Acidcore was not a love at first sight for me (or, more precisely, "first sound"). While other electronic and "hardcore" styles like Gabber, Speedcore, Breakcore, Hardtrance, Electro... enamored me immediately (more or less)... when I heard my first Acidcore tracks, I went more like "meh".
These were tunes on Fischkopf records for example, or Industrial Strength, UK labels, or even some of the more acid-ic Mokum ones.
This stuff felt very monotone and repetitive too me... also quite "minimal". There just seemed to be a lack of action in these tracks, and not much going on...
In the 90s, I decided that Acidcore was the only subgenre of Hardcore, that I was not very fond of...
The only exception were some tracks by Lasse Steen, those that, in my opinion, had more variety, with lots of melodies and weird tempos, and so on. For example of the Senical and Skullblower variety. And a few tracks by other artists.
But actually, my path to Acidcore had begun, even before I got into "Hardcore proper". During vacation, a trip to a small, "90 souls" village at the border of the norther sea, on reclaimed land, that did not even exist and was the Atlantic ocean a few hundred years ago, before humans walked there, and created that land out of the ocean.
Where i swapped tapes with another teenager my age, which was hardcore punk on one side, acid techno (first time i heard that stuff!) on the other, and while i did not like the sound at that age either, i concluded that it had... potential, so to say.
Another big "woah" event was when i heard some acid tracks by PCP, especially of the 303 nation kind.
But yeah... let's say i was still not convinced.
Until the year 2000, when I went with some friends to a "hard trance rave revival party", here in hamburg, and the first hour was... very oldschool acid and techno.
And it really felt like an enlightenment!
Listening to the tunes, at night time, in a dark club, under ultra and violet light, on a loud sound system, dancing with the freaks, under the influence of caffeine... completely changed the sound to me.
I think that especially the "played out loud" thing changes acid... a lot! all those frequencies, no longer tame and distant, but buzzing around you, getting, getting to, and into your head and mind and soul... ready for liftoff!
also, that year, i had an early producer breakthrough, because a demo CD-R by me (hah!) became quite popular, within a secret community hidden behind the underground "circuit 8" website... which led to me exchanging CD-Rs, tapes, and demos, with quite a lot of people (like Somatic Responses, Christoph de Babalon, Praxis records) and also with Daria Blax from Drop Bass Networks, who sent me a kind of "bootleg mix" (hah!) with the acid classics, from berlin, london, cologne... and that sound blew my mind too!
after this, there was "no holds barred" anymore, i got deep into the acid...
and this led to my first "proper hits", hits in the underground sense, of course... my release on black monolith records, a new york adjacent label, my bookings at tresor, suddenly i played acidcore in front of 1000s of people... literally. was a wild (acid) ride!
and then, many, many (and many) years later, i finally got into more mellow acid too, which led to another wave of releases, that then were mentioned in the big magazines again and was a bit like a "return to fame" for me... "fame", in the underground sense of course, or let us rather call it popularity, or maybe "notoriety".
but all these years, my acid and acidcore tracks go back to the idea, that acid works best, and only "works", if it's made for the party situation in mind, for nights of endless dancing, for the combination of loud frequencies, a gathering of people, and black white flicker-flackering lights, powered by strobes.
and, paradoxically, that the tracks even sound (much) better during "home listening sessions", when they are made with that original thought in mind!
Music:
Urban Uprising https://doomcorerecords.
Farewell Old World https://lowentropy.bandcamp.
Really Into The Space Stuff https://zuur-nl.bandcamp.com/
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