Syndrome, DTM, n3oc0rt3x, dyLAB – Made in Melbourne V2.0 (Acid All Stars)

This, as they say, is Melbourne fucking Techno, four of Melbourne Acid’s leading lights on a cracking EP with nods to the old skool, plenty of bang for your buck, plus plenty of proper, what-the-hell-are-they-smoking weirdness.

Things kick off with Syndrome’s Lost in Transit (146 BPM), a woozy tune beamed in from a cracked-open, dying dimension. All the parts have made it through but in various states of malfunction and decay. Only the 303, solid little trooper that he is, seems unaffected by the carnage, holding things together as riffs and vocals explode like planets into echo and distortion around him. This is the music playing inside Grant Morrison’s head, and it’s ace.

Likewise, Gear by DTM (145 BPM)seems cut from a different sonic template, scuffing up an already muffled kick and distorted sound effects into a storm-blown live sound that’s at once hypnotic and distorientating. Up next, n3ocOrt3x’s New Realm (145 BPM) sounds like it’s about to fall to pieces in the middle then fires into a life with a doozy of a kick– a doozy – the whole thing sounding like a battle fought at the gates of a medieval castle.

Rabbits favourite dyLAB, meanwhile, does his dyLAB thing on EP closer Exhibit One (130 BPM). That thing being the precise, almost surgical application of 808 and 303. As usual, his is superior fare, and in this company he’s a mild-mannered professor, a welcome respite from the storm that came before.

Get it from: Beatport

dyLAB – M.U.S.E EP (Devilbeat Records)

Release date: 13/11/11
Get it from: Devilbeat

The latest from DyLAB is an overt homage to Richie Hawtin’s legendary acid workouts of the Nineties, with its track titles co-opted from Hawtin’s Dimension Intrusion album (one of his least acidy works from the period, funnily enough), and the sounds themselves indebted to the Plastikman debut, Sheet One – specifically the first side of Sheet One, where the ambient textures of Dimension Intrusion slowly gathered the clinical acid that was to become the Plastikman trademark. Judging by what’s here, that’s the side of Hawtin DyLAB loves best. As ever the beauty of the production lies in the warmth of the sounds and the care with which they’re deployed, the usual precision-tooled 808 sound providing a metronomic foundation to the single analogue 303 lines that runs throughout all three tracks. Moondrive and Dimensional Replicant are both compelling, though a tad overlong, but rounding out the EP, Slac is a little gem, with an insistent acid line that develops at a less leisurely rate than elsewhere and really benefits from it.

Various – Acid Sampler (Council House Recordings)

Cat no: CH009
Release date: 10/10/11
Get it from: Juno

I first came across Belfast’s Council House Recordings thanks to the free Moody B download, Dirty Acid, a cracking tune you can get by adding yourself to the Council House waiting, sorry, mailing list, here. The label’s unashamedly in thrall to old skool Chicago and Detroit sounds but has thankfully eschewed the usual route of smiley face logos and bandanas for a punky visual aesthetic that’s pleasingly counter-intuitive, while for those of us who saw the rave explosion as a kind of punk anyway, a perfect fit. The music has a similar sense of intelligently applied nostalgia. It’s inescapable that each of the tunes on this seven-track sampler will inspire Proustian rushes of yearning, but the influences never completely take over.

So, on Humandrone’s House Noir (121 BPM), sinister vocal samples and orchestral stabs combine with highly strung 303 to create a wigged-out old skool tribute that’s as funky as it is dark, while Acid is Safe & Wonderful (120 BPM), by Affie Yusuf is a gorgeous half-awake dream of a tune, more Sheffield than Detroit. dyLAB’s Acid Council (130 BPM) is a hypnotic Chicagoan offering, the Acid duelling beautifully with the percussion, all of it infused with his trademark analogue warmth. He and Council House are a match made in heaven. Meanwhile, Mark Forshaw’s Designer (117 BPM), is a squelchfest of the highest order, think Do You Want to Perculate by the Sweat Boyz, except with a bit more, oh, oomph. Alert the Nation (124 BPM), by label head Moody B is a jack track, pure and simple, raw and funky – the funkiest thing here, in fact. Acid Raw Mix (120 BPM), by Owain + Cliffy has tough, breathy vox in the vein of early Green Velvet, while the Chicago Distortion’s Together (119 BPM) is another irresistible jacking number. Great stuff, then, and proof that Council House has the musical muscle to match its ethos.

House Noir

Acid is Safe & Wonderful

Acid Council

Designer

Alert the Nation

Acid Raw Mix

Together

dyLAB – 808 Business EP (Hand Made Acid)

Cat no: Hand 008
Release date: 06/08/11
Get it from: Beatport

The Melbourne 303 professor returns, this time on Hand Made Acid, an intriguingly idiosyncratic label run by Melbourne’s David Haberfield, who records as Honeysmack. The fit is a good one. Navigate to the the Hand Made site and you’ll find a label philosophy that ’embraces Acid and Techno music made the traditional way, with hardware. We celebrate electronic dance music produced with contemporary and vintage gear,’ which is just what dyLAB’s all about. His last EP was the Filter In set, an exercise in ascending weirdness. Here, he has reined in the experimentation, with each of the three tracks, Play, Manual Play and Pattern Write (all 130 BPM), carefully sculpted and finessed tributes to the crystalline ticking of the 808 (the tracks are named after modes on the 808) and by extension to Chicago. Why, it’s even got cowbells. There’s a warmth and depth to the tracks that though they’re more dancefloor ready than Filter In, and groove accordingly, give them an enveloping, ambient quality, making them essential gear for the discerning acid head. Here’s hoping there’s an album in the works.

