From Rivera's Groove Box #228: Electronome - Een Drumcomputer & Een Synthesizer

Some of the very best and innovating electro music comes from the Hague, Netherlands. The beat on this one is being hailed legendary by those who know it. It's made on a TR-808 drum machine and an overdriven, almost abused, synthesizer. It sounds insane, but yet so funky!

From Rivera's Groove Box #227: The Rurals - Big Fire

A huge dose of disco madness from 1999. I really like that simple, but very strong funky groove in this one, it just grows and grows. Very fun. The Rurals is most known for their deep house power ballads with the sweet sould drenched vocals from Marie Tweek, but this track proves that Andy Compton is a good producer who has an ability to spot a good groove.

From Rivera's Groove Box #226: DJ Deeon - 2 B Free

Bow wow we can do a bang. What a great disco house track from Chi-towns own ghetto dance music sensei DJ Deeon. Sure, the First Choice 'Let No Man Put Asunder' might be an overused sample in house music, but DJ Deeon managed to pull it off very well done. The track has gained a sorta cult following, and being featured in the 1997 Essential Mix by Daft Punk (when they used to be cool) certainly helped to cement this one into a classic.

From Rivera's Groove Box #225: Beverly Hills 808303 - Dinner At Barney's

Who would have thought, that some of the very best acid tracks would come out of the Hague, Netherlands? Beverly Hills 808303 is a 'dirty acid sound' project and as one could guess, every track is made solely with the Roland TR-808 and TB-303. And it totally works. The mastermind behind this project is a former member of the Dutch techno-pioneers Unit Moebius. Some of the tracks from Beverly Hills 808303 sound very funky, like its counterpart sound from Chicago, but some are absolute carnage with distorted drums and evil acid melodies. To sum it up - Beverly Hills 808303 is bare, stripped down, aggressive, high velocity, meant to do damage acid techno.

From Rivera's Groove Box #224: Ellis De Havilland - Fun Stuff

Acid house is fun. Those repetitive beats and squelching 303 bass melodies are very minimal and it may sound simple to a lot of listeners, but the truth is that there is no two acid house records in the world which sound alike. Die-hard gearheads know that every real Roland TB-303 Bass Line machine has its own unique sound. Some say, that the Chicagoan house producer James 'Jack Rabbit' Martin had the best sounding 303 unit, and that his track 'Rabbit Trax' feature some of the best acid lines in the history of its genre. And there are producers who swear that their acid bass machine sounds particularly evil - like it is haunted. And while it's true that a lot of acid music nowadays are made with virtual instruments, which may emulate the sound very well, even these records never sound alike. It's so because there are so many ways to tweak the acid bass line melodies, even if a producer would like to duplicate a well known acid melody, it would end up sounding different. I'm pretty sure even the original members of Phuture couldn't replay the exact acid bass lines they had for their classics for their later shows.

But the thing with acid is, there aren't really much memorable acid tunes produced in the modern times. We remember the classics because they sounded so unique, and a lot of modern acid house tracks just lack the spark. However this isn't the case for Ellis De Havilland's (aka Perseus Traxx) acid tracks. The last time I heard acid tracks sounding so fresh was when Helena Hauff made that split EP with Andreas Gehm in 2014. It's raw jacking acid straight from the sewer. But it's just produced so well, despite the lo-fi sound quality. The tracks sound very alive, because they're recorded live with all the hiss and bumps, probably first takes. The melodies are very funky - and they would sound like it when played on a real bass guitar I guess. The drums are very intense, sounding like true ghetto acid house should.

There have been some criticism for the made up biography for the fictional 'Ellis De Havilland'. The press release offered an intriguing backstory: De Havilland was a poor young man from Gary, Indiana who composed music on his church's reel-to-reel recorder in the late 80s before dying of a heroin overdose in 1992, at age 23. His tracks of blasted, lo-fi acid house were discovered later at a police auction. But it's a made up story presented to us from the label Bunker. Thump magazine wrote about it as being a case of 'When White Producers Co-Opt Black Identity'. But I don't care to be honest, because the music is just so good. I think it may be one of my favourite Bunker records releases! And being that Bunker is such an legendary label - that's saying a lot.