state of London underground

[Gus]

I agree

you have to accept that it is not 1997 any more.

Im still trying to accept its not 1993 anymore !
Anyway I know what you mean about the lifestyle. I was talking to this girl about it, she hates techno, and she was saying - youve stopped taking the drugs now stop listening to the music. I was trying to explain to her its not just about the drugs but she wasnt having any of it. I do love techno but I am not a druggie anymore and to be like that for life is not my thing, however the truth is , side from political matters, the music IS designed to illicit a certain response whilst people are on drugs, yet I still love it. What a dilema. I guess maybe once a year in a field is not going to kill me.

[rhythmtech]

i think we all (well most of us anyway) got cained a lot to acid techno.. but i think those memories of what it can do are the reason why its so special, it still does those things to me sober because my brain is programmed to react a certain way to it. maybe..

[Gus]

People always say - oh Acid techno that was the nineties man, thats over - then they go and put a jungle cd on ! or hip hop which preceded acid techno by ten years. Its just another genre that will always exist now, like trad jazz or skiffle.

[Lag]

from what i heard of acid techno around these forums is kick + quantised snare on every second kick + quantised hihats + looped bassline + 303 with filter going up and down

thats about it. 0 groove, 0 futurism, 0 punk, 0 funk. all 140-150bpm.
acid techno should be 30-200 bpm, experiments, different rythms, shuffled, delayed with mad effects and otherworldly feeling, like all techno. no limits i experimenting, heavy punk or heavy funk or heavy futurism. thats what made it big (i mean all techno), and now that its gone - ofcourse nobody will like it. u gotta have in mind that the audience, the people who u need to fill the club, doesnt want to listen to music just cause its got a big kick and a 303. they wanna hear MUSIC and the kick and the 303 can be a part of the music. i hope im making sense

just listen to the oldschool techno. mescalinum united - we have arrived, x-101 x-102, old millses, early prodigy records etc and ull know what i mean

[d3v]

from what i heard of acid techno around these forums is kick + quantised snare on every second kick + quantised hihats + looped bassline + 303 with filter going up and down

thats about it. 0 groove, 0 futurism, 0 punk, 0 funk. all 140-150bpm
acid techno should be 30-200 bpm, experiments, different rythms, shuffled, delayed with mad effects and otherworldly feeling

One of the things i always liked about acid techno was the directness and lack of pretention in the music - that (along with the political) is a big part of what makes it the punk rock of techno IMO. For me its much more focused on wrecking a dance floor than large scale experimentation and pushing the limits of musical boundaries - when i feel like listening to something that does that i go elsewhere in my collection.

I don't think this is the reason that acid tec is not as listened to as it used to be - even if something stands still it can still be fresh to someone who hasn't heard it before. When shopping online for tunes there seems to be a glut of hard house/hardstyle stuff none of which i've heard so far that offers anything that wasn't on the table years ago either - yet theres tons of it and quality acid is much, much more difficult to find.

[Gus]

What I like about acid techno is its completely unpretentious.

[Gus]

That and the unbelievably positive energy that liberated you from the misery and mundanity of everyday existance and dissolved the illusion that is the world the "system" has created for us. In the end though the druggie lifestyle just becomes a different sort of prison. Acid techno was never just about drugs for me.

[davethedrummer]

Well what exactly does go against the grain of commercial music these days since just about every concept from the underground has been absorbed?

Most forms of techno are in your face on a daily basis in adverts and trailers.

i don't agree

[nihilist]

what goes against the grain is putting on an avin't party in a field or a warehouse.


i think its important to get younger poeple into techno for it to grow again, but it's hard. they seem to have the attention span of a nat these days, they seem to go where ever its trendy tobe what every the music.

acid techno will never be absorbed into the main stream!!!

[Gus]

LSD will never be absorbed into the mainstream, so if you make music on acid and dance around in a field or some other illegal place chances are its going to annoy mainstream society. Today however acid is hard to come by and we live in a complete nanny state - the very antithesis of the rugged wilderness which is the essential habitat for acid techno to thrive. Besides I wouldnt want to take it again anyway - I dont want to go mad.
Acid techno cannot defeat the state because at the end of the day its made by a bunch of hippies/punks/travellers on drugs whereas the state is armed to the teeth and protected by riot shields etc This makes a mockery of Acid technos pretensions to be able effect change politically and has resulted in the impotent druggy mess we see today. Sure you can influence peoples attitudes with music but ....
Ill tell you what - I HATE that tune "one night in Hackney" as far as Im concerned that is when the "system" won and acid techno sunk as far down as it could get and became just about getting mashed.
Ill tell you one thing good acid techno does - it makes you feel free.

[the_psychologist]

Ill tell you what - I HATE that tune "one night in Hackney" as far as Im concerned that is when the "system" won and acid techno sunk as far down as it could get and became just about getting mashed.
Ill tell you one thing good acid techno does - it makes you feel free.