All Acid from Soundcloud Mix Part II

Another mix of all Soundcloud Acid, and there’s some seriously brilliant tunes in there…

The tracklisting is…

dyLAB - Acid Pass One
Alexi Delmano – Acid Burning Remix
Acidulant – S-Vpam
Otz - rebi
Minimum Syndicat - Lost Planet
Homemade Acid - The Place We're Looking For
Bekracid - Soulharvesters
Neatcorp - Exiles
Justin E - In the Mouth Of Madness
DJ Mente - Bicycle
Fil Devious - Trip Switch
Sisku Acid - Electricman
The Badger - It's not Rock & Roll... It's Acid!
Northeus - Greentooth
Imperfect Being - (You're All) Dreaming
David Diagonal - Autograft
Doorfer - Acid on Fire
Joey DJ - Teeth

dyLAB – Filter In (Acid All Stars)

Cat no: AA25
Release date: 16/06/11
Get it from: Beatport

There’s a Cornish flavour to the latest from Melbourne’s dyLAB, who acknowledges the debt to Rephlex’s Universal Indicator on his site. Just as he did with his previous EP, Wordsmith Project, where he worked from a template of trippy Chicagoan Acid, he’s revisiting the epochal 303 of our youth and tickling it into the new millennium with a fresh layer of sounds. Thus the Filter In EP is Mike Dred and Aphex acid but with bounce – a bit of dancefloor poke. And if it seems unusually expansive of him to so readily acknowledge his sources, then that’s because he knows full well that he’s bringing something new to the party. As Utah Saints would say, something good. It’s rare to find someone who works so diligently and with such perfectionism in their chosen field, but if that’s what you want, and who doesn’t, then dyLAB’s the droid you’re looking for.

The EP works as a whole. Really? Yes, really. It’s sixteen minutes thirty two seconds of analogue journey, of sounds that begin almost conventionally at Filter In One and finish fried and exhausted-but-happy by Filter In Three. Filter In One (130BPM) then, is probably the most floor-friendly of the set. It’s got a spacious bass drum and sudden outbreaks of distorted military drumming, like you used to hear in Sabres of Paradise records. Over that comes exquisite, high-frequency acid, a head fuck for sure, but a funky one. Filter In Two (130 BPM) is a more obstinate, testing offering, best heard when you’ve been softened up by One, with the drums taking a distinct second place to screaming, squabbling 303 lines. By Filter in Three (135 BPM) you’re hearing the final death throes of his machinery and, fittingly, it all ends suddenly, as though burnt out and blackened. In short, a brilliant EP. A masterful brew of acid worship and musical ambition from a producer happy to feed the head and feet.

All Acid from Soundcloud Mix

Hearing a ton of good stuff upped to Soundcloud got me wanting to do a mix, so here it is. All fantastic stuff, all downloaded from Soundcloud and all absolutely free.

The tracklisting is…

Zafer Gürkan Ağırman - Heavy Rain
DyLAB - May Acid Pattern
Shugsy - Acidpants
Balzano - Tracigd
Otz - Analogue Monster
Robert Babicz - Remote Kiss (K.Larm & J.Raninen Remix)
Reverse Forward - For God's Sake
Gerome Sportelli - Polyform
The Setup - Acid Fashion Redux
David Diagonal - Umbilical 303
Distek - Praktikal
DJ Mente - Acid Biker 2011
Neatcorp - batty7
Philacid - Dioxid
Son Of Mom - Acid For Life
Nuwinski Vs n3oc0rt3x - whatever man
Jonnay - Effing Creeper
Justin E - Acid wobble
Special Patrol - The Special Patrol Group
Jamie C - Tribal Acid Oldskool
Sisku Acid - Infected Sound
Northeus - Museumstreetmuggings
Homemade Acid - Acidist
Tassid - Psilocybin
Zafer Gürkan Ağırman - Heavy Rain

dyLAB – Wordsmith Project (Acid All Stars)

Cat no: AA22
Release date: 12/05/11
Get it from: Beatport

Three-oh-three rapture hisses from every valve of a perfectly engineered release from Melbourne’s dyLAB, a producer evidently enamoured, not only with the sound of acid’s old skool, but also with its founding principles: the idea of the acid as experimental counterpoint to the marching rhythm of house and techno; as an ever-expanding fractal, as psychedelic graffitti on the austerity of a four-four beat. There are seven tracks here and they can be sampled via his Soundcloud page, or his blog, where he explains the genesis of the project thus: ‘The EP is based around the concept of using the Roland TB-303 as a typewriter, and writing short words or phrases using the notes of the 303 and seeing what works, musically. The rhythms all come from the Roland TR-707, some live and some multitracked.’

Kicking things off is BAD Version Two (140 BPM)** which fuses the speed and structure of more fearsome acid techno to a kaleidoscopic, echoing acid pattern, the result being a mini masterpiece of hypnotic 303. It’s the pick of the EP and certainly the one that lends itself best to a faster techno set. Meanwhile BAD (130 BPM) is a more explicitly house treatment, while the original of CAGEDFACE shades it over the second version (both 130 BPM) by having just that bit more thump. FAG and DEAD (both 130 BPM) strip things way back to the Windy City, but with a far brighter sound – like a Blu-Ray version of 1980s acid house – while EP closer A Fag Gagged Bad (130 BPM) is an itchy unsettling tune that I genuinely can’t say whether I like or or not, so I won’t try. As a whole, a superb EP, and a brilliant introduction to the DyLAB sound and philosophy, an approach he expands further on upcoming release In Filter, which we’ll get to in due course…