Acid House

Characteristics of this subgenre are minimalistic and mostly instrumental tracks with a pumping beat and especially a heavily modulated Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, bubbling and chirping by playing with its filter resonance and cutoff frequency. Contrary to Chicago house, acid house hardly shows disco influences anymore. Texture is more important than melody.

Before acid house, there was hi-NRG – electronic disco music driven by a pulsating bassline, starting it all off with the iconic one by producer Giorgio Moroder in Donna Summer's »I Feel Love« from 1977. The first album relying heavily on the TB-303 bass synthesizer and the TR-808 drum machine was 1982's »Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat« by Indian musician Charanjit Singh.

But presumed to be the inventors of acid house are Chicago duo Phuture. Around 1985, members DJ Pierre and Earl »Spanky« Smith produced a track called »In Your Mind« which was played by dj Ron Hardy at Chicago’s club »Music Box«. People started to talk about Ron Hardy's »acid tracks«, so »In Your Mind« became known as »Acid Trax« (and finally released with this name in 1986). Whether the name arose from associations with acid rock/psychedelic or acid/LSD cannot really be confirmed. However, Phuture were not happy with acid house being associated with drugs.

The European center of acid house was »The Shoom « in London, opened in 1987, with its party mascot smiley »J« becoming a symbol for the whole scene. Soon, it became a short-lived yet the biggest British youth subculture since punk, culminating in commercial mainstream successes like »Theme From S-Express« by S’Express and »The Only Way Is Up« by Yazz.