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Acid - Can You Jack? Soul Jazz
****

Thankfully, there's not a smiley logo in sight. The arrival of acid house in Europe in the late 1980s sparked a tabloid outrage about raves and drugs, but the music which drove this particular revolution escaped the headlines. Forged and perfected in Chicago's Music Box (where resident DJ Ron Hardy was happy to play rough-and-ready demos from local young producers experimenting with Roland 303 synths), acid house tracks were freaky blasts of sci-fi fever, alien and futuristic slam-dunks compared to the clean, smooth disco-driven tunes to be found elsewhere. Naturally, some are showing their age, but Soul Jazz's brilliantly compiled retrospective of acid's defining age highlight such flashbacks to relish as the subterranean stabs of Phuture's Acid Tracks, the hypnotic voodoo of Virgo Four's Take Me Higher and the dark, swirling pops of Tyree's Acid Over. www.souljazzrecords.co.uk

Jim Carroll