Tags: Acid Techno

Review: Bushwacka! deserves any plaudits that come his way. He was there at the birth of acid house and went on to foment his own take on tech house. He held a legendary residency at the End in London and of course dropped countless seminal tunes alongside Layo, not least their epic 'Love Story' mash-up. Now the acclaimed but still relevant UK veteran dives back into his roots to serve up the sounds that came before tech house with highlights that would have been heard at the time at parties like Heart & Soul, Release, The Drop, Vapour Space, and at venues like Heaven and The End. Skippy, dubbed garage and driving house all feature in a fine collection.

Review: Since booting up again a couple of years ago, Network Records has released an enticing mix of re-mastered catalogue classics and fresh remixes. This double vinyl collection maintains that approach by pairing vintage reworks from the vaults with recently commissioned revisions. There's naturally plenty of high-grade floor fodder on show, with our picks including Chez Damier and Ron Trent's wonderful 1996 Urban Sound Gallery mix of Andrew Pearce's gospel-tinged house treat 'Day By Day', Xen Mantra's sweaty, warehouse-ready 1994 rave re-fix of Slo Moshun's 'Bells of New York', Derrick May's vintage Motor City techno fix of Neal Howard's 'To Be Or Not To Be', and a pleasingly weighty and sleazy Sequel re-rub of Rhythmatic's 'Demons'.

Review: At long last, a light has been shone on the career of one of the UK's true underground rave heroes: Bedford producer (and man of umpteen aliases) Tony Bonisegna. Cold Blow and Musique Pour La Danse have done a terrific job on the two-part set, offering up remastered killer cuts from Bonisenga's vast catalogue alongside extensive sleeve notes by Join The Future author Matt Anniss (whose book was the first to tell the producer's remarkable story). There's plenty to set the pulse racing on this first volume, including Bonisegna's earliest explorations of house in the late 80s (both as part of The Rhythm Squad), the clonking and bleeping shuffle of Original Clique's 'F (Whistle Mix)', the Pet Shop Boys-go-to-a-rave shimmer of 'Tonnere' by Pierrepoint, the acid-flecked breaks madness of Big Showdown's 'They're Here' and the sub-heavy early breakbeat hardcore of AEK's 'Lick It'.

Review: Between 1986 and 1994, Tony Boninsegna released an insane amount of music under dozens of different aliases, offering up rave-ready tracks that variously mixed and matched elements of acid house, bleep & bass, hardcore techno and breakbeat. Yet he remains almost unknown. Notes From The Underground, a two-part retrospective of his career, is therefore well overdue. This second part, which boasts extensive sleeve notes from UK dance music historian Matt Anniss, is packed to the rafters with re-mastered treats, with highlights including the electro-tinged bleep business of Lab Technicians' 'We Gave You Life', the weighty acid breaks of Sykosis 451's 'Monsoon', the breakbeat hardcore funkiness of MI7's 'Show I', and the proto-jungle madness of Raggahead's 'Give The People What They Want'.