The Hardcore Overdogs

It's widely established that acid house gave rise to the techno explosion of the 90s, and all that followed - trance, breakbeat, gabber, jungle....
Yet, acid never really went away. Acid or Acid Techno were major subgenres of the whole techno thing throughout the 90s and had their loyal fanbase and dedicated "floors" on parties and raves.

It's interesting to see that there was always a crossover between acid and hardcore; acid gave rise to a lot of the first really rough techno tracks; many hardcore producers did acid on the side or vice versa.
This was especially the case in Germany with mono tone records, the "hard noize from cologne" thing, Hamburg, Berlin, overdrive, and so on. but even a lot of the early "Dutch Gabber" releases are close to acid.

and when "the man" tried to get all traces of rebellion, rough- and dirtiness out of "techno" - the meager decades of minimalist techno or retro-disco influenced house - acid parties were often the only place where you could still get a grip on a good, distorted 909.

Thus, there is acid - there is harder acid - there is hardcore acidcore even (we talked about that in the past).

But, some of the artists within the acid / acidcore circus really took it to the extreme.
there is little trace left of the funky acid house boom from the 80s in their productions.
the drums get distorted to mere squarewaves - the 303s get manipulated until they sound closer to an exploding jet engine; the percussion and cymbals become walls of noise; and often an insane amount of reverberation "drowns" the whole track until you wonder whether this is still a techno production, or a secret supergroup composed of members of einstürzende neubauten, ken kesey, and albert hofmann.

now, let me not waste any more words. check these tunes yourself. and heed our disclaimer: these sounds might corrode your mind.

1. Agro - Bullen Raus