What do you MEAN you haven't heard of Acid August?

As we approach the end of the month, I really hope you've enjoyed listening along with Acid August.

Pardon? You've never heard of Acid August? Have you been living under a rock?

The whole idea of Acid August is that you spent the whole month listening to acid house music and nothing else. Are you telling me you've not done this? Have you that much disrespect for Acid August?!

Admittedly I didn't mention Acid August, but it was difficult to figure out. It's the alliteration. Acid in August, Metal in March, Jungle in June and Off-Kilter Space Jazz in October. I shouldn't have to explain this to you.

Despite your wilful negligence of Acid August, I've hastily cobbled together a list of well-known acid classics you should have been listening to. Maybe you could invent a time machine to rescue the month you just wasted. Harrumph. You people.

• Hardfloor's Acperience 1: maybe the band's most famous track, and a template many people have copied
  
  
• Josh Wink's Higher State Of Consciousness (pictured): a silly track that put acid-tweaking fun into the charts
  
  
• Hydrochloric acid: a kind of bubbling sound, especially when it's burning off your skin
  
  
• Ceephax Acid Crew's Sidney's Sizzler: a lo-fi tempo-twiddling joyful track designed to move your tootsies
  
  
• Carbonic acid: makes a fizzing sound when you open the bottle, as long as the Diet Coke or sparkling water hasn't gone flat
  
  
• Spanky's Acid Bass: Phuture's much-missed Earl Smith Jr turning in an early stomping acid house classic
  
  
• Citric acid: doesn't make much of a sound, unless you jam a lemon into your eyes for a delightfully citrus-y scream
  
  
• 808 State's Flow Coma: the Manchester boys in a moody acid mood, a feeling replicated on their most recent album
  
  
• Amino acid: something to do with compounds (I've honestly no idea) – probably sounds like Westlife
  
  
• A Sid: just a man called Sid, who looks angry and disappointed on the rare occasions someone makes an "a sid / acid" joke, while mumbling "what kind of hack joke is this"
  
  
• Maurice's This is Acid: A stone-cold classic with the added frill of rave chords and sexy gasps

Why not go through that list and tick off all the acids you have listened to this month? And in the future, please don't forget Acid August.

See you this time next month when I'll be checking on your progress in Soft Rock September.

Further Fats: 467 (2010, which also mentions Acid August!)

I recommend three, oh, three great acid tracks

For a couple of days last week, I took over @303OClock, a Twitter account dedicated to posting acid tracks twice a day at 3:03 O'Clock.

I thought I would record my takeover here, because Twitter is ephemeral like mist or memory or biscuits, while a blog post is forever, like Jesus or shame. 

The brief was my favourite acid tracks from 2010–2019, and although I don't think my choices were especially original, I was pretty happy with my selections.

Takeover this week from music journo and all-round good egg Fat Roland. Have a read of some of his work here https://t.co/aBjf8KGqFm @FatRoland

— 303 OClock (@303OClock) April 30, 2020

Recent takeover people have included Perc Trax, DJ Food, EOD and Ghostly International. So no pressure then.

Fat Roland Takeover 1. Hardfloor - Good Lack Scharm. "I can't have an acid list without my first love Hardfloor. Of all their 2010 tracks, this sounds most like them getting back to their build-em-up roots" #acid @FatRoland https://t.co/L7AIpNQ25y

— 303 OClock (@303OClock) April 30, 2020

Hardfloor's Good Luck Scharm isn't easy to come by, and I was pretty dismayed at the booby nonsense in the homemade video. Still, I chose this track because there's nothing more cobweb-clearing than Hardfloor in full tweak. It's so nice the boys have kept going: in lockdown times, I have to work on my motivation, and this is exactly the energy I need.

Fat Roland Takeover 2. Daniel Avery - Drone Logic. "A mean little shuffler that gets overtaken by big fat acid nonsense. Just gorgeous." #acid @FatRoland https://t.co/qDH5ypMFwL @danielmarkavery

— 303 OClock (@303OClock) May 1, 2020

I was disappointed not to be seeing Daniel Avery at this year's Blue Dot festival, a wonderful shindig whose 2020 event fell foul of the coronavirus crisis. I chose Drone Logic not just for the Chemical Brothers-style scuzziness, but for the sheer joy you can get from a very basic acid melody. In the words of Robert Leiner, it's a kind of magic.

Fat Roland Takeover 3. Ceephax Acid Crew - Legend Of Phaxalot. "I've loved Ceephax's King Arthur fun these past few years, so it has to be the one track that's wedged in my mind. Like a sword in a stone. Or something." #acid @FatRoland https://t.co/He3N3vbD8T

— 303 OClock (@303OClock) May 1, 2020

And finally, Ceephax Acid Crew's Legend of Phaxalot. I could have chosen any number of his works, especially from his brilliant 2020 album Camelot Arcade.  This was my comfort-listen choice: I can't imagine life without Ceephax.

