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quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated Nice article, though it only added minor details to stuff I've already read. It (and you) didn't answer my question. If you call something acid house and it doesn't have a 303 squelching sound in it, which other characteristics make it acid house then? The article was only really about straight house except for the couple of paragraphs towards the very end.

just answered it.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec it's a huge part of it, but it's also the 808 and he rhythm of course, the minimalism, the militant cadence, the use of vocals, the alien sense of authority, the subjugation to the rhythm and the sound. i was just trying to make a point that the presence of 303 squelch in another track doesn't automatically make it acid house or acid anything. if acid house is like an alien invasion, the squelch is like the voice of the leader, the mind control aspect. but the 808 is there to keep you in line and stuff your body parts into little metal cages. (sorry if parts of this are gibberish, its scanned from kodwo eshun's book 'more brilliant than the sun')

Thanks, I've learnt something today. Would you call this acid house? Sounds like you would.

Wasn't there a thread about the exact same tune a while back?

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated Thanks, I've learnt something today. Would you call this acid house? Sounds like you would.

yes, absolutely

i predict the yearly yeke yeke thread is going to happen soon too because summer means richie will play it again...and every noob is going to go crazy thinking he produced it.

as someone said acid is alot more than just a random 303 and 808 + 909 drums. infact im willing to say that its impossible to make acid with these instruments only. you might be able to make minimal techno with these instruments only but not acid house as it usually contains lots of samples, loops, vox and other stuff from 70s 80s and maybe even some synths. and the kickdrum and snare are more likely to be from Linn Electronics LM-1 drum machine, atleast in the early ages imo. such an underrated drummachine lol.

who can forget these:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=75842
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=75843
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=75845

Totally disagree with all this. The 303 is acid. Acid is a sound, not a genre, and acid house is just house that predominantly features a 303.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Totally disagree with all this. The 303 is acid. Acid is a sound, not a genre, and acid house is just house that predominantly features a 303.

so what about the "this is acid" mix I posted?

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Totally disagree with all this. The 303 is acid. Acid is a sound, not a genre, and acid house is just house that predominantly features a 303.

where are you getting this?

acid is the 'new dance craze'.

it's not an instrument or a sound. the sound is a common component of it.


acid is a culture/movement.

Film Trailer - They Call it Acid from Gordon Mason on Vimeo.

House Music Pioneers - They Call it Acid from Gordon Mason on Vimeo.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec how many times are we going to have to hear about this? and acid house was a club movement before it was a genre. and it certainly wasn't a movement in bollywood. acid house wasn't one record, it was a constellation of records and sounds that developed in a local scene and eventually people [cough, the british] were like hey there's something going on here.

Thank-you. Someone who actually knows steps in to explain it. Acid House does not mean just one sound, and yes it is COMPLETELY a movement. It was the movement that started the rave scene. Once exported from America, in England Acid House referred to not just House records with that 303 sound in it, but any trippy House that in fact started the rave scene. Not only was the Acid House movement the beginning of raves, it was the beginning of Trance. The word 'Trance Out' came from the Acid House movement, along with it the many House records that contained the early Trance sounds.

I also agree on the reference to Phuture...there were a variety of records on Trax before those releases that contained the 303 sounds, such as VIRGO-My Space or even Z-Factor tracks on Mitchbal in 1984.

I'm not sure why, but every 5 years or so, someone always pops up trying to convince the public that House wasn't an American invention...now it's a Yoga instructor..sure.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec acid is a culture/movement.

No it isn't. The acid house explosion was, acid itself is just a sound. The term was leaped on by hysterical media outlets because of its open drug reference, and became the catch-word for a scene that hadn't previously existed in any notable form. Rave is/was the culture and the movement, acid house just the first term to really be affixed to it.

Also, you should know that there were loads of rip-offs, bootlegs and bandwaggoners around in the Chicago house scene at that time. Just because someone put "Acid" in the title of their record to shift more copies when it didn't have a 303 doesn't invalidate how the term has been primarily used by everyone for the past 25 years. And I've heard countless producers, DJs, clubbers and journalists equate acid to the 303.

I really don't see the point in making it any more complicated or esoteric.

Does anyone have any info on the origin of the word acid for describing the TB-303 sound? I was thinking about it a few weeks back and started thinking of the TB-303, which is a bass line machine, which some people write as base line (even native English speakers). And as the "acid" sounds aren't very bassy at all, but quite the opposite (high pitched squeals) I thought maybe someone had come up with the idea of calling the sound acid instead of bass (base) from acid/base being "the opposite of each other" in chemistry. Is this possible in any way or does it have a completely different origin?

Nobody really knows. There are a variety of theories and claimants, but whatever the reason, the crowd at the Music Box ended up dubbing Phuture's (then untitled) demo "Ron Hardy's acid track". The term was minted when they named the track itself Acid Tracks.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Nobody really knows. There are a variety of theories and claimants, but whatever the reason, the crowd at the Music Box ended up dubbing Phuture's (then untitled) demo "Ron Hardy's acid track". The term was minted when they named the track itself Acid Tracks.

Not necessarily. If you believe a direct quotation from DJ Pierre, it's a related to the drug. The punch at the Music Bowl was spiked with LSD, and pretty much everyone in the club was high on it when they were listening to the track, including the three guys from Phuture. And the song wasn't untitled prior to then - it had a name I can tell you when I get home tonight.

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated Not necessarily. If you believe a direct quotation from DJ Pierre, it's a related to the drug. The punch at the Music Bowl was spiked with LSD, and pretty much everyone in the club was high on it when they were listening to the track, including the three guys from Phuture. And the song wasn't untitled prior to then - it had a name I can tell you when I get home tonight.

I'll save you the effort: In Your Mind. And even Pierre doesn't really know for sure where the name came from:

quote:

Spanky and DJ Pierre went to the Music Box for the next fortnight and then took a three-week break. During that time a friend approached them and said that Hardy was spinning an amazing track, which the dance floor was referring to as "Ron Hardy's Acid Tracks". The friend played a tape of the record to Spanky and DJ Pierre. It was "In Your Mind". "There was a rumour that they put acid in the water at the Music Box," says DJ Pierre. "I don't know if it was true or not, but we now had a new name for our record."

Look if acid house is a movement, the TB-303 sound is its logo. (even more than the smiley face)

It's both the movement AND the sound, but it's not JUST the sound.



That Tim Lawrence Article on House music is the liner notes to this record on Soul Jazz:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Acid-Can-You-Jack-Vol-1/release/466015

And guess what? There are tracks on this album without TB-303 squelch. Yes, many of them include TB-303 squelch, but since that is not acid entirely, there are squelchless tracks.

acid.




acid.



aciiied!

off-topic: thread title reminds me of this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnmLuOEDbkQ

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I'll save you the effort: In Your Mind. And even Pierre doesn't really know for sure where the name came from:

In that quote, there are two fragments very close together, "Ron Hardy's Acid Tracks" and "There was a rumour that they put acid in the water at the Music Box."

Why would he even bother to mention the latter if it didn't relate to the song? Also, I have a different quote from Pierre which more clearly supports this notion. Don't get me wrong, I think you're probably correct that the term's origins will never be known. However, Pierre seems pretty clear on it - but I don't really believe that, as musicians often lie about their influences, their intentions et cetera.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec Look if acid house is a movement, the TB-303 sound is its logo. (even more than the smiley face) It's both the movement AND the sound, but it's not JUST the sound. That Tim Lawrence Article on House music is the liner notes to this record on Soul Jazz: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Acid.../release/466015 And guess what? There are tracks on this album without TB-303. Yes, many of them include TB-303, but since that is not acid entirely, there are tb-303less tracks

Subtitled "Chicago Acid & Experimental House 1985-95"

AND experimental house.

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated Subtitled "Chicago Acid & Experimental House 1985-95" AND experimental house.

it's clearly one phrase.

it's not 'chicago acid' and 'experimental house'

it's 'chicago acid and experimental house'

like chicago deep and jacking house or deep and funky house.

there is no such genre as 'experimental house', or 'chicago acid'. if you nitpick the subtitle like this, you have to define which of the tracks are not 'experimental house'. so tell me, what are they?


if anything the tracks WITH the squelch are the 'experimental' ones. so does that mean they arent acid?

Acid Over
by Simon Reynolds, with Paul Oldfield, 1990

quote:

House music is so impersonal, minimal and repetitive it seems to take effect beneath the level of conscious hearing, sweeping you up by a process of `molecular agitation'. Acid house is the purest, barest distillation of house, the outer limit of its logic of inhuman functionalism. With acid, black music has never been so alien-ated from traditional notions of `blackness' (fluid, grooving, warm), never been so close to to the frigid, mechanical, supremely `white' perversion of funk perpetrated by early eighties pioneers like D.A.F. and Cabaret Voltaire. Acid house is not so much a new thing, as a drastic, terminal culmination of two tendencies in house: the trance-inducing effects of repetion and dub production; a fascination for the pristine hygiene and metronome rhythms of German electronic dance. Pure acid tracks like Tyree's `Acid Over' recall the brute, inelastic minimalism of D.A.F. - it consists of nothing but a bass synth sequencer pulse reiterated with slight warps and eerie inflections. Other tracs parallesl the obscure innovations of bands like Suicide, the Normal (`Warm Leatherette'), Liasons Dangereuses (very big in Chicago), Die Krupps (proto-metalbashers and an early incarnation of Propaganda). Ex-Sample's `And So it Goes' combines cut-ups (`Heroin Kills'), unidentifiable bursts of distorted, sampled sound, and human cries torn from their context (agonies of ecstasy or distress), in a manner not unlike Front 242. Reese's [...]`Just Want Another Chance' sets a guttural, Cabaret Voltaire monologue of desire over the spookiest of Residents synth-drones, an ectoplasmic bassline four times too slow for the drum track. `Strings Of Life' by Rhythim-Is-Rhythim (a.k.a. Derrick May, a prime mover on the acid scene) takes the sultry swing of Latin disco and clips into a spasmodic tic that's deeply unsettling; his `Move It' is a perimeter of trebly rhythm programes that restlessly orbit the black hole where the song should be, and strangely recalls one of those lost, desolate Joy Division B-sides. Weirdest of all is `Acid Trax' by Phuture, the record that started the whole fad off. The `Cocaine Mix' starts with a treated voice midway between a dalek and the Voice of Judgement that announces, `This is Cocaine Speaking'; spectral eddies of a disembodied human wail (reminiscent of nothing so much as PiL's `No Birds Do Sing') simulate the soul languishing in cold turkey; then we're launched on a terror-ride that again reminds me of PIL's `Careering' or `Death Disco'. `I can make you like for me/I can make you die for me/In the end/I'll be your only friend.' If disco was always ment to be about escapism, acid is about no-escapism. In this, acid house takes after the white avant-funk of the late seventies/early eighties, its concept of disco as trance, a form of sinister control or possession. The flash and dazzle of disco classics like Chaka Khan's `I'm Every Woman', Michael Jackson's `Off the Wall' album, or anything by Earth Wind and Fire, is replaced by a clinical, ultra-focused, above all inhibited sound. Expansive and expressive gestures are replaced by a precise and rigorous set of movements, _demands_ on the body; flamboyance and improvisation by a discipline of pleasure. Perhaps there's a kind of `liberation' in submitting to the mechanics of instinct, soldering the circuitry of desire to the circuitry of the sequencer programmes.

That bit you bolded doesn't support the fact that acid house can exist without a gurgling 303.

Also, that same article calls Strings of Life acid house.

I'm actually not quite sure what to believe here. I think your case has merit but you're not supporting it very well.

