From Chicago to Shoom get ready for ‘Bless This Acid House’, a new authentic album inspired by the dawn of rave from UK producer & DJ Steve Mac.
Overflowing with collaborations with original house icons including Marshall Jefferson, E Raze, Robert Owens and Irvine Welsh.
In the summer of 1988, so legendary folklore recalls, a new kind of music appeared in abandoned warehouses, industrial units and fields across the UK. A phenomenon that would come to be known as Acid House. With direct influences from the USA especially that of Detroit and Chicago, as well as later Germany and Ibiza, it marked the dawn of the infamous and very British ‘Rave’ movement. The Second Summer of Love, as the summers of ’88-’89 became known, and with the help of a little newly synthesized compound MDMA redefined nightlife for generations to come in UK clubs such as Shoom and Spectrum.
One of the finest and most respected house music producer / DJs the UK has ever produced, Steve Mac pays great homage to this moment in time, compelling him to release his new acid and classic house inspired album in collaboration with many of the scene’s original and seminal greats entitled ‘Bless This Acid House’.
This is a collection of brand new, authentic and original sounding house tracks that transport you back to a time when house music was strictly underground and burgeoning. The album features collaborations with some of electronic music’s most influential names including house music pioneers Marshall Jefferson, E Raze, Robert Owens and the late Sleazy D, of which his track ‘Take You There’ was one of his final pieces of work, plus notorious chemical generation author Irvine Welsh.
To date two single releases have been released from the album, the first is ‘Jack Said What’ containing a sample — a nod to the foundational house pillar of the mid-1980s — ‘Jack Said What’. The track also inspired the name of Steve Mac’s Brighton-based record label. The track is an authentic and well-produced raw house cut, an acid-tinged dancefloor slayer filled with 303 and fizzy electro basslines which dominate throughout.
It’s followed by ‘One Day’, a deep cut that has all the hallmarks of a classic — think Frankie Knuckles ‘Tears’, or ‘I’ll Be Your Friend’, with its deep and memorable male vocal — delivering the aesthetics of a Chicago house record recorded 30-something years ago, but with some modern production techniques. The vocal on ‘One Day’ comes courtesy of Robert Owens, probably the greatest house music male vocalist of them all and a man whose golden voice has set the standard on many classics, such as the aforementioned ‘I’ll Be Your Friend’.
Steve Mac himself has impeccable credentials; a UK house music heavy hitter, he has been a pillar of the international house community from the start. He is a DJ, producer and record label boss of Jack Said What Records, in partnership with the infamous Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh. He is respected and revered for his analogue production style. Mac has released tracks for many labels including Nervous, MoS, Cr2, Toolroom, Saved, Underwater and Ovum. His remix credentials are just as strong, having worked on Jamiroquai, Simply Red and Michael Jackson releases over his 25-year career. More recently he has been releasing under the name These Machines — a tribute to the amount of vintage bits of analogue hardware he has in his studio in order to produce and expertly mix down his tracks.