Acid house

Acid house is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The defining feature of a "squelching" bass sound was produced using the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer. Acid house spread to the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where it was played by DJs in the acid house and later rave scenes. By the late 1980s, acid house had moved into the British mainstream, where it had some influence on pop and dance styles.

Acid house brought house music to a worldwide audience. The influence of acid house can be heard on later styles of dance music including trance, Goa trance, psychedelic trance, breakbeat, big beat, techno and trip hop.

Characteristics

Acid house's minimalist production aesthetic combined house music's ubiquitous programmed 4/4 beat with the electronic ‘squelch' sound produced by the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer by constantly modulating its frequency and resonance controls to create 'movement' in otherwise simple bass patterns. Other elements, such as synthetic strings and stabs, were usually minimal. Sometimes tracks were instrumentals such as Phuture's "Acid Tracks", or contained full vocal performances such as Pierre's Pfantasy Club's "Dream Girl", while others were essentially instrumentals complemented by the odd spoken word 'drop-in', such as Phuture's "Slam".

House

A house is a building that functions as a home, ranging from simple dwellings such as rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes and the improvised shacks in shantytowns to complex, fixed structures of wood, brick, marble or other materials containing plumbing, ventilation and electrical systems. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) may share part of the house with humans. The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, although households may also be other social groups or individuals. The design and structure of the house is also subject to change as a consequence of globalization, urbanization and other social, economic, demographic, and technological reasons. Various other cultural factors also influence the building style and patterns of domestic space.

Acid

An acid (from the Latin acidus/acēre meaning sour) is a chemical substance whose aqueous solutions are characterized by a sour taste, the ability to turn blue litmus red, and the ability to react with bases and certain metals (like calcium) to form salts. An aqueous solution of an acid has a pH of less than 7 and is colloquially also referred to as 'acid' (as in 'dissolved in acid'), while the strict definition refers only to the solute. An acid usually contains a hydrogen atom bonded to a chemical structure that is still energetically favorable after loss of H⁺ (a positive hydrogen ion or proton). A lower pH means a higher acidity, and thus a higher concentration of positive hydrogen ions in the solution. Chemicals or substances having the property of an acid are said to be acidic.

There are three common definitions for acids: the Arrhenius definition, the Brønsted-Lowry definition, and the Lewis definition. The Arrhenius definition defines acids as substances which increase the concentration of hydrogen ions (H⁺), or more accurately, hydronium ions (H₃O⁺), when dissolved in water. The Brønsted-Lowry definition is an expansion to include solvents other than water: an acid is a substance which can act as a proton donor. By this definition, any compound which can be deprotonated can be considered an acid. Examples include alcohols and amines which contain O-H or N-H fragments. A Lewis acid is a substance that can accept a pair of electrons to form a covalent bond. Examples of Lewis acids include all metal cations, and electron-deficient molecules such as boron trifluoride and aluminium trichloride.

Fast Eddie

Fast Eddie (born Edwin A. Smith; January 20, 1969) is an American house producer from Chicago, Illinois.

Career

Prior to his entry into the realm of production, Fast Eddie was one of the premier DJs of the early Chicago house movement. His talents earned him spots on WGCI and WBMX. During that period, he produced one of his first singles in collaboration with Kenny "Jammin'" Jason entitled "Can You Dance", circa 1986. In 1987, Eddie came out with other house tracks such as "The Whop", based on the dance of the same name. Eddie then left WGCI for WBMX for a short time and then quit his radio DJ gigs to concentrate on producing. In 1988, Eddie scored one of his biggest hits with "Acid Thunder" on the DJ International label. However, it was the track "Hip House" that really established his career as a producer. Eddie popularized the genre of hip house.

He scored several hits on the US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "Git On Up" (featuring Sundance), which spent a week at number one in 1989, but only reached number 49 in the UK Singles Chart.

1988

1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday (dominical letter CB) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1988th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 988th year of the 2nd millennium, the 88th year of the 20th century, and the 9th year of the 1980s decade.

In the 20th century, the year 1988 has the most Roman numeral digits (11).

1988 was a crucial year in the early history of the Internet—it was the year of the first well-known computer virus, the 1988 Internet worm. The first permanent intercontinental Internet link was made between the United States (NSFNET) and Europe (Nordunet) as well as the first Internet-based chat protocol, Internet Relay Chat. The concept of the World Wide Web was first discussed at CERN in 1988.

The Soviet Union began its major restructuring towards a mixed economy at the beginning of 1988 and began its gradual collapse. The first extrasolar planet, Gamma Cephei Ab (confirmed in 2002) was detected this year and the World Health Organization began its mission to eradicate polio, a feat that is nearly complete as of 2015.