The best records ever to wreck a genre part 3: Phuture’s Acid Tracks
Phuture’s Acid Tracks has the dubious honour of being the only song that both invented and killed a musical genre in one fell swoop. The genre in this case is acid house, in the sense of house music made using the acidic squeak of the Roland TB-303, rather than the more open definition that encompasses all music heard in British raves in 1988 and 1989. And by “kill”, I don’t mean that no interesting acid house records came after Acid Tracks; rather that the genre’s doom was sown in its own creation.
Acid Tracks is one of those wonderful songs that came about, if not quite by accident, then by the time-honoured principle of messing around with a piece of gear in ways it wasn’t intended. The fateful gear was the TB-303, a synthesiser launched by Roland in 1981 to simulate the bass guitar, at which it proved an outright failure, being pulled off the market in 1984.
The specifics of the Acid Tracks story vary according to who tells it. Basically, though, the three members of Phuture - Earl “Spanky” Smith Jr., DJ Pierre and Herbert Jackson - concur that Spanky bought a second-hand 303 in 1985, after Pierre heard his friend Jasper G use one to create a bass line. Spanky then invited Pierre and Jackson over to try to work out how to use his awkward piece of new kit.
DJ Pierre takes up the tale, in an interview with the Red Bull Music Academy. “I came over to his house and he already had a beat plan but we didn’t know how to programme it [the 303]. We had it synched up and it was playing some stuff, and I started just tweaking knobs and turning stuff and Spanky was like, ‘Woah woah woah. Keep doing that, keep doing that.’ So, I kept twisting knobs, and the next thing you know, we were there for like an hour or two, just twisting knobs and programming things.”
Out of such simple knob-twisting joys came Acid Tracks - known originally as “In Your Mind” - a 15-minute, 128 BPM beast that the trio gave to Ron Hardy. The Chicago DJ legend played it four times that same night and then kept on playing it, the song becoming known locally as “Ron Hardy’s Acid Track” for its caustic grooves.
Phuture eventually reached out to Marshall Jefferson, the house music producer who was then working as an A&R at local label Trax, who suggested they slow the song down to 120 BPM and also helped to mix it for release. Trax eventually released the song, now 12 minutes of brooding electronic noise, in 1987, whereupon it blew up.
Today, the vitriolic groove of the 303 has become so widespread that it has gone beyond cliché, so much so, in fact, that I very rarely listen to Acid Tracks these days. But hearing the song in the mid 1980s must have been mind-blowing.
Because the 303, in full acidic flight, doesn’t really sound like anything else. It’s psychedelic, sure, but kind of nasty and sharp, like an invitation to a bad trip. The 303 is melodic, just about, but doesn’t sound musical in a human way, more the soundtrack to a bad-ass jam in a dive bar on the outer rings of Saturn. What’s more, the 303 appears to create almost infinite variety, each twist of the knob or touch of a button setting off a slight but very satisfying change in tone.
For Phuture, wandering upon the properties of an ill-mannered 303 must have been like rock and roll artists discovering the delights of the fuzzed-up electric guitar in the 1950s, a sound so satisfyingly, perfectly, raucous that you don’t really need to do much with it to make it sound fantastic. It’s little surprise, then, that that is basically all Phuture did on their celebrated track. Over 12 minutes, they tweak, twerk and manipulate a 303 line over an echoing drum machine groove until it begs for mercy, spitting out an eternal dance music classic in its sway.
If you heard Acid Tracks for the first time today, with no context, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. But this is a mark of the song’s success. Acid Tracks created a whole new world around itself, forging a new normal that others felt compelled to follow. In this, Acid Tracks feels a bit like the Sex Pistols’ debut album, another record that time and success have overwhelmingly tamed.
Acid Tracks was massive in Chicago, inspiring producers like Armando to pick up the 303 for his brilliant Land of Confusion. (It’s worth mentioning that Sleezy D’s 303-based I’ve Lost Control was released in 1986, before Acid Tracks, but was almost certainly recorded after Phuture’s famous track. Meanwhile, Mumbai musician Charanjit Singh released his own album of 303 grooves Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat back in 1982, although it had little to no audience outside of India for the next two decades.)
It was in the UK where Acid Tracks arguably had the greatest impact, its mind-blowing, abstract grooves fitting in perfectly with the nascent house scene. Countless Acid Tracks imitators flooded the UK’s raves, with some 303 tracks - such as The KLF’s What Time Is Love and A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray - even making the charts. By the end of the decade the 303 sound felt largely played out.
That certainly didn’t stop people, though. Over the following four decades hundreds of thousands of tracks have been made using the distressed sound of the 303. And while many of them have been excellent - Plastikman’s spectral Sheet One, Hardfloor’s maximalist to the point of bursting Acperience 1, Josh Wink’s party-starting Higher State Of Consciousness and Dilinja’s filthy junglist tear out Acid Track, to name but four - they have been far outweighed by weak Acid Tracks copies, as producers over the decades discover the joys of the 303 sound.
