Paranoid London: Arseholes, Liars, and Electronic Pioneers (digital, Paranoid London Records, February 2024)

Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley are on a self-proclaimed mission to “save” acid house from “smiley faces, rave, and sugary excess”. I don’t know how I feel about that: I like rave, I’m happy to indulge the odd smiley face, and I’ve been known to be sucked in by sugary excess. Well, let us leave that to one side for now.

Let us also pass quietly over the opening track on this album, an ambient number with vocals from Bobby Gillespie. It might be perfectly fine, but it’s ruined for me by the flashbacks to the disappointment induced by, well, any Primal Scream album other than Screamadelica.

Because the rest of this album is absolutely banging. It is proper hard and dirty acid house. (In some cases, it is positively filthy.) Sometimes it’s stripped back, sometimes it’s more melodic, but there’s never an ounce of fat on it. The sound is analogue, but not in a wonky way, and the guest vocalists are mostly great (I especially like the two Jennifer Touch tracks). There are touches of electro and bleep, there’s at least one synth line that gives me Detroit feels, there are some nicely euphoric moments (Touch The State Of That), and near the end there’s a very welcome dose of 303 squelch (Fuse). And it’s basically all a great deal of fun.

I bought this from the band/label’s Bandcamp page.