Three tracks of clever, modern electronics. Horizons are expanded, stretched out by echoing bars with just enough punch for the dancefloor.
Sales can be a good critical indicator. I HEART ACID’s first vinyl outing sold out, quickly. Now those sales could have been the fanfare that accompanies a first release, especially one from an institutional UK club night but the quality of Room 13 is tough to deny. After that success the imprint is re-opening its doors for an EP from a stalwart of the British 303 scene. In the 90s Affie Yusuf picked up a TB303 and never looked back, the Southampton based musician has been doling out Techno napalm and subtler cuts ever since. It is this rich electronic history that Yusuf brings to his latest, I Heart Acid 02.
The Roland Box is of course at the epicenter of the three tracker. Warbling bass lines are met by steadily building percussion for simmering “Another Brother.” Beat patterns are more than a structure as chords twist and flex, rhythms bend and breathe under groaning pressures. Old school bleep and House descend for the retrospective “Flutter Deep.” Yusuf takes an expansive look at Acid. Rather than surges and vitriol the longer route is taken. This is nowhere more present than in the final piece. Coming in at over ten minutes “Katsura” is a meandering piece of considered Techno. Measured and never overbearing the track unfurls, ribbons of squawk unraveling against a backdrop of softened snare.
I Heart Acid 02 isn’t a return to the 90s, to Yusuf’s steroid pumped machine aided mayhem. Instead the Southampton man has dished up three tracks of clever, modern electronics. Horizons are expanded, stretched out by echoing bars with just enough punch for the dancefloor.
I Heart Acid 02 is available on I Love Acid / Balkan Vinyl.
