Virtual Kikumoto (Acid Compilation) (Page 2 of 2)

this compilation is so solid it could be made of granite.. but acid can dissolve granite, and this music is so caustic it must be made of stuff stronger than granite itself.

aciiiieeeeeeeeeddddd!!

Listening with a huge grin

I have a thing for Linde's.

I think there are a couple of tracks that avoid replicating the 303 sound for various reasons (creative choice, limitations of hardware etc) but it was really up to the artists to define what 'acid' meant to them (to give one example - A Guy Called Gerald himself finds it "really interesting how the TB303 has come to be fetishised as an acid machine" since for him "acid was all about the tweaking of synths and riding a groove").

The "famicom track" (by Kplecraft) is by one of the few chipmusic acts who have ever come close to appropriating the sound of goa-style trance (as far as I'm aware), which is an area of acid house/303-related music which deserved to be covered. They work with the 2A03, which isn't the easiest soundchip to manipulate (considering there is essentially no way of recreating a high-resonance acid squelch with pulse/triangle waves) and even then came up with some wobbly modulation noises which build tension like the best TB-303 lines.

Besides all that, it is a fucking excellent track that I would play at a bonkers rave without a second thought.

That is a really great track! I agree that it is perhaps a clearer appropriation of classic acid house.

Without wanting to be a pedantic nuisance (it's late, I enjoy writing essays about this kind of shit) I think the acid effect comes through more in its drum programming (which certainly is similar to that in early Roland-powered acid house) than its sounds, because the bassline can't really be said to have 'that 303 sound'. In the same way, I'd also say the Kplecraft track features tropes that go hand in hand with an acid style, namely goa trance (which often piles on the acid sounds) rather than classic acid house (which - if the TB-303 sound is indeed the sole true identifier of 'acid' - cannot be the only valid style of acid music).

I think such tracks highlight a point I was interested in exploring with the compilation - whether soundchips that might not be able to recreate the TB-303's sound (the use of which, I do agree, is probably the most solid definition of 'acid' dance music) can still generate music that, by utilising other familiar techniques, sounds like 'acid' to our ears.

This is an interesting point within dance music more generally - often the only thing that seperates classic house tracks from being categorised as 'acid house' or not is the use of the TB-303 (or similar sound). To throw out a random example, Mr. Fingers' Washing Machine features 4/4 drum machine rhythms, a slowly evolving structure and a repetitive tonally ambigious synthesizer riff. So does the sublime Love is Happiness by Jaquarius. One is acid house and one is not. Virtually every single other aspect would place them in the same genre.

But yeah none of you will have read this far. Let's just lose it to some classic acid house tracks.