thank you. How are you? What do you do and what are you up to, if you care to say. ** Steve, Eek. I get that impetus in a kind of Rimdaudian sense, but the evil involved is problematic supreme. No, on Chrisman’s DOZAGE, but I’m going to try to get that today. Thanks, it sounds like what I sorely need. Continued luck for Sunday. It sounds like you’ll be at the ready when the time comes. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Awwww. The issue continues to unfold majestically. I’ll give you a full feedback style take when I finish it, but it’s nonstop thrills. I’m trying to imagine what shit food is. Like fast food burgers or something? Says the guy who was wandering in the shit food aisle at the supermarket yesterday and trying to restrain myself. Although I have to say most French shit food would qualify as cuisine in the US. Love disappearing Kanye West and maybe his wife too, G. ** Growl, Hi. I like spring too, but its early arrival feels very eerie. Cyprus, nice. What’s that like? I’m thinking it’s maybe sort of like Greece? I don’t know. Hm, hard to say if that was flirtation. Wouldn’t put it past him. When is Easter? I don’t even know. Sunday, I guess? No, in other words. I might check to see if any of the patisseries have any Easter-specific edibles of note. No, Firbank isn’t too camp for me at all. I don’t even think of him as camp. It seems transcendent of that. Lovely trip! ** Justin, So, what did you do to your hair to cause such wide eyed reactions? Lopped a bunch off, I assume? Being surprising is the ultimate state, I think, so … cool. Enjoy it while it lasts. My week has been relatively lowkey because we’re in a short no film work phase. Mostly writing, making plans, buying tickets to upcoming things. Yours, other than looking brand new? ** Robert, Hi, Robert. It’s good to meet you. Well, it’d be easier to talk about your situation maybe. We could phone or Zoom if you want. My email is: [email protected]. For now, yes, it sounds familiar. I certainly don’t think it’s any reason to consider stopping writing. I go through months and longer when I can’t work on my writing, where that kind of direct route from my imagination and impulse just isn’t working or hooked up. Maybe especially if you’ve been intently concentrated on your writing for a long period. My guess is your main goal is to stop worrying that the break in focus is damaging or that it means more than that you’re just at an impasse and need to be refreshed. It could be a positive thing, which may sound weird, but I personally have found that taking a complete break from my writing has only pushed me forward. Maybe let yourself enjoy and study forms other than writing for a while: films, art, music, … I do that a lot. Sometimes just looking to other writers for ways forward can be claustrophobic or something. I don’t know. I guess I’m saying that, based on what you wrote, I don’t think it sounds like some kind of major break or turning point. Like I said, if talking it out would help, let me know, and we can sort out a tete-a-tete. Try not to worry. Easy to say, but, … ** Darb😏, Ah, the good kind of business. Sure, I love Tim Buckley. I have a big fondness for that song ‘Pleasant Street’. And lots of others. I really like his ‘weird’ period, like ‘Lorca’. Do you like that too? I haven’t had a cassette player or boombox in so long that I don’t remember what ones I had. Film: yum. Trusting you got your permit and I can celebrate. Store go-to? You mean what store? The health food store I go to here is called Naturalia. It’s pretty good. If you mean what item, lately it’s microwaveable mashed potatoes. ** Uday, Hi there. Favorite Firbank … that’s tough. I think maybe ‘The Flower Beneath the Foot’. Oh, I’m A-okay with alcohol itself, and, you know, a bunch of my closest friends indulge. Boring reason: my mom was extremely horrible, abusive alcoholic, and that really tinged me. That is really heartbreaking about Morrisroe. God, I didn’t know that part. Jeez. You good? ** Cap’m, Hi! Well, I definitely made myself up, and you’re all just things I have around me, so maybe you are just things wiggling in my web? No need for butterflies with me. I’m so chill, I’m easy, easy like a Sunday morning (if that’s the right quote). Anyway, you’re very kind, thank you. You seem pretty ace yourself, and not because I made you up, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I want to eat a pie out of my lap! I’m going to do that today, if I can. Pies are not common things here in France. Can you believe that? ** Okay. Some years ago, the maestro of the sonic Mr. _Black_Acrylic, currently host of the divine podcast Play Therapy, put together a post about … well, you see about what. And it had gotten a little technically rusty with time, so I’ve righted its ship and relaunched it for the good of all. Thanks, _B_A. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Thank you for restoring my acid house day!
The Jerry Sadowitz “Comedian, Magician, Psychopath!” gig last night at Leeds Wardrobe was great. Although often billed as being “not suitable for anyone”, I reckon that audience all knew what they were in for. I did not see any walkouts, only fits of hysterical laughter. This being Leeds, there were plenty of Jimmy Savile and Yorkshire Ripper jokes to test the crowd’s tolerance. Black humour is very much a Yorkshire thing.
Dennis, Thanks! Well, we’d been like (or he’d been like), we’re not boyfriends and we’re not dating or in a relationship even though we really are, but let’s don’t call it that, let’s just enjoy what we have. He was always slipping up, though, and saying we were dating and boyfriends and stuff and then we’d laugh. But, like I said, he said he’d been really thinking about it and wanting to do it. So far, so good. Let’s see where this takes us.
