Convection Criminals, Owen Acid, Jye Feelgood, Nesbit – Analogue Juice Extraction EP (AER02)

An excellent second helping from AER records (their first is reviewed here). It’s all good, but for me a standout is Jye Feelgood’s Acid Swamp where I’m even prepared to forgive the ‘kiss my acid’ sample because the rest of it is so frickin’ good. With a loose feel, like it’s about to come apart at the seams any second, and 303 so deliciously stewed you can taste it, it’s like, if Rob Zombie made acid techno records he’d probably make this one.

Fajita Swing by Convection Criminals is another highlight. It’s got all the roll and bounce you’d expect from anything involving Fil Devious (Convection Criminals is him and Gav Feedback), as well as a vocal sample from The Big Lebowski that the Criminals have had the wit and style to mess with till it’s all pulled out of shape. The result is a track with proper tension and depth. As Nesbit, Jared Blyth’s Prephaser builds from a restrained, grid-friendly opening until a breakdown around the 4.15 mark when the acid fireworks into life, and Owen Acid’s Naughty Control mixes up hard, reverb-heavy drums with an old skool acid line and a masterly, fuzzed-up breakdown at 3.40. In all, cracking stuff.

Get it from: Audio Eargasm at Bandcamp

Silex – Twisted Turmoil EP (Anecdote)

Silex is the new project from Fil Devious and Justin E, who together have been mining a love of horror movies and techno riffery for this debut EP, a more sinister, and snarling thing you couldn’t hope to find.

Coulrophobia, (145 BPM) then. No, I didn’t know what it meant either. The fear of clowns apparently: their cadaverous white faces, the painted-on grin that hides what they’re really thinking, which is that they want to skin you alive then stuff your body into the crawlspace. Accordingly, the Silex take opens with a clean kick, like the insistent drip-drip of an underground pool, but then comes a nasty, bubbling bassline, and then a set of chords that stare at you red-eyed from inside a storm drain. It hits its groove and stays there, dark, but without resorting to the industrial sound that’s getting a bit wearing elsewhere, intense and subtly layered. Fluff Buzz (143 BPM) is just as good. Coulrophobia’s sci-fi twin, it blasts away with trippy, swirling effects and nagging melodies, while Touch Tone Trip (145 BPM) breaks out a sample from The Thing halfway through and teases you with a ghostly 303 that might not even be there. Superb stuff.

Get it from: Juno

Nitronoise, Jared Blyth, Benji303, Fil Devious, Adam Derry – Acid Techno 005 (Injector Records)

Cat no: Acid Techno 005

The reasons to love Adam Derry – that he’s mercurial, uncompromising and makes noisy, challenging electronic music that isn’t fêted by Boomkat or Wire Magazine – can also sometimes be his downfall, meaning he can veer into unlistenable territory and has a tendency to produce overlong tracks. I Can’t Name Tunes (150 BPM), for example, would benefit from being a good three minutes shorter, despite the presence of a marvellously unwashed 303. Miles better is Threshold Driven (160 BPM), a sweaty, fidgety seizure of a track that uses waves of distorted acid-driven noise to punishing but undeniably awesome effect. Whether you’d like a second dose in I Don’t Use Sample Packs (155 BPM) may well depend on how much you want a repeat viewing of the fire extinguisher scene in Irréversible.

Remixed by Benji303, Jared Blyth’s Fucking Cocaine has an accordingly hollowed-out and distanced feel to it, while a treated animal-noise adds the requisite note of self-disgust. Only the 303 feels a little underdeveloped, lacking the darkness and bite elsewhere. Fil Devious’s Phat Pants, meanwhile, is a tremendous tune that absolutely rewards close and repeated listens, especially to the trippy, kaleidoscopic 303 that courses through all seven-and-a-half minutes, bouncing off a metallic melody, dipping and soaring and turning inside itself like a Möbius strip. Phil’s tracks always deliver, but this is one of those you feel can stand on its own outside of the mix.

Which leaves Nitronoise. Nitronoise is Injector Records’ head honcho Gabriel Stirbu, and his tracks invariably have a ravey, old skool quality that makes them a real joy to hear. Get ’Em Up The Fuck (145 BPM), for example, is the party right there, and like That’s My Shit (145 BPM) uses bouncy, good-time vocal samples and chord changes for funky, eminently mixable techno. Acid Junxion (145 BPM), meanwhile, employs cavernous echo-soaked drums for a harder, booming sound destined to sound ace on big rigs or headphones, whichever is your poison.