The problem is that 303-driven acid is simply too easy to make. That might sound snobby - it’s great that people can make music - but it’s true. Get your hands on a 303 - or, more likely, one of its cheap clones - and, with minimal experience, you can create a tweaking 303 line that sounds authentically acid. It’s incredibly fun and massively satisfying; and I know this because I’ve done it, to little artistic return.
I know, for example, of one famous electronic music producer who makes simple 303 tracks with his friends as a way of relaxing, endlessly tweaking the machine’s simple knobs to ease away the tensions of a long day. But - and this is the key - he never releases them. He may use a 303 in his more celebrated work but those are complex tracks, where the 303 is one element among hugely adventurous productions. His simple acid tracks are just for fun.
I wish more people would follow his example. I receive about a promo a week in which in its fairly obvious that 1) the producer has just discovered how to use the 303 (or, more likely, some simulator of) 2) they had a blast using it and 3) if you’ve heard any kind of acid house before, then the track feels played out before it even starts, adding nothing to what you’ve already experienced.
This is why I say Acid Tracks sowed the seeds of its doom in its own creation. The song, essentially, was Acid House, its 303 sound too simple, - perhaps too perfect - that there was little impetus to advance creatively.
Some producers pushed thing on anyway. I will forever be grateful to Phuture for the subtle use of a 303 in Theme from S-Express, say, or the siren blast 303 in Daft Punk’s Da Funk. But after enduring what feels like hundreds of thousands of cheap Acid Tracks clones over the years, I really wish people would give it a break.
How about a new rule for 2024? Tweaking the 303 should be like juggling or masturbation: something to be enjoyed uniquely in private and never, ever taken into the public sphere.
Sónar 2024
The full Sónar 2024 line up came out last week, prompting a frenzy of summer planning. The stand out live acts, for me, are Air, playing Moon Safari, true nostalgic heaven for anyone who lived in Paris in the late 90s; CASISDEAD, whose debut album Famous Last Words is a brilliant example of musical world building and who almost never plays live; Jessie Ware, who I missed at Primavera 2022, where she was apparently among the most life-affirming things people had ever seen; and Laurel Halo, who, rather brilliantly, could do almost anything. As for DJs: Danny Tenaglia, a legend indeed; ditto Kerri Chandler and DJ Flight & MC Chickaboo; and Olof Dreijer should be fascinating. Plus I am intrigued by their idea of "hyper local" parties from the likes of Argentine producer Tayhana, Venezuela's Verushka and Barcelona’s own BLEX. See you there. I hope.
Some listening
Lee “Scratch” Perry & Greentea Peng - 100lbs of Summer (Daddy G and V Robot Club remix)
Lee “Scratch” Perry’s supposedly final album, King Perry, was a bit of a wash out, with the dub reggae struggling under heavy production choices. His collaboration with Greentea Peng on 100lbs of Summer was a highlight, though, and this new remix from Massive Attack’s Daddy G and West Country production team Robot Club works fantastically, by ratcheting up the robotic nastiness until it sound, well, like a Mezzanine-era Massive Attack tune, all brooding cloak and dagger and future reggae menace.
Max Richter And Sparks - Don't Go Away
There is a hard and fast rule in music that anything featuring Sparks is better than anything without Sparks. And so it proves on this new Max Richter tune, taken from the soundtrack from the new Netflix film Spaceman, with Russell Mael’s vocal providing the sharp emotional pull to Richter’s tangled space blues production. I haven’t seen Spaceman but I imagine that, in the right scene, this song would be utterly devastating.
Twin Coast, a a duo from what they call “the Chicago youth DIY scene”, make gloriously sludgy rock, like You Made Me Realise-era My Bloody Valentine surfing with dinosaurs.Forget To Know is gloriously, chaotically thrilling, demanding to be spun again and again. I sometimes forget guitars can sound this wild.
Parris - why can’t rabbits wear cowboys boots
Parris’s 2021 album Soaked In Indigo Moonlight was a wonky pop delight, especially the hooks-beyond-hooks, light-beyond-light single Skater’s World, with Eden Samara. The Passionfruit EP sees Parris dive into sound-system influenced UK house. But, on the evidence of why can’t rabbit wear cowboy boots, he has lost none of his radiant lightness of touch, a lurking bass line and sturdy house beat combining with a lilting xylophone (I think) and a vocal that is cut up and dripped over the track like a chef with a pomegranate.
Things I’ve Done
Laetitia Sadier - Rooting For Love
As I argue in my Pitchfork review, Laetitia Sadier is “an ideologically engaged, masterful pop dramatist who understands the power of understatement and artful contrast”. Her new album contains some jaw-dropping moments, as well as enough Stereolab feels to please the purists.
Line Noise - With Ben Frost 2024
I spent an hour speaking to Ben Frost earlier this month and it’s no exaggeration to say that I could have spoken to him all day. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard many musicians take such obvious effort to clearly enunciate what is going on with their music and process of creation. TL:DR I really recommend you have a listen.
The playlists
You know the drill. Or maybe you don’t? Anyway, I have two playlists for new music. One covers new music from 2024; the other, new music from the last three years. (My wife things the latter is far too large.) You’ll find all the music in my “some listening” section, as well as other treats.