My thing with drinking is that I drank tons between the ages of 14 and 22/3, and I finally realized that I was a crazy fucking drunk for whom 1 was too many and 100 wasn’t enough. I’d just drink to excess every single time and then do something really dumb and/or fucked up. At a certain point, I tired of that, and I realized I just couldn’t be a drinker anymore or I’d fuck my life up irreparably. So I stopped. I’ve been drunk once in the last 30 years and that was by accident.
I hear you on why you drank. My brother would always drink to bring himself down from his crack highs.
Ahhh!!
I’m sitting in the DMV bored. God the line wasn’t this long last time….
I recognize someone here but I don’t like them so I’m going to hope they don’t notice me because I’m been ignoring them 0.0
OOOH I love this post so much oh I’m totally going to read this while I wait because I love acid house and acid jazz and literally all that
Be right back…
Someone should really do a good post on Digital hardcore and 90s breakcore I would but ot would br too overwhelmingly endless
The Roland is also amazing.
I’m like total electronic music nerd this makes me giddy.
Friend I think envy how you seem to recall drugs having great influence on your work.
These things seem to have only destroyed me and I realize that now as I feel I’m so behind on everything and my brain seems to always feel so empty and destructive.
Wait brb….
(Cont)
….The computers are down and I regret not bringing a book or anything to the DMV.
Oh yeah it’s crazy because a Tim Buckley died from a heroin overdose. It’s just so crazy ya know, that’s all it takes to abruptly end the life of someone so talented. Because that’s just all it takes. Ya know? I think that grueling work and endless attempts to feel better/ get better just completely shattered by one wrong thing is th endless cycle of living life half a person
Oh “Lorca” that’s a good one!
Uh last question! Have you ever been in a K-hole??
I’ll c ya
Pssst
Also I passed my permit test!
Hi!!
I’m so happy you like it, really! And, of course, I’m ready for your full opinion whenever you’re ready to share!
Yes, fast food and frozen stuff = shit food. But no judgment here; I – just like love – find myself making that promise about taking better care of my body after stuffing it with crap all the time.
Love has had enough of hearing about Kanye West’s cringe shit every day? Yeah… I get him…
Love stumbling around like a question mark when he’s not having sex, Od.
P.S. Anita’s parents will be here for a few days, so I’ll be back on Monday! 🙂
The new Scab is —one more time— awesome, congrats to everyone involved!
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for the response. I’ve been on your blog for a while now but never knew what to say. This blog actually introduced me to a lot of great writers, I recently read Time Remaining by James McCourt and loved it. I’ll get to reading Mawdrew Czgowchwz soon. I think you’ve also mentioned Denton Welch and Jane Bowles and I’m obsessed with both. I’m a creative writing student in London and want to be a writer. I guess the rule is that you can say that you’re a writer once you’re published. I won’t make you suffer the whole spiel about that. Anyway, hope you’re well.
hey Dennis, just finished reading “Period” and the whole George Miles cycle. Which made we wonder, do you ever listen to the City Girls? (Their thing is “,period!” lol). Are you a hip hop fan? Just curious who you like if so. Love the blog as always. Hope you’re having a good day.
Hi, Dennis! Yeah, my hair was neck-length and I got the short on the sides/back with some length on top/in front cut. You’re right re: being surprising/changing things up. Always good to keep things interesting! Hope you had a nice day.
Hi Dennis, Cyprus been lovely so far. Yes, it’s a bit like Greece, and a bit like my country. My brother has bought a beautiful house here, which I’m loving. I will explore more of the geography tomorrow and give you a more reliable account! Ha, that makes me want to properly engage with Firbank. Sending you a kiss from Paphos to Paris!
I want to to go through this day more closely when I’m less pressed for time, but the compilation ACID: CAN YOU JACK? is such a great survey of the scene.
I booked my cab drive to my parents’ house. Apart from actually packing my suitcase, very little remains to be done. But my dad’s hearing has noticeably declined, even in the last few weeks, and I have to shout at him on the phone to make myself understood.
For Crooked Marquee, I reviewed Med Hondo’s WEST INDIES, which gets re-released in the U.S. Friday: https://crookedmarquee.com/west-indies-when-a-country-becomes-a-slave-ship/
Hello Dennis!
Thank you for this day, _Black_Acrylic! I didn’t know anything about this kind of music and this post has helped to solve that, thanks Ben!
Fingers crossed with your movie and the festival, Dennis!!
Hey Dennis! Sounds great, just let me know when you’re LA-bound. I’m definitely going to try out Paper Mario. I went to Brown for undergrad, where I believe Keith went before his MFA at Irvine. Let me know if you read Inner City Romance! Would love to hear your thoughts. xx, Allegra
Oh I’m sorry about your mom that’s rough. Do you know what Mewing is and who Zizek is? Because something really funny happened today. I’m not having the best day but that is ok.