Yeah, but for all the missteps and cheezy tunes, the dons produced 10x as many banging tracks. Anyone else here put out a fraction as many tracks as the Chris/Henry/Lawrie/Guy/DDR combo of the 90s?

It seems like hedonistic dance music is kind of dead now, ie Hardcore, "Psy" Trance, UK Hard House (at least where I live), and Acid Techno. I'm not sure why Minimal has become so embedded in the world party scene, and it shows a change in tastes. I think people are more into feeling cool now than just losing it to music all night long.

Shit, even the DJs seem to be in it just to be seen. I have spoken to several lately who didn't even know what tunes they were playing. It's just a download/play it/delete it mentality now. I spoke to one idiot who said he "never plays the same track twice", and he is a local fixture who plays out all the time at higher profile parties. There's no sense of history and preservation of the music and attached culture.

People talk about how Acid comes and goes, but I'm really concerned that overt Acid is done. If someone can meld it with Minimal, it'll deffo work. But who can imagine a dancefloor pulsing to "**** Goa" these days? The golden age is a snapshot of everything that was happening at that time, as well as the enthusiasm of the producers. It can't just be conjured up at will.

[the_psychologist]

I should add that the Canadian artist MUX is one of the only acts I've heard in the past few years that seemed to capture the same spirit. Hardware fetishist does ravey acid techno with weird samples and funky programming. I wonder what he's doing these days?

[Gus]

Yeah, but for all the missteps and cheezy tunes, the dons produced 10x as many banging tracks. Anyone else here put out a fraction as many tracks as the Chris/Henry/Lawrie/Guy/DDR combo of the 90s?
.

Oh yes they made some brilliant records. They learnt to work as a team.

[nekro]

from what i heard of acid techno around these forums is kick + quantised snare on every second kick + quantised hihats + looped bassline + 303 with filter going up and down

thats about it. 0 groove, 0 futurism, 0 punk, 0 funk. all 140-150bpm.
acid techno should be 30-200 bpm, experiments, different rythms, shuffled, delayed with mad effects and otherworldly feeling, like all techno. no limits i experimenting, heavy punk or heavy funk or heavy futurism. thats what made it big (i mean all techno), and now that its gone - ofcourse nobody will like it. u gotta have in mind that the audience, the people who u need to fill the club, doesnt want to listen to music just cause its got a big kick and a 303. they wanna hear MUSIC and the kick and the 303 can be a part of the music. i hope im making sense

just listen to the oldschool techno. mescalinum united - we have arrived, x-101 x-102, old millses, early prodigy records etc and ull know what i mean

what he says ^^

uk acid techno is dead because the tracks are way too formulaic and people are bored of listening to that style now

[FuK-NuT]

this thread rocks...

im moving to the big smoke soon...this has actually gave me an insight and understanding of things im looking to get in too ;)

[nihilist]

i cant be arsed with this thread anymore............ same old same old.........whats the point in going round and round bush?

get out there and do it !!

[Gus]

i cant be arsed with this thread anymore............ same old same old.........whats the point in going round and round bush?

get out there and do it !!

Do what ?

[Gus]

what he says ^^

uk acid techno is dead because the tracks are way too formulaic and people are bored of listening to that style now

Im not - im bored of R and B

[the_psychologist]

i cant be arsed with this thread anymore............ same old same old.........whats the point in going round and round bush?

get out there and do it !!

not really - we've been discussing more than just "i like it / i don't like it". just don't read the thread if you don't like it.

i'm quite interested in the social factors that have buried party dance music under a pile of plinks and plonks.

[the_psychologist]

from what i heard of acid techno around these forums is kick + quantised snare on every second kick + quantised hihats + looped bassline + 303 with filter going up and down

thats about it. 0 groove, 0 futurism, 0 punk, 0 funk. all 140-150bpm.
acid techno should be 30-200 bpm, experiments, different rythms, shuffled, delayed with mad effects and otherworldly feeling, like all techno. no limits i experimenting, heavy punk or heavy funk or heavy futurism. thats what made it big (i mean all techno), and now that its gone - ofcourse nobody will like it. u gotta have in mind that the audience, the people who u need to fill the club, doesnt want to listen to music just cause its got a big kick and a 303. they wanna hear MUSIC and the kick and the 303 can be a part of the music. i hope im making sense

just listen to the oldschool techno. mescalinum united - we have arrived, x-101 x-102, old millses, early prodigy records etc and ull know what i mean

Yeah, what's interesting is that some of the Minimal/Tech House tunes coming out are as hard and funky as classic Acid tracks. Boys Noize stuff, Trentemoller, Soulwax, and so forth. Huge builds, hard kicks, and a lot of glitched-out squelches (even acid sometimes). I really think that people will still lose it to hard music, but I think it does need to be more... complex? I don't know what the word is. I'm confident that there are new frontiers for "acid" music that have yet to be explored. Remember, we used to call Cluster and the like "Acid Techno". It's more about a vibe than a specific piece of hardware.