Acid house
- Alternate meaning: The Acid House a 1994 novel by Irvine Welsh, later made into a film.
Acid house is a variant of
house music characterized by the use of simple tone generators with tempo-controlled resonant filters. It began when musicians discovered that they could create interesting sounds with the
Roland TB-303 analogue bass synthesizer by tweaking the resonance and frequency cut-off dials as they played. The term "acid" was used in Chicago at the time as a term for the squelchy "acid" sounds of such bass synthesizers such as the TB-303. When
Genesis P-Orridge visited Chicago in the late 1980s, he checked out acid house music, thinking at first that "acid" referred to
LSD. He brought the sounds back to
England and began developing with his band
Psychic TV a more psychedelic sounding acid house music, including samples from
1960s exploitation films, from
Timothy Leary, etc. Acid house music became a central part of the early
rave scene in the
U.K, and the yellow
smiley became its emblem.
Notable acid house artists
- Phuture - Chicago-based group of acid house pioneers, formed in 1985, and best known for their classic 1987 single "Acid Tracks", which defined the genre and was its first "track".
- 808 State - British outfit from Manchester, formed in 1989. Their first album, Newbuild, was acid house, and occasional acid house influences appeared in later tracks.
See also: Madchester, acid house party
Sources
- Shapiro, Peter (2000) Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound, ISBN 189102406X.
External links