Acid House
The 8 Best Acid House
Tracks of All Time
One discontinued Roland bass synthesiser, misused. Chicago producers found that twisting a TB-303's filter mid-pattern produced a squelch nothing else made, and Britain built two summers of illegal parties on the sound.
- Origin
- Chicago and London, 1987
- Tempo
- 118–135 BPM
- Also known as
- acid, acieed, 303 music, second summer of love
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
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Number 1: A Guy Called Gerald / Voodoo Ray
1988 · Rham!
Made in a Manchester bedroom on borrowed equipment, with a vocal sample truncated by a sampler that ran out of memory. The most beautiful accident in British dance music.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — Both Rooms, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 2: Phuture / Washing Machine
1987 · Trax
The B-side to the record that named the genre, and arguably the better one. Twelve minutes of a machine being tortured, released because Ron Hardy kept playing the tape.
Number 3: 808 State / Pacific State
1989 · ZTT
A saxophone line and birdsong over an acid bassline, which should not work and does. The record that proved this music could be pretty without becoming polite.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 4: Humanoid / Stakker Humanoid
1988 · Westside
Brian Dougans making the most aggressive 303 record of the era and taking it into the UK top twenty. Britain's answer arrived louder and faster than the question.
Number 5: Fast Eddie / Acid Thunder
1988 · DJ International
Chicago answering Britain's enthusiasm with something harder and more functional. A reminder that while London was having a summer of love, the source was still making tools.
Number 6: D Mob / We Call It Acieed
1988 · ffrr
The moment the underground became a novelty hit and got itself banned from daytime radio for a chant. Cynical, effective, and genuinely the sound of a scene losing control of its own name.
Number 7: Joey Beltram / Energy Flash
1990 · R&S
A Brooklyn teenager, a Belgian label and a whispered word. The point where acid stops being playful and becomes the harder European techno that swallowed it.
Number 8: Josh Wink / Higher State of Consciousness
1995 · Strictly Rhythm
Years after the fashion passed, Wink runs a single 303 line through a filter for six minutes and produces the most physically effective record in the whole tradition.