Champion Breaks – Extasy Make You Lovely (The Remixes) (Kut Off Records)

An unbearably nostalgic three-track remix EP from our favourite acid-breaker Champion Breaks, this begins with a real Rave Digger-esque take from Dodders, complete with tingle-on-the-back of your neck piano sections, and quick-hug-a-friend samples from Human Traffic. The DJ Slim vs Menace mix gets all junglistic on your ass but at the risk of playing Rabbit favourites, it’s Benji303‘s rub that really rules the roost. Benjio retains the manic  breakbeats so beloved of Champion but teases them into Acid Techno shapes and the result is phat and fast and highly addictive.

Various – Scum Like Us (Corrosive)

We’ve been waiting a while for the release of this, with Scum Like Us featuring on SUF t-shirts before appearing in any home-listening sense, and now – shit the bed! – here it is. It’s the addictive vocal that really makes it, of course, that and the filthy acid, and it’s so good that I’m going to forget all about Pies n Mash, just pretend it never happened.

Back to this EP and the Naked Rockstars serve up something a bit different in Acid Corporation, a high-paced but lower-key acid bubbler, old skool in feel. The current trend is to go all-out, full-on filthy, so this represents a welcome change of pace, building and building very elegantly. Props go to Badger, AP and Josh Inc., the droogs behind it. And finally, Nightmare by Austin Corrosive, Tassid, Chris Liberator & Sterling Moss, which samples the rap from an old Kid Unknown track (I think) and is a full-throttle stormer, unleashing sheet-metal waves of acid. Sheer brilliance, just as you’d expect from the names above the door.

Get if from: 909

A.P., Josh Inc., MK303 & Tassid – Skuxx003 (Skuxx)

All your favourite Acid producers have tucked away their 303s for this Skuxx release. First A.P attacks Tassid’s awesome Raw ‘n’ Dirty on the remix. The original is a beast of a track, a coachload of screaming, terrified cheerleaders hurtling towards a cliff edge as the driver clutches at his chest and slumps dead to the wheel. Cleverly, A.P saves the cheerleaders. He even has the cheerleaders celebrating at the precipice as he reforms the tune into a bouncy party centrepiece. And it’s a cracker.

Meanwhile, Paranoia by Josh Inc. is a bit of a Marmite track, which is all I’ll say about that. Next, things get real filthy for MK303’s Section 6. Industrial-revolution era beats, metal-on-metal sparking: the man like Matt Knight lays down some extra-special powerage here, and the ‘section 6’ vocal gives it a focus, although it never quite develops as much as you wish it would. Lastly, Wretch is another hard-assed torture-chamber tune from the ever-dependable Tassid. It’s hard, it’s filthy, it sounds like demented tramps playing with operating-theatre equipment and it has a series of late-period breaks that keep the energy levels high.

Get it from: 909

Dave Elyzium – Scraps EP (Hypnohouse Purple)

Scraps is a bracingly nasty slice of underground horror film scuzziness, with the vocal sample – something about blood – providing an eerie counterpoint to stark drums and a nagging, torture-chamber riff. The D’FunK Darktek Remix, is a skittering fractured take, as though the tune has been taken apart then reassembled by a horrible kid in a Punisher t-shirt, while Hypnohouse mainman John Rowe steers things in an altogether more rolling, almost Millsian direction with his Threshold remix, cleaning up the central riff and adding funky stabs. But for this gorehound, the final track on the EP, the Zombie in Progress Mix, in which the darkness of the original is filtered into a propulsive, filthily funky beast, is where it’s at. Wonderful stuff.

Various Artists – Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet (Projecting Nothing/Invisible Records)

In the heady days of discovering that there were other people who liked those week-long Weatherall One Dove remixes just as much as you, one name stood out, the Acid Ted blog, an essential bookmark for anybody who grew up on, and never quite grew out of Boy’s Own, Guerrilla, Hard Hands etc.

It wasn’t until after three years of following Acid Ted that I realised he had another blog, this one, in which he talked about his little boy’s ultimately unsuccessful fight against a brain tumour. It’s heartbreaking. I’m a parent and there are times I’ve felt more like the unwilling father out of Eraserhead than the grinning gimp in a credit card advert, but reading what Ted had to say, well, firstly I read it through eyes divided by diamonds and fired off an email to tell him so; secondly, it put me straight on a few priorities in my own life.

Today marks the release of a compilation curated by Acid Ted, a collection inspired by what he and his family have been through, with profits going to brain tumour charities. Let’s Go Somewhere Quiet: A Compilation For Hope is a mix of ‘raucous dance, delicate house, acoustic indie and downtempo chill’, and it comes with the stamp of one of the internet’s most reliable selectors. Beginning with the sublimely fried thump of Crystal Castles’ producer Alex Zelenka, through the cinematic breaks of Coventry’s QTheSuit, the album also ventures into more reflective, folksy pastures. Given the context, Stylusboy’s A Song For Noah, with the lyric ‘every time I look upon those eyes, I say thank you for your life’ is truly shattering. Oh, and just in case you were wondering where the Acid be at, well, you’ll find it present and correct in Larry Jefferson’s Welcome, a 303 workout straight from some vault in Chicago, locked there since 1986.

According to AT, the album’s intent is to ‘heal the soul’, to take you on a rollercoaster – the pain of hurt through to the blistering joy of being alive. Well, it does that. With humour and idiosyncrasy and without ever bludgeoning you with the sheer emotional wallop of the project, it does that brilliantly.

Of course, Acid Ted has blogged about it today, here, so what remains to be said is that all the artists have given their tracks free, all profits go to brain tumour charities in the USA and UK: http://braintumourtrust.co.uk/ – http://www.cbtf.org/, and that the compilation is available on Available to buy on iTunes and Juno. And in the meantime, here’s that Acid joint.

ACID TED

As you may know, my son died of a brain tumour just before his fourth birthday. The Projecting Nothing label have kindly agreed to put out a compilation of unsigned artists, with profits going to Brain Tumour Trust (UK) and Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation (USA). The closing date for entries is tomorrow.

I’m therefore asking musicians and graphic artists (they have to be unsigned) to send links to their best work to be released digitally worldwide. Please fill out the form here with your details and a link to the track to download  http://form.jotformpro.com/form/20918462330954. If you don’t own the rights and publishing, please don’t submit. Submit by 15 May

100% of the profits of this compilation will be going to charity as well.  There are 10 spots for 10 artists / bands.   All genres considered.

If you want to know why this is important, please take the time to read my…

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Great Acid 2011

Most of my favourite records of the year weren’t available from Juno Download, but here’s a list of some favourites that were.