Acid House
Acid house is an electronic music-oriented subgenre of house music, which emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house's characteristic electronic "squelch" sounds were developed by mid-1980s DJs who were experimenting with the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer. Acid House spread to the United Kingdom where it was played by DJs in the early rave scene. By the late 1980s, copycat tracks and Acid House remixes brought the style into the mainstream, where it influenced other pop and dance styles.
History
UK acid house and rave fans use the yellow smiley face symbol as the emblem of the music and scene, a "vapid, anonymous smile" which 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.
Acid house soon began influencing UK pop music, emerging in a somewhat sanitized form in songs like Bananarama's "Tripping on Your Love" (1991) and Samantha Fox's "Love House" (1989). As well, acid house influences appearing as remixes of pop songs on 12" singles by mainstream acts and in the hit song "Theme from S'Express" by electronic band S'Express in 1988.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, news media and tabloids devoted an increasing amount of coverage to the hedonistic acid house/rave scene, focusing on its association with psychedelic drugs and club drugs. The sensationalistic nature coverage may have contributed to the banning of acid house, during its heyday, from radio, television, and retail outlets in the United Kingdom. Musically, acid house eventually moved away from its reliance on the TB-303, but continued to use repeated sound sequences that were shifted and warped by electronic modulation.
Etymology
There are conflicting accounts about how the term "acid" came to be used to describe this style of house music. British performer and musician Genesis P-Orridge from the experimental music collective Psychic TV claims that he invented the term "acid house." In the Better Living Through Circuitry interview, he states that when he asked a Chicago record store clerk for the weirdest records on hand, he was pointed to the "acid house" section. P-Orridge claims that he listened to them to try to figure out what made them psychedelic, he believed that the tempo was the key element. ; however, this claim is disputed by another member of Psychic TV . The reference to "acid" may also be a celebratory reference to psychedelic drugs in general, such as Ecstasy (MDMA), a popular mid-1980s club drug.
Other accounts of the etymology of the term are not based on the LSD or psychedelic connotations. Before DJ Pierre's "Acid Trax" (by his group Phuture) was given a title for commercial release, it was played at a nightclub by DJ Ron Hardy, where it was called "Ron Hardy's Acid Track" (or "Ron Hardy's Acid Trax"). After the release of Phuture's song, and the term Acid House came into common parlance. Philippe Renaud, a journalist for La Presse in Montreal, states that the term "Acid house" was "Coined in Chicago in 1987 to describe the sound of the Roland 303 bass machine." Renaud states that acid house music "made its first significant recording appearance on Phuture's Acid Trax (DJ Pierre) in that year."
The theory 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" One of the problems with this theory is that although early house music producers did use samples, most acid house music was fully original compositions made using sequencers and synthesizers.
In 1991, UK Libertarian advocate Paul Staines claimed that he made up the non-drug oriented explanation (equating "acid burning" with stealing) to discourage the government from adopting anti-rave party legislation. Staines stated that he spread this misinformation because he believed that the British public would deem the use of drugs at rave parties to be unacceptable, and would therefore support legislation against rave parties.
Once the term acid house became more widely used, participants at acid house-themed events in the UK and Ibiza made the psychedelic drug connotations a reality by using club drugs such as ecstasy. This coincided with an increasing level of scrutiny and sensationalism in the mainstream press, although conflicting accounts about the degree of connection between acid house music and drugs continued to surface.
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/
