JL: We make extensive multi room environmental installations. They usually have to do with histories of counterculture and have the overarching themes of community, ritual, and psychosis.
JF: Or they're about countercultures and their relations to industrial society. The works are essentially rooms that we present as sculptures. In most cases you get a kind of incongruous juxtaposition of use and social context -- like putting a crystal meth lab next to an upper east side museum. We want the threshold of each room to be analagous to a cinematic cut.
JF: I think the body of work we've made over the past four years has taken a complex approach to mind alteration. Rather than taking a pro- or anti-drug stance, it seems to us like the need to alter consciousness is a central part of human life. This goes back to the hunter-gatherer societies in which taking psychedelic mushrooms or cacti was part of life. And, of course, fermented beverages are a part of almost all societies.
JL: We've been obsessed with the varieties of mind alteration, whether through New Age remedies or narcotics. People are constantly playing with their nervous systems. We've recently become interested in the pre-psychedelic era tests made by the US government that involved using hallucinogenic drugs as mind control agents.
Since the birth of the avant-garde in the mid-nineteenth century, art history has been considered mainly in formal ways: What led to what, who begat whom. That approach has a way of shutting out a basic idea—namely, the visionary, shamanic inexplicability of most of what we see. Johnson’s idea brings such an escape from reason back into the discussion, and could relegate some major art to the margins and move marginal (and questionable) things to the center. Keeping psychedelia in mind as you look at art stops it from being just a building block or part of a stylistic family; it allows recent work to regain some of the value that art has had over its 50,000-year history.
Terry Wilson: The cut-up techniques made very explicit a preoccupation with exorcism—William's texts became spells, for instance. How effective are methods such as street playback of tapes for dispersing parasites?
Brion Gysin: We-e-ell, you'd have to ask William about that, but I do seem to remember at least two occasions on whyich he claimed success...
Uh, the first was in the Beat Hotel still, therefore about 1961 or '2, and William decided (laughing) to "take care" of an old lady who sold newspapers in a kiosk, and this kiosk was rather dramatically and strategically placed at the end of the street leading out of the rue Git le Coeur toward the Place Saint Michel, and, uh, you whent up a flight of steps and then under an archway and as you came out you were spang! in front of this little old French lady who looked as if she'd been there since-at least since the French Revolution-when she had been knitting at the foot of the guillotine, and she lived in a layer of thickly matted, padded newspapers hanging around her piled very sloppily, and, uh, she was of absolutely incredible malevolence, and the only kiosk around there at that time that sold the Herald-Tribune, so that William (chuckling) found that he was having to deal with her every day, and every day she would find some new way to aggravate him, some slight new improvement on her malevolent insolence and her disagreeable lack of...uh (chuckling) collaboration with William in the buying of his newspaper (laughter)...
So...one day the little old lady burnt up inside her kiosk. And we came out to find that there was just the pile of ashes on the ground. William was... slightly conscience-stricken, but nevertheless rather satisfied with the result (laughter) as it proved the efficacy of his methods, but a little taken aback, he didn't necessarily mean the old lady to burn up inside there...And we often talked about this as we sat in a cafe looking at the spot where the ashes still were, for many months later...and to our great surprise and chagrin one day we saw a very delighted Oriental boy-I think probably Vietnamese-digging in these ashes with his hands and pulling out a whole hatful of money, of slightly blackened coins but a considerable sum, and (laughing) we would have been very glad to have it too—just hadn't thought of digging in the thing, so I said: "William, I don't think your operation was a complete success." And he said: "I am very glad that that beautiful young Oriental boy made this happy find at the end of the rainbow..."
Continuing the creative curatorial spirit of Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, this anthology presents the legacy of American acid house in three themed mixes curated and performed by CCC DJ Harry Bennett. Each mix contributes to the recognition of this musical subgenre, originating in late 1980s Chicago, as itself a rich strain of folk music.
“Acid Ballads” covers vocal acid tracks, which variously depict the trials of romantic love, feelings of erotic desire, communal ecstasy, and the phantasmorgia of urban nightlife. “Werk Songs” features the subgenre’s heaviest dance numbers, whose propulsive rhythms embody the jackhammer-style of “jackin” house. In “Slow Motion Acid,” signature acid tunes are spun in a chopped & screwed style which re-imagines classic Chicago house in the vein of the pitched-down rap music pioneered by DJ Screw in the 1990s.
The historical approach of the AAAH reflects the ambiguous etymology of the word “acid” in “acid house.” While the term initially referred to psychedelic sounds and the mind-altering substances traditionally consumed in nightclub environments, “acid” began to additionally invoke an “acid burn,” the act of stealing or sampling recordings endemic to dance music production. The anthology’s own acidic character can be found in its relation to history, which the anthology subjectively samples and re-presents in a psychedelic mix.
Anthology of American Acid House Vol. 1: Acid Ballads
Victor Romeo ft. Leatrice Brown “Love Will Find A Way (Club)” (Dance Mania – 1988) The It “Donnie (Club Mix)” (D.J. International – 1986) Jeanette Thomas “Shake Your Body (House Shaker)” (Chicago Connection – 1987) Blake Baxter “When We Used To Play” (KMS – 1987) Fast Eddie “Acid Thunder (Tyree’s SuperCooper Mix)” (D.J. International – 1988) John Rocca “Move” (Criminal Records – 1985) Blake Baxter “Get Layed” (KMS – 1987) Tyree feat. Chic “I Fear The Night (Subterraranian Mix)” (Underground – 1986) Adonis “We’re Rocking Down the House (Down Break)” (Trax Records – 1986) The Party Boy “Twilight Zone (Bam Bam’s Corrosion Mix)” (Urban Acid – 1988) Bam Bam “Spend The Night” (Westbrook Records – 1988)
Anthology of American Acid House Vol. 2: Werk Songs
LNR “Work It To The Bone” (House Jam – 1987) Blake Baxter “Body Work” (KMS 1987) Mike “Hitman” Wilson “Bango Acid” (Trax Records – 1988) Endless Pokers “The Poke (The After Poke Mix)” (D.J. International – 1988) Bobby Konders “Version” (Nu Groove 1992) Phuture “Phuture Jacks” (Trax Records – 1987) The Children “Freedom (Factory Mix)” (D.J. International – 1987) Mr. Lee “Never Gonna Change” (Trax Records – 1988) Pierre’s Pfantasy Club “Fantasy Girl (Club Mix)” (SRO 1987) Phuture “Slam! (Vocal)” (Trax Records – 1988)
Anthology of American Acid House Vol. 3: Slow Motion Acid
Phuture “Your Only Friend” (Trax Records – 1987) Adonis “No Way Back” (Trax Records – 1986) Blake Baxter “When A Thought Becomes U” (Underground Resistance – 1991) Fingers Inc. “Can You Feel It” (Serious Records – 1988) Maurice “This is Acid (New Dance Craze)” (Trax – 1988) Jamie Principle “Baby Wants To Ride” (ffrr – 1988) Bam Bam “Where’s Your Child” (Westbrook – 1988) Farley “Jackmaster” Funk & Ricky Dillard “It’s U” ( D.J. International – 1987)
Published by Acid Age. A field report compiling the research from the Acid Age blog, and new interviews.
Contributors include Antonin Artaud, William James, Timothy Leary, Rodney Graham, and Francis Alÿs. Interviews with Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman, Arik Roper, and Hamilton Morris.
