Phuture – Acid Tracks

Lucked out on a bit of a battered copy which sounds better than it has any right to. What an absolute unit of a tune. Happy to find in the wild…

Recorded all the way back in 1985 when it was originally called In Your Mind. This is probably the most iconic and important dance records in history. Acid Tracks is the epitome of Acid House and the whole House Music genre. This is my favorite Acid House song. I believe for new people who want to explore this song may not like it at first, but if you listen to it a few times, then you will actually like it. Thank you Spanky (Earl Smith Jr.), DJ Pierre (Nathaniel Pierre Jones), Herbert J (Herbert Jackson), and also Marshall Jefferson for making Acid Tracks. Phuture Jacks and Your Only Friend are great also.

One of the best records ever made. You can really feel the energy.

Alongside Adonis ‘No Way Back’ and Sleezy D ‘I’ve Lost Control’, one of acid’s holy trinity. All three set the grid for brutal tech-hedonism, Adonis and Sleezy urging you to lose your shit, Phuture taking their inspiration from LSD-soaked nights at the Music Box. The sleeper here (for some) is the crack-era cautionary tale ‘Your Only Friend’: stripped down, spooked out, fucked up, wearing addiction’s cruel ravages like a bleak-hearted badge of honour. Simplicity never sounded so downright scary or, indeed, essential. You need this.

CONFIRMED WOW! ON acid LISTENING to THIS must have BEEN ferciuous if YOU were at this witnessing....The original title for the song 'Acid Tracks' was 'In Your Mind'. In My Mind is a seriously good name for a track... This is still hard as fuck music. And if you dont get it welllll Anyway I'm chatting shit....? So read these notes... DJ Pierre had given a tape of the track to Ron Hardy to play at the Muzic Box in Chicago it then appeared on a tape Hardy had labelled 'Acid Tracks'. So this name stuck and Phuture decided to issue it under this title. According to DJ Pierre the 'acid' in the title of the tape was a reference to LSD as this was a popular drug at the club. It was not a reference to the sound of the Roland 303.................. ;)

There is mushhhhhhhroooooooooooooooooooooom in this sound space........ Phuture is a series of guys in the same mind! FUNK ;)

ALL OF THESE TRACKS ARE SO SO SOOOO GOOD...

Lets hope the royalties come through soon to pay ALL of these males and females who are the people who deserve the credit for making this astounding ep.... Alcohol will be your only friend................

just got remastered repress. awesome quality. can't stop listening )

Phuture Jacks is the One, without doubt. great hi hat patterns and devastating B line

Considered the earliest Acid House tune ever, "Acid Tracks" story begins with the friendship of two friends which later became part of Phuture - DJ Pierre, and Earl Spanky Smith. Very close to each other since the high school, they grew up together in a very strong musical environment, until a day when DJ Pierre got surprised by his friend Spanky when he came on his house while he was DJing and told something like "Hey, I bought a drum machine, it's time to produce!", back in 1984.

Since Earl Smith had a job, he could afford the expensive equipments necessary to do it. But at the first moment, it was just a Drum Machine, which made them do drum solos – cleverly used by Pierre on his DJ sets. Earl Spanky had a natural ability with kicks, snares & hi-hats, so he quickly turned himself into an amazing drum line maker.

One day, Earl Spanky bought a Roland 303 Acid Bassline, and they both tried with their friend Herbert J to manipulate those sounds, and that acid loop seemed to be already there (as a preset), but at that time they really did not know yet how to create different ones. “We didn’t know how to program. When we plugged it, it was already making that sound. It had plenty of different acid loops. As we didn’t know how to ‘create’, we worked on the only one that sounded good. No one really invented it, it was already in there. We sequenced it, and Spanky made the beats”, said Pierre, trying to remember his first steps as a producer, about 21 years ago. Boom! - "Acid Tracks" was ready.

Marshall Jefferson, who was giving them advices, became a sort of an executive producer for their first tunes, and was also behind their partnership with Larry Sherman from Trax Records (the single got out on Sherman’s red label many months later, in 1987). Jefferson told them immediately to slow down the “Acid Tracks” BPMs from 125 to 120, because it was too fast for the dancefloors when it was made. “This is too fast, New York won’t accept it”, remind DJ Pierre about his friend’s advice.

The big turning point that made this early Acid House tune a hit lies in the legendary Music Box cellar and its historical resident, Ron Hardy. At the same year of 1985, Spanky came to Pierre and said: “This is the place to be, you gotta go to the Music Box, the DJ there is incredible!” - They both started to be regulars on that venue, more precisely an underground parking place for about three hundred people which would change their lives forever.

Ron Hardy did not know them the day these two kids, Pierre & Spanky, decided to give him a tape with the Acid Tracks demo. That was in 1985, just before the party's opening. As soon as they gave Ron the tape, the visionary DJ listened to it and said, smiling: “It’s ok... When can I get a copy?”

That first night, Ron was bold enough to play “Acid Tracks” four times. The first one was immediately rejected by the public, and nobody stayed on the dancefloor. But Ron Hardy was a forward thinking mind, so he played a second time, and some people started to pay attention. The third time, it was already well accepted, and in the fourth one, the crowd went mad: the impact was so strong that it became a hit.

Nobody imagined who could be the author, the regulars just thought that it was something made by Ron Hardy himself, so they named that tune “Ron Hardy’s Acid Trax”; but later, by the time it was released in 1987, the audiences discovered it was made by Pierre, Spanky and Herb J from Phuture.

Also in the same record, another big hit was born. Let’s go back to 1985. Some months later after “Acid Tracks” conception, DJ Pierre started to think about another music. “About that time, I already knew how to program it”, said Pierre on an interview years later. He did some basslines, wrote some lyrics, and recorded them with his personal vocals, but Marshall Jefferson interfered, saying that the sinister lyrics with “This is cocaine speaking!” on its ouverture needed a deeper and more scary voice. Earl Spanky Smith had it, so he owned the chance to sing the legendary tune – as well as to make the beats for it. The tune was baptized “Your Only Friend”. These vocals quote mentioned the white powder influence, which reflected the reality of all those nightclubs at that time. Acid and cocaine were both largely consumed by the underground audiences since the Disco era, and they still dominated the night scene in early House era.

An all round classic release which still holds up to this day. However, a special mention for the B1 track Phuture Jacks is so desperately needed. Vastly underrated compared to the other two, and for those who were there first time round it was a proper, underground, warehouse annihilator.

Ok, did someone ever notice the very low volume singing just before the beat of 'acid tracks' kicks in. I just discovered this today....

turn up the volume, put on your headphones and pay good attention.