I've banged on about my love of acid before, including hearing it on odd-shaped speakers, how I would make acid house parties compulsory, and, er, how acid house is for losers. Um...

Do give @303OClock a follow for a twice-daily dollop of acid. It's not only an antidote to all major diseases, it also makes you better looking and will instantly make you a millionaire. Citation needed. 

Further Fats: "Apart from Dizzee Rascal and the Script, of course..." (2014)

Further Fats: Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy (2020)

Fifteen questions for Fat Roland (contains raisins)

This blog post is about me. Which is why it's accompanied by a picture of me.

There's a 30-question Facebook quiz doing the rounds, so for the sake of content, here are my answers. I should point out that I deleted half of the questions: they were so inane, they made me want to go to a wedding reception with Westlife. Here, readers, are 15 questions about me.

1. Who are you named after? Not a who. A what. I'm named after a Roland JP-8000 synthesiser. I am not named after the chubby lad from Grange Hill, although there are worse people I could be named after. I could be called Dan Widdecombe.

2. Last time you cried? I cry at everything. Movie endings, children's choirs, wasps, anything. Jojo Rabbit had me in floods of tears. Seeing arbitrary insanity through a ten-year-old's eyes, in appropriately dis-tonal primary colours (comedy Hitler, rabbit blatherings, "clones"), made this a deeply moving and exhilarating film. Roberto Benigni meets Wes Anderson. Go see.

3. Do you like your handwriting? Actually, I do. It's a bit cartoony. As a child, I refused to learn joined-up cursive as it made no sense to my bookworm brain. Books didn't do cursive, so I shouldn't either. I'd have good handwriting for cartoon strip speech bubbles.

4. Would you do a bungee jump? Plop off. I'd hit the ground so hard, I'd come out in China.

5. What is your favourite kind of cereal? When I do eat cereal, which isn't often, I plump for something with raisins. Got to love a raisin. It's one of those foodstuffs people really baulk at, but they're idiots. Smother me in raisins.

6. What is the first thing you notice about someone? Tentacles.

7. Rugby or football? Neither. Both sports remind me of the horror of school changing rooms, the bullying tackles designed to injure me for fun, the cold mud and rain. Also, each side should be given a ball to make everything easier.

8. What are you listening to right now? Finally a question relevant to my website. I'm currently enjoying Mason Bee's debut album Play Flights. He's the bloke who makes nice guitar sounds and bleepy melodics in Plaid, so it's like someone's taken all the harmony from Plaid and tied a big beautiful bow on it.

9. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? I've kept this question in here to show how bad the deleted questions were.

10. Favourite smell? Not this quiz, coz it stinks. It's all the cliche answers, I'm afraid. Cut grass, fresh bread, nice flowers, old books, kittens in blenders. Some people like the smell of babies or hair, which is weird. If you scratch this blog, it smells of warehouse raves.

11. Colour of your hair? Brown. Not a particularly interesting brown. A general hair brown. The colour of a horse that's just eaten two jars of Marmite. Like I say, not an interesting brown.

12. Scary movies or happy? I'll choose scary. Actually, I'm watching fewer scary films as I get older. Maybe the torrent of existential terror that is modern life has finally got under my skin. Boo! Was that scary? No? Okay, I'll choose happy.

13. Last movie you watched? That Armando Iannucci film about David Copperfield. More gentle than I expected; more Cock & Bull Story than Death Of Stalin. Dev Patel is perfect casting. Made me want to fly kites.

14. Favourite Holiday? Why is holiday capitalised? I don't really do holidays. If I wanted to lounge around doing nothing, I can do that at home. If I wanted to see interesting sights, I can use Google. If I wanted to sit by some water, I can find a puddle. Sigh. I'm happy, honest I am.

15. Best acid house tune? Great question. For years, my go-to acid tune was Fish & Chips by Hardfloor. It was on a Harthouse CD and I played it to smithereens. Amazing build-up. Sorry? What? Yes, you got me. This wasn't one of the original questions, I just wanted to big up Hardfloor. Is this over now? Can I go?

Photo: Alex Winton (taken at Mother's Ruin at Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester)

Just look at this lovely album cover

Look at the cover of Hardfloor's 2014 album The Art Of Acid. Look at it. Just look at it. No, don't look at that thing over there. Just look at this album cover.

All those synthesisers. All those sound modules. All those knobs just waiting to be tweaked. Some of them are Rolands, just like me. Don't go tweaking my knob. I might make an interesting sound if you do, but trust me, those machines will make a better noise.

It's such a lovely album cover. I want to nuzzle that picture. I want to buy it dinner. I want to dance the Lambada for it, then suddenly switch to the Macarena, and everybody will be, like wooah look at his dance moves, he knows all the dance moves.

I can't keep looking at that album cover. You never know, I might even listen to it. Maybe. One day.

Too slow slow, hush hush, three oh three*

Why do I keep missing 303 Day?

For those not up on their music technology, '303' refers to a music-making box called the Roland TB-303 Bass Line which was made by the Roland corporation back when everyone was into Kajagoogoo and Toto.

The silver box had a built-in sequencer. Party kids high on emulsion and terps quickly worked out you could get a biting acidic sound in the higher registers of this bass unit. And electronic music's longest-lasting underground genre was born.





Two acid tracks three decades apart, there.

And yet, I keep missing the most important day of the year. The one date in which we can all come together by tweeting alone from our respective bedrooms about how great acid house music is. That date is, of course, 3/03.

Not only is the date 3/03 today, there are exactly 303 days left till the end of the year! Happy Acid House day! :-) pic.twitter.com/fO3jZbqpWI

— Suddi Raval (@suddiraval) March 3, 2017

Nope. Completely missed it. I should blog on March 3rd every year about the wonders of acid house and acid techno and all things acid but I don't. Tsssch. Bad blogger.

I fear that, back in the 1980s, instead of buying that magical silver box I would have been bopping to Kajagoogoo. That, blogchums, is the real horror of me missing 303 Day.

*I'm hoping this is a reference to a Kajagoogoo lyric. I may be getting my bands mixed up.

Further Fats: Syntheme's winsome shit, Kompakt's ambient 'shosts' and Circlesquare's dullness (2009)

Further Fats: Painting 2010 beige: Eno, Orb, Hardfloor and Seefeel (2010)

I love acid and the acid loves me

I'm pretty sure acid is the best kind of music.

I go through phases. Recently it's been ambient dub centred around the Beyond label of the mid-90s. I went through a big house phase a few weeks ago. And sometimes I just want noisy techno (Objekt's pretty good for this: I keep hearing sounds on the street that sound like this album).

Acid, though, is the music I'll always go back to whatever my mood. Because of its technological restraints (imagine having a genre of music that can only be made on the banjo), acid barely changes. One Josh Wink record aside, it has never commercialised, nor has it ever faded to nothing.

I Love Acid are parping out some great records at the moment. And imagine my delight when I discovered this Twitter account.

New favourite Twitter account: @303OClock. 1,505 acid tracks and counting. I'm going in. I may be some time.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) October 1, 2015

And nothing will beat Hardfloor's sledgehammer acid build-ups.

Maybe the best thing about acid, whether it's acid techno, acid house, acid gabba or acid trousers, is it's never going to be a topic of conversation at a family dinner table. There may be spilled gravy over Ed Sheeran's performance on X Factor, but no-one's going to get into a humus fight over the best era of Lords Of Acid. Acid is somehow secret clubber's knowledge, forever shaded from the glare of the mainstream. Maybe it's the drug connotations, I dunno.

Not that I've ever done the drug. No seriously, I haven't. My mind's weird enough as it is.

Acid is totally the best kind of music. Delve into those links above. Because when it's good, it's proper good. Even acid trousers, which is definitely a thing, honest. Ahem.

> Further Fats: Painting 2010 beige: Eno, Orb, Hardfloor and Seefeel

Painting 2010 beige: Eno, Orb, Hardfloor and Seefeel

It's not sepia: it's beige. When you look back on the past, you're looking through beige-tinted glasses. Don't go romanticising it.

A clutch of recent and upcoming releases offer several shades of light brown for those with nostalgia in mind. Let's start with The Orb, who have teamed up with 90s uber-producer Youth to put out a retrospective of the acid house label WAU! Mr Modo, called Impossible Oddities.

You may think you've never heard of WAU! Mr Modo, but you surely do remember their biggest hits Zoe's Sunshine On A Rainy Day and The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds. Both tracks are here, albeit re-jigged. I'm more excited by the Orb's remix of Sun Electric from back in the days when an Orb remix was always called an 'Orbital mix', thereby confusing them with the famous but unconnected head-lamped techno duo that brought us Satan.

Also, ambient sandal-gazers Seefeel are to release their first album in 14 years (artwork pictured). The band was relaunched by their original pair of guitarists a couple of years ago and, after releasing the summer-crackled Faults EP (the title track is lovely) in September, they have slated an eponymous long-player for a February 2011 release on Warp Records.

And there's more. Hardfloor are back, this time with their eighth studio LP. Two Guys Three Boxes (the boxes referring to their beloved acid-making machines and not record boxes) will be out on bonfire night. And finally, we are moments from the launch of the Small Craft On A Milk Sea, Brian Eno's album on Warp Records and, for many, the most anticipated release of the year. Eno's album will be out on November 15th and you can listen to bits of it here.

The old school is very much alive, well, and unashamedly beige.