Since its inception, acid house was received far more enthusiastically in the UK than in the U.S. Writing about his favorite tracks for Fact, Ed DMX said: "Even though nearly all the best records were made in Chicago, the music took off in a big way over here, [where] it was massively popular, much imitated." The UK top 100 for 1989 boasts the likes of Inner City's "Good Life", Lil Louis's "French Kiss", and British early adