Acid House

For the 1994 novel by Irvine Welsh, see The Acid House.

Acid house

Stylistic origins    House, Chicago house

Cultural origins    Mid-1980s, United States (Chicago)

Derivative forms    New Beat, acid techno, acid trance, Goa trance, psychedelic trance, Breakbeat hardcore, trance, electro house, techno

Acid house is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The defining feature of a "squelching" bass sound was produced using the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer. Acid house spread to the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where it was played by DJs in the acid house and later rave scenes. By the late 1980s, acid house had moved into the British mainstream, where it had some influence on pop and dance styles.

Acid house brought house music to a worldwide audience. The influence of acid house can be heard on later styles of dance music including trance, Goa trance, psychedelic trance, breakbeat, big beat, techno and trip hop.

The Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer provided the electronic squelch sounds often heard in acid house tracks.

Acid house's minimalist production aesthetic combined house music's ubiquitous programmed 4/4 beat with the electronic ‘squelch' sound produced by the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer by constantly modulating its frequency and resonance controls to create 'movement' in otherwise simple bass patterns. Other elements, such as synthetic strings and stabs, were usually minimal. Sometimes tracks were instrumentals such as Phuture's "Acid Tracks", or contained full vocal performances such as Pierre's Pfantasy Club's "Dream Girl", while others were essentially instrumentals complemented by the odd spoken word 'drop-in', such as Phuture's "Slam".

Beat Dis by Bomb the Bass (1988) features the "bloodied" version of the popular smiley icon.

English acid house and rave fans used the yellow smiley face symbol simply as an emblem of the music and scene, a "vapid, anonymous smile" that portrayed the "simplest and gentlest of the Eighties’ youth manifestations" that was non-aggressive, "except in terms of decibels" at the high-volume DJ parties.

Some acid house fans used a smiley face with a blood streak on it, which Watchmen comics creator Alan Moore asserts was based on Dave Gibbons' artwork for the series.

Etymology

Two simple TB-303 patterns

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Two simple patterns on the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer. The second pattern has had the filter EG attack level altered.

Overdriven TB-303 patterns varying resonance

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Two simple overdriven patterns on the TB-303. The second pattern has varying resonance to give a harsh screeching sound. Both patterns have gradual cutoff frequency.

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There are conflicting accounts about how the term acid came to be used to describe this style of house music.

One account ties it to Phuture's "Acid Tracks" Before the song was given a title for commercial release, it was played by DJ Ron Hardy at a nightclub[6] where psychedelic drugs were reportedly used. The club's patrons called the song "Ron Hardy's Acid Track" (or "Ron Hardy's Acid Trax"). The song was released with the title "Acid Trax" on Larry Sherman's label Trax Records in 1987. Sources differ on whether it was Phuture or Sherman who chose the title; Phuture's DJ Pierre says the group did because the song was already known by that title, but Sherman says he chose the title because the song reminded him of acid rock. Regardless, after the release of Phuture's song, the term acid house came into common parlance.

Some accounts say the reference to "acid" may be a celebratory reference to psychedelic drugs in general, such as LSD, as well as the popular club drug Ecstasy (MDMA). According to Rietveld, it was the house sensibility of Chicago, in a club like Hardy's The Music Box, that afforded it its initial meaning. In her view "acid connotes the fragmentation of experience and dislocation of meaning due to the unstructuring effects on thought patterns which the psycho-active drug LSD or 'Acid' can bring about. In the context of the creation of "Acid Tracks" it indicated a concept rather than the use of psycho-active drugs in itself.

Some accounts disavow psychedelic connotations. One theory, holding that acid was a derogatory reference towards the use of samples in acid house music, was repeated in the press and in the British House of Commons. In this theory, the term acid came from the slang term "acid burning", which the Oxford Dictionary of New Words calls "a term for stealing." Since acid house makes substantial use of sampling, this can be deemed "stealing from other tracks." In 1991, UK Libertarian advocate Paul Staines claimed that he had coined this theory to discourage the government from adopting anti-rave party legislation.

Several accounts[which?] claim that Genesis P-Orridge coined the term on the 1988 Psychic TV release “Tune In (Turn on the Acid House).”[citation needed] By other accounts, while shopping in Chicago in 1986, P-Orridge came across a bin of records marked acid, indicating a corrosive liquid, and mistook it for a reference to LSD  P-Orridge allegedly bought the entire contents of the bin and went on to play them when DJing in Ibiza; and in so doing inadvertently introduced the Chicago sound to the MDMA-using, Osho-following "orange people" in attendance at the time.  P-Orridge's role is disputed by music journalist Simon Reynolds, who calls it a "self-serving myth", and by Psychic TV band member Fred Giannelli, who suggested that "Gen has made this claim so many times in interviews that he actually believes his own bullshit."