THE SACRED ACIDCORE

There are plenty of ways to describe acidcore, but to put it very simply, it sounds like a distorted 909. a screaming acid line, distortion everywhere and that feeling that the whole track is about to fall apart. And that's exactly why we love it.

Acidcore has always had something different compared to other styles of hard electronic music. It doesn't need to be clean, complicated or technically perfect. Sometimes a simple acid sequence, a good kick and the right amount of distortion are enough to completely destroy a dancefloor.

 

WHERE DID ACIDCORE COME FROM?

To understand Acidcore, you have to go back to the acid and rave culture of the late 80s and early 90s.

The Roland TB-303 was already becoming famous for its strange squelching sound, while hardcore was getting faster and harder. At some point, these two worlds started getting closer together. 

The free party and sound system scenes also played a huge role in the evolution of these sounds. Music was being made for big systems, warehouses, fields and illegal parties rather than for a basic studio monitor or a radio station. We touched on that in our latest article on old-school tekno history!

And when you hear some of those old records through a proper system, you understand very quickly why.

 

Sounds of Acidcore (Vol.1), 1996

THE 303

The TB-303 is obviously a huge part of the Acidcore story, but the machine itself isn't really the interesting part.It's what people started doing to it.

Turn the resonance up. Play with the cutoff . Distort it. Run it through something else. Resample it. Do it again.A simple sequence can suddenly become this completely screaming, unstable sound that barely resembles the original patch.

That's probably one of the things we like most about acid. You can start with something ridiculously simple and get really creative. In today's acidcore scene, you can really find some very original sounds that are still based on the TB-303.

 

THEN THERE'S THE KICK

If the 303 gives Acidcore its voice, the kick gives it the weight. This is probably the most essential part of the genre and what that interests us the most as sound designers.

In terms of design, it looks a lot like the original gabber kick, but there are many ways to make it more unique and impactful. kicks can be short, long, distorted, metallic, saturated, noisy, clean underneath or completely destroyed. There isn't really one formula.

A lot of their character actually comes from the harmonics created by distortion. Once you start pushing a kick hard enough, you're no longer just changing its volume or texture. That's why processing matters so much.

In fact, we're working on an article entirely focused on the sound design of hard kicks because it's a topic that deserves a more in-depth look!

 

THE ACIDCORE WE KEEP COMING BACK TO

What we love about Acidcore is that it never really stayed in one place.

There are tracks that sound extremely close to the old free party sound, others that are much darker and more industrial, ore more atmospheric and others that are almost completely focused on the relationship between the kick and the acid.

We've always been drawn to the artists who manage to keep that raw feeling while still bringing something of their own to it. Here are some of our favorites:

 

Mr Gasmask : https://soundcloud.com/mrgasmask

NZ42 : https://soundcloud.com/nz42

Ling Ling: https://soundcloud.com/freetaxler

Sevenum Six : https://soundcloud.com/sevenumsix_live

Vikkei: https://soundcloud.com/vikkei

Acid Division: https://soundcloud.com/acid_division/tracks

Enko : https://soundcloud.com/enkosound

Hypnoise Theory: https://soundcloud.com/hypnoise-theory

DRYMK : https://soundcloud.com/drymkmusic

Schmirlap: https://soundcloud.com/shmirloop

 

And many more!

 

WHY WE'RE MAKING AN ACIDCORE KICK PACK

Before Phazor Audio came along, it was just us having fun with our gear and selling the kicks we made for fun. So naturally, Acidcore was something we wanted to explore properly.

This week, our acidcore kick sample pack is coming out. Built around the sounds we actually want to hear in our own productions. We're experimenting with different kick sources, distortion chains, pitch processing, resampling and layering to create a wide range of characters rather than 100 versions of the same sound.

In addition to simply finding kicks, you'll find a kick builder with attacks, tails, top kicks, Serum presets, full scale kicks and more...

For everyone who's read this far, enjoy an exclusive 20 percent discount on this pack coming up with the code AC20 💀

WHAT'S YOUR ACIDCORE?

There are probably thousands of Acidcore tracks that have influenced the scene over the years, and everyone has their own ones that they keep coming back to.

So we're curious:

What's your favourite Acidcore track? Which artist made you fall in love with the sound? 

Drop it in the comments.

We're always looking for new tracks to listen to.

KEEP THE ACID ALIVE.