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated In that quote, there are two fragments very close together, "Ron Hardy's Acid Tracks" and "There was a rumour that they put acid in the water at the Music Box." Why would he even bother to mention the latter if it didn't relate to the song?

I think that passage makes it very clear that the "acid tracks" moniker was developed by the kids at the club while Phuture weren't there, and while they heard rumours about it they weren't there themselves, so even they will never know for sure. I can't remember half the shit I talk when I'm in a club, so the odds are nobody will ever say for certain where it came from.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec That Tim Lawrence Article on House music is the liner notes to this record on Soul Jazz: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Acid.../release/466015 And guess what? There are tracks on this album without TB-303 squelch. Yes, many of them include TB-303 squelch, but since that is not acid entirely, there are squelchless tracks.

I know. I own that compilation. And you're clutching at straws.

All Simon Reynolds is referring to is the way house music sounds when you replace most of the sounds with acid. Everything he's describing is actually the TB-303. The 303 is inherently weird, abstract, inhuman, and alien. It encapsulates the exact essence of sonic hyperreality that defines futurist electronic music - a simulation of a "real" instrument so synthetic and unrecognisable it absconds from any obligations towards reality. That's why it's been such an enduring staple of electronic music.

And I know what you're going to say - these properties aren't exclusive to the 303. However, if we're going to assume "acid" is some synonym for cold, impersonal, futurist hyperreality then you're going to relabel several hundred thousand tracks as acid. They're not. Acid = 303.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I know. I own that compilation. And you're clutching at straws. All Simon Reynolds is referring to is the way house music sounds when you replace most of the sounds with acid. Everything he's describing is actually the TB-303. The 303 is inherently weird, abstract, inhuman, and alien. It encapsulates the exact essence of sonic hyperreality that defines futurist electronic music - a simulation of a "real" instrument so synthetic and unrecognisable it absconds from any obligations towards reality. That's why it's been such an enduring staple of electronic music. And I know what you're going to say - these properties aren't exclusive to the 303. However, if we're going to assume "acid" is some synonym for cold, impersonal, futurist hyperreality then you're going to relabel several hundred thousand tracks as acid. They're not. Acid = 303.

You've yet to offer proof for any of your claims in any way.

Funny how simon reynolds doesn't even mention the TB-303 by name. He writes of it abstractly, equal to his description of the other mechanical techniques of acid house.

I know it's blowing your mind, but every time I hear someone described 303 squelch as 'acid', i have to cringe at their pedestrian ignorance. It's like when someone hears any 4/4 beat and call it 'techno'.

And it's not about relabeling tracks. Since when does music need to be dogmatically compartmentalized like this? What is the purpose of relabeling music in this way? In many cases early house and techno are not easily discernable or cannot be discerned as unique styles.


BTW - Strings of life would most definitely be called acid house all around the world if it had been produced in chicago. It's a political distinction, Detroit guys wanting to cling to their baby and hold their own against chicago.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec BTW - Strings of life would most definitely be called acid house all around the world if it had been produced in chicago. It's a political distinction, Detroit guys wanting to cling to their baby and hold their own against chicago.

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec it's a huge part of it, but it's also the 808 and he rhythm of course, the minimalism, the militant cadence, the use of vocals, the alien sense of authority, the subjugation to the rhythm and the sound. i was just trying to make a point that the presence of 303 squelch in another track doesn't automatically make it acid house or acid anything. if acid house is like an alien invasion, the squelch is like the voice of the leader, the mind control aspect. but the 808 is there to keep you in line and stuff your body parts into little metal cages.

Strings of Life:

- 808? I think it uses this, but then most tracks at the time did.
- Rhythm? Strings of Life has no percussion or bassline.
- Minimalism? Perhaps for its time, at a stretch.
- Militant cadence? Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.
- Vocals? None.
- Alien sense of authority? Not at all. Again, the opposite. It's full of soul.

If you're going to make a believable argument, you'll have to be a lot more consistent. Which characteristics do you think qualify Strings of Life as acid house, even though I just debunked everything you said previously?

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