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

Austin Corrosive, Fil Devious, Gav Feedback & OB1 – Corrosive 909 01 (Corrosive Digital)

Cat no: Corrosive 909 001
Release date: 24/05/11

Get it from: 909 London 

Recharge – Austin Corrosive
BPM: 148
A big tune, this, with plenty to like, starting with hypnotic tribal drums and a vocal sample that gives it a finger of fudgy funkiness. Next a bad-tempered, distorted acid line drops by and kicks the place apart for a while. It’s got horns with it. Things get real nasty. Then it leaves and that funky vocal serenades us out. A good track and a total contender for best of the EP, although that honour ultimately goes elswhere. 

Loose Control – Fil Devious
BPM: 145
Buffeted kickdrum, a sample saying ‘lose control’ (not, ahem ‘loose control’), plenty of breaks and an acid line that builds, drops and builds again. A solid but unspectacular tune. Moving on, and the thinking behind Corrosive Digital is not only to run a digi-only label alongside the vinyl-orientated Corrosive, but also to showcase up-and-coming producers, so the next two tunes belong to a pair of names that are new to us.

Fix as Funk – Gav Feedback **
BPM: 145
…and the acid drops in straight away. First beat of the bar and that 303 is snarling: a big, funky acid line that dominates the first half of the track, leaving enticing little details to pop away in the background: old skool bleeps, nicely separated percussion, the ‘damn you all to hell’ sample from Planet of the Apes. Things are mixed up around the halfway mark, and that amazing 303 falls away a bit. Is it instrumentation? No, it’s a power loss. Is it supposed to end that suddenly? I don’t know, but it does. Even so, it gets the coveted double asterisk from me.

Dumbass – OB1
BPM: 155
The Dumbass of the title is George W Bush, and the track begins with his famous howler from 2000 when he declared, ‘We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.’ There are a couple of other Bushisms elsewhere in the track, and while the track’s okay, and the acid sufficiently screeching, it’s… I don’t know, having him in there just feels like an old joke that wasn’t very funny in the first place, and I can’t really get past it. Sorry.

Nitronoise, Projekt 51, Fil Devious – Acid Techno 001 (Injector Records)

Cat no: Acid Techno 001
Release date: 22/02/11

Acid Crumble – Nitronoise**
BPM: 145
Either Injector Records are new or this EP is their first foray into Acid Techno, I’m not sure which; either way, Acid Crumble was the track I heard first, prompting me to download the whole EP (it’s download-only, this one). It’s a long, ambitious track that hits the ground running with a hard kick so polished you can almost hear it gleam, has something happening every eight bars, whether it’s a swoosh, a stutter or a little backwardsy sound, then a supple acid line that swings by at about 2.15. There are vocal samples plucked from suburban America, ‘You parked in front of my driveway!’ etc. but it’s not clear how they tie into the title, if indeed they do, and then a distinct third section that actually sounds like a different track. Overall it’s a cracking tune that sounds nice and fizzy in the mix as long as you like a busy, crowded sound, because there’s literally never a dull moment with it.

No Supply  – Fil Devious
BPM: 147
When I first came across the name Fil Devious, many moons ago, I fondly imagined Fil from Back to the Planet was following in the footsteps of Guy McAffer and D.A.V.E. the Drummer and that, just as many of the cast of Predator have gone into US politics, so it was with members of Back to the Planet and acid techno. My red face when I discovered that Fil is a bloke from Wales! Lucky I never told anyone, eh? Fil’s always quality, whether it’s his mixes or production, and this is no diffrerent, a bit less peak time than Acid Crumble, perhaps, a prelude to the storm, rather than the storm itself.

Acid Train – Nitronoise
BPM: 145
This is too quiet; it actually sounds as though it’s been mastered lower than the rest of the set. Is it worth reaching for the gain? Well, it’s a bouncy, lively track, with busy 303 stabs all over, but lacks the je ne sais quoi of Acid Crumble and rather sounds as though, with this train, the lads from Nitronoise had (wait for it; it’s coming) run out of steam!

Nomenospace – Projekt 51
BPM: 150
The trouble with this is it’s just not banging enough for the speed of it, if that makes sense. It’s all a bit laid back for 150BPM, plus there’s a repeated vocal of a guy saying, ‘We were born to dance,’ when everybody knows we were born to run.