- A welcome reissue that highlights how Tin Man would go on to refresh the 303 sound.
- It should come as little surprise that Tin Man's 2005 LP, Acid Acid—repressed, expanded and now containing an extra "acid" in its title—is the most faithful to the classic acid sound. You won't encounter the ambience-bathed vocals poured into Scared, nor the chamber pop strings and reeds heard on Vienna Blue. For the most part, Acid Acid Acid is eight sides of dance floor minimalism that finds Johannes Auvinen, then barely a year into using his Tin Man alias, drunk on his obsession with Phuture. And that's no overstatement—Auvinen has always been a stubbornly passionate "acid fanboy."
Acid Acid Acid is the kind of early-career album that in hindsight reveals an artist's subsequent development. In Auvinen's case, this revolves around the evolution of what he calls "neo acid." There's his innovative and widely hailed ability to shift the 303's focus from bass to melody. But just as vital is his outsider sense of experimentation, which has earned him a following both among devout clubgoers and noise oddballs. (Scared, after all, came out on White Denim, which has released plenty of power electronics and industrial.) The bonus tracks will appeal most to the latter group. Between the distortion gnawing at "Heated Acid"'s funk bassline, the hollow techno loop on "Crisp & Cosey Acid" and the rock backbeat anchoring "Jack It Acid," you get the impression they failed to make the initial pressing because they broke from acid a little too forcibly. Auvinen was still another couple of years out from embracing radical change.
These signs are subtler on the original tracks, but lurk in all the dense, analog squelch and modulations and their expansive ascents and descents. The dirge-like "Come Feel The Acid" reveals his gift for blow-torching acid's euphoric thrust into something slower, tougher and moodier. "Love And Sex" is an early flash of his melancholic side, marrying a patient yet determined melody to chilly drone frequencies flecked with pangs of loneliness and isolation.
There are also traces of a fascination with what he would later describe as the contrasting of small and large sonic details, and the manipulation of "dimensionality" through reverb and spatial effects. "Acid Acid" is a prime example. Its icy toms, snares and cymbals are enveloped by bass that shapeshifts from gurgling liquid to decayed rubber and back again. The results greatly enlarge the proportions of acid's core attributes, drowning listeners in an expansive matrix of clashing atmospheres and granular infinities. Something similar occurs on "Acid Supreme"—you could imagine crawling inside the massive folds of sound oozing from the 303.
Auvinen's subsequent releases have ventured well beyond acid's strict formalism. An album like 2017's Dripping Acid, for example, is a far more nuanced expression than this LP. Still, there's a wonderfully elemental energy and tension coursing through Acid Acid Acid that remains unique to his earliest fan letters to the genre.
Lista de sequência de músicas01. Flip
02. Forever
03. Confusion's In
04. Acid Supreme
05. Giving It To You
06. Love And Sex
07. Come Feel The Acid
08. Bass Tunnel
09. Hot Juice
10. Acid Acid
11. Heated Acid
12. Crisp & Cosey Acid
13. Jack It Acid