This holiday, bake some bleeps and bloops with your family
December 17, 2016 10:11 PM   Subscribe

Acid Techno/House producer TB Arthur (@jeparleacid) made a minor splash in 2014/15/16 due to a mysterious/contrived backstory, periodic single releases, a mix for Boiler Room Upfront, and a live session at Smart Bar.
For the holidays, Mr. (Ms.?) Arthur has a new release for all the producers out there: “Psychedelic Cookbook” is a 100% Royalty Free Sound Library created in TB Arthur's analog studio: over 900 MB of basslines, beats, percussion, synths, vocals, tops & more. All the inspiration you need for building your own original tracks in any DAW or hardware sampler.
Need ideas? Try Bandcamp’s list of 30 tracks to celebrate the 30th anniversary of acid house or FACT’s list of the 20 best Acid House records ever made.
posted by Going To Maine (17 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
(In what can be considered a standard bit of industry incest, Joe Muggs both made the list for Bandcamp and wrote the Upfront blurb for the mix.)
posted by Going To Maine at 10:24 PM on December 17, 2016


Everyone knows that all you need to make great acid house iss a hiigghheerrrr sttaaaaatteeee offfff cooonnnsciousssssssnnnessssssssss
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:27 PM on December 17, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yeah, but a 303 isn't going to hurt....
posted by pompomtom at 1:35 AM on December 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cool! And, this seems like a great opportunity for someone to finally tell me what "acid house" is.
posted by thelonius at 5:03 AM on December 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


early Christmas prezzies! thanks, downloading.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:27 AM on December 18, 2016


thelonius: Like all types of music, it is not possible to provide a closed-form definition, but for a discussion of what is House music in general, try this. For acid house, specifically
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:02 AM on December 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cool! And, this seems like a great opportunity for someone to finally tell me what "acid house" is.

$20, same as in town.

(I did it, I finally made a mefi in-joke!!!!)
posted by lollymccatburglar at 7:06 AM on December 18, 2016 [6 favorites]



Cool! And, this seems like a great opportunity for someone to finally tell me what "acid house" is.


I believe that back in the day, Chicago mid-80s, "acid" meant freshly pressed vinyl (or perhaps freshly recorded), and "house" meant house music, a sort of underground resurgence of disco (the good kind -- pared down, beat based music that only wanted you to dance it). So the term just meant new dance grooves. The acid part had nothing to do with LSD (or any drug), but that didn't start various traveling British artists from buying various acid mixes, gobbling various drugs and getting to inventing a whole new form, rather by mistake.

Or what I-Write-Essays just linked to ...
posted by philip-random at 9:45 AM on December 18, 2016


Acid house is basically house music which features the Roland TB-303, a synthesizer/sequencer released in the early 80s with a very distinctive and funky sound. The 303 was marketed to guitarists, as a substitute for a bassist for practice sessions - but it sounds nothing like a bass guitar, and was a commercial flop. Chicago house musicians rediscovered them in secondhand shops, put them to off-label use, and created a genre of psychedelic Afro-futurist disco.

There's more to it than that, but the 303 is the linchpin. There are numerous ducoumentaries on YouTube about acid house and/or the 303; they'd probably be the best introduction if you really want to understand what it's all about.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:11 AM on December 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


thanks, escape from the potato planet and others! Very informative.

I'm a genre lumper - I classify The Cramps and The Moody Blues as "Rock" in my iTunes library, for example - and electronic music seems very much to play for the other team.
posted by thelonius at 10:32 AM on December 18, 2016


And I'm here to say everybody gets it wrong and I'm willing to go all election thread about it.

Every track in the Fact Magazine list, save a couple of the ones with real vocals (specifically "Lack of Love" and the Da Posse), is Acid music rather than Acid House. Acid music was the stripped down stuff out of Chicago and the like, Acid House was the UK (or Arthur Baker'ed) descendant that emerged in 1988. Consequently, I think it's a bit rich that Ed DMX shades "Jesus Loves The Acid" for not using a 303, when later he lists Tyree's "Video Crash," which uses an SH-101, but this wouldn't be the first time I had a difference of opinion with him.

For the record, my sense of the "acid" term is that it's a metaphor for the timbre. The Chicago house use of the sound burned like acid (see: Jacquarius) compared to what had come before.
posted by rhizome at 11:27 AM on December 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Chicago house use of the sound burned like acid (see: Jacquarius) compared to what had come before.

Was this anything to do with the Devilfish distortion modification for the TB-303?
posted by acb at 3:47 PM on December 18, 2016


Devilfish arrived on the scene in the early-mid 90s and sounds like the (personally reviled) "Higher State of Consciousness" ripping-whistle sound of Acid Techno.
posted by rhizome at 6:39 PM on December 18, 2016


the (personally reviled) "Higher State of Consciousness" ripping-whistle sound

It certainly is divisive! I love that sound.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:00 AM on December 19, 2016


Having seen him play live and being a bit blown away since I didn't know what to expect: It's very definitely Mr. Arthur, and his work is rad and I was happily surprised to see it pop up here.
posted by sparkletone at 8:19 AM on December 19, 2016


Devilfish arrived on the scene in the early-mid 90s and sounds like the (personally reviled) "Higher State of Consciousness" ripping-whistle sound of Acid Techno.

Incidentally there was a longstanding controversy over the synth used on that track. A lot of people used to say it was actually the MC-202 (which I think is basically an SH-101 with a more 303-style sequencer) or alternatively the Devilfish, but I read recently Josh Wink says it's a regular 303 with distortion after all.
posted by atoxyl at 12:13 PM on December 19, 2016


Yeah, distortion ruled the day because Devilfish was either not really available, super-expensive, and/or mysterious (as I remember it, for the longest time only Richie Hawtin was said to have one). They are different, though: Devilfish increased the range of the knobs and added a bunch of other stuff (90s site alert), so you could get filter self-oscillation, MIDI, and more, but distortion is just a pedal. They were used in similar (Devilfish example) ways, though, but ultimately it was distortion that won the genre battles because that's what people could get/afford.
posted by rhizome at 12:40 PM on December 19, 2016


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