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Acid: Can You Jack
Soul Jazz/UK/CD
Larry Heard
Two new comps
further define acid
house’s legacy.
With the ashes of the “disco sucks” record burning in Chi-
Town’s Comisky Park, lovers of dance music went underground,
where their only respite from the racist reaction was
all-night house parties. They were down but not out; as Tim
Lawrence (writer of disco history book Love Saves The Day)
explains in the liner notes for Acid: Can You Jack, house
music was “disco’s revenge.” Like the Knights Templar or the
Freemasons, the banned disco culture sublimated the scene
under the guise of building a house. Brick by brick the genre
introduced the Roland 808 drum machine, replaced lush
string arrangements with staccato synths, and even snuck in
some maligned divas.
But if house music was about renovation, then acid house
was about tearing the shit down and starting all over. The
new wave of Chicago producers made music from their
bedroom–no room for musicians, only plastic boxes like the
Roland TB303. Tweaked knobs made blips and squelches
that would repulse the likes of Thelma Houston. The sounds
made were more familiar to computer printers and automated
production lines; fitting, considering the industrial city that
Chicago was and its proximity to Motor City, where they
already Metropolized (updated) Motown and the motorbooty.
In fact, acid house is almost as much Detroit techno as it
is Chicago house. Players like Phuture (DJ Pierre and Spanky)
and Marshall Jefferson (a.k.a. Sleazy D) weren’t interested
in updating the “The Sound of Philadelphia” as much as they
wanted to make a brand new sound–witness tracks like
Atom presents ACID
(Evolution 1988-2003)
Logistic/FRA/CD
“Phuture Jacks” and “I’ve Lost Control,” just a few of the
classics included in the two-disc set.
Acid: Can You Jack resembles a playlist from the Music
Box, Ron Hardy’s legendary club. It features classic tunes that
mostly appeared on the Trax or DJ International labels, with
the addition of modern concoctions like, “Acid Bass” by Roy
Davis JNR. or “Explorer” by Green Velvet/Cajmere.
A few years later, avant garde artists like Genesis P-
Orridge–thinking “acid” referred to LSD–combined the jack
with the Union Jack and some ‘60s psychedelia to put the
movement in a whole new context. Psychic TV’s Jack The Tab
(1988) was put out by Temple, “the original home of UK acid
house,” and their 12-inch, “Tune In (Turn On Thee Acid House)”
introduced a more cosmic and industrial side of acid. That’s
where Atom Heart’s Acid: Evolution 1988-2003 comes in.
If the Soul Jazz collection centers on the American
output from 1985 on, then Logistic Records capitalizes on
Pink Floyd-inspired European movements. Under a variety of
aliases, Uwe Schmidt (Atom Heart) has taken European acid
from graffiti to fractals to a sound that borders on trance.
In fact, Atom’s “Little Grey Box” is a sturdy bridge between
Chicago house and Frankfurt’s Harthouse sound, and Fume’s
“Jack2000” is a display of where acid was going in the new
millennium. Atom’s collection follows what happened when
acid left its home, in a culture that feared ambisexuality, for
a continent that almost preferred it. Daniel Siwek
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