single // Acid Folk
A while ago a friend told me that every London map
designer includes a fake road somewhere in their maps, the purpose
being that it allows them to tell if anyone has copied their version
illegally. One can only imagine how much of a wild goose chase you'd
find yourself on if you actually tried to find that road or asked
a cabbie to take you there.
I found myself thinking about that when a copy of
Perplexer's 'Acid Folk' purchased for £1.45
from eBay arrived through my letterbox. 'Acid Folk' is listed in
my copy of Mute's Statement 2 2001 catalogue,
but nothing about the CD tells you it's a Mute release at all. No
mention on the label, it doesn't appear to be licenced, and the
address for the record label is a completely different part of London
from where Mute were based at the time. So I don't know. Perhaps
it's just the version I bought, or maybe it was issued by Mute on
behalf of the label (Deutsch-Englische-Fruendschaft, or DEF) without
wishing to draw any attention to the Mute connection. Whether it's
the same DEF that has been Moby's management agency
for years also isn't clear to me.
But enough of the mystery. Perplexer's public face
was 'enacted' by Marc Olbertz. 'Acid Folk' was written and produced
by Alexander Breuer, Andreas Schneider and Ramon Zengler; Zengler
is most familiar to me as one half of the seminal Hardfloor, whose
'Acperience' EP was responsible for stimulating acid house's second,
enduring renaissance on dancefloors. Unsurprisingly, then, that
'Acid Folk' should have a lovely set of 303s running through it.
However, it plays second fiddle to the bagpipe drone that dominates
the track; that's right, acid house meets traditional Scottish folk
music. Just when it seemed that every possible novelty permutation
of dance music had been exploited, along comes a track which mixes
the sort of happy hardcore beats that used to get skinhead Dutch
ravers very excited, bagpipes and acid house grooves. I used to
think that you could add a 303 to anything and it would make it
sound superb (see acid head Ege Bam Yasi's How To Acid An Egg
for evidence of that); that's evidently not the case with bagpipes,
or at least it doesn't feel that way to me. I'll be relatively upfront
and say that I don't really like 'Acid Folk'.
The vocal mix is too fast for my liking, plus -
despite some Scottish roots - I don't really like the sound of the
bagpipes anyway, so it's sort of difficult to listen to; the Low-Speed
mix is slightly slower and I would really love this mix were it
not for the bagpipes, since it would just be a constant acid rush.
I'm also not a fan of hardcore DJ Ellis Dee's breakbeat-and-drone
version although the rave stabs and 1992 'ardcore vibes are quite
good.
The House mix starts with some nice sounds, a deep
house beat / bassline and processes the bagpipe riff into the equivalent
of the euphoric clipped sax samples that used to be a favourite
of house producers back in the day. It's my favourite mix overall,
mostly because the bagpipes are treated and not too irritating;
I was never a huge house fan back in the day and yet I really like
this. The Pro-Gress mix is a bit all over the place for my liking,
blending some ear-friendly aesthetics with some deeper sounds to
create a hybrid that would probably appeal to fans of trance. Once
again it's the bagpipe drone that stops this from being better than
it should be. I do find it quite strange - in 1994 remixers usually
went out of their way to dispense with most of the original elements
of a track yet here all the mixers keep the bagpipes in. There are
other mixes available on the 12" and limited remix 12";
I'm not that much of a Mute completist to bother with those for
this release.
Perhaps I'm starting to understand why Mute didn't
properly affix their name to this after all...
12":
A1. Acid Folk (Low Speed Mix)
A2. Acid Folk (House Remix)
B1. Acid Folk (Vocal Mix)
B2. Acid Folk (DJ Tom & Norman Remix)
remix 12":
A1. Acid Folk (Ellis D. Remix Edit 2)
A2. Acid Folk (Cream & Candy Remix)
B1. Acid Folk (Exit EEE Remix)
B2. Acid Folk (Pro-Gress Remix)
cd:
1. Acid Folk (Vocal Mix)
2. Acid Folk (Low Speed Mix)
3. Acid Folk (Ellis D. Remix Edit 2)
4. Acid Folk (House Remix)
5. Acid Folk (Pro-Gress Remix)
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