Atomâ„¢ Presents... | Acid Evolution 1988 - 2003
Logistic | CD
Uwe Schmidt is prolific in the extreme. Operating under a rapidly growing list of pseudonyms including, but by no means limited to, Atom Heart, Lassigue Bendthaus and, of course, Señor Coconut, he has excelled as an innovator in too many genres to mention. Here, under his best known moniker Atom™, he presents an overview and primer, charting the development of acid over 15 years by 16 leading practitioners. Or so he would have us believe...
Closer inspection reveals that all 16 artists 'presented' are, in fact, none other than Schmidt himself (who in one fell swoop adds another sixteen monikers to the list). To those familiar with Schmidt's work this should come as no surprise, playing games with identity has always been a central feature of his profuse output and here it's no different.
'Acid Evolution...' forces the listener to question and confront expectations. Is this a history, culled from Schmidt's no doubt extensive archives, or did he reconstruct this 'acid evolution', painstakingly creating a reverse-engineered 'history', built with the benefit of hindsight?
Whatever the truth is, 'Acid Evolution...' is a timely glance backwards at electronic music's recent past veering from the minimal, stripped tones of Phresh Phantasy's 'Come on Acid' (1988) to the sweaty lock-groove hedonism of Takeshi Onda's 'Lock It' (2003) by way of Microsmiles' swirling and narcotic-infused 'Drugs Are Right' (1999).
As artists like the Aphex Twin and 808 State look backwards towards a golden era of 303s, acid and warmly remembered 'summers of love', Schmidt proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he can still rub shoulders with the best of them.
