Album: Lover's Acid
Artist: Luke Vibert
Label: Planet Mu Records
Released: 2005-04-04
Summary: Upbeat and loud acid house with the occasional Aphex Twin style tangent.
This surprisingly coherent album is a compilation of the three 12" EPs '95-'99, Homewerk, and Lover's Acid, all reordered and fit onto a single CD.
The music is upbeat and loud; if it stuck to simple 4/4 rhythms with less fancy sequencing, it would be a perfect mindless floor filler for clubs, but it's more intelligent than that, occasionally getting sidetracked by Aphex Twin style tangents.
This album isn't particularly accessible. The first few times I listened to it, I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. It is growing on me, though. If you're going to judge whether or not to get the album based on just one track, I'd recommend giving Acid 2000 a listen. It's probably the easiest track on the album to get into.
Lover's Acid is a bit cheesy in places, but judging by the vocal sample "Can you imagine where you will be in the year two thousand?" I think it's safe to assume that Luke Vibert is being satirical in his use of the occasional cliche - a wise move considering that the music is probably better off with them included.
The star of this series is undoubtedly the distorted Roland TB-303, although the suitably tough drums and accompanying breakbeats come in a close second. The fact that a lot of the percussion sounds like it was performed on something other than Roland drum machines is pretty refreshing.
If you hate TB-303 acid lines, don't even bother looking at this. If you love them, though, it's probably worth checking out Lover's Acid as it does provide a refreshingly original perspective on acid house - quite a feat considering how long the genre has been going.
If you're into acid house or IDM, you might love this, but it's definitely not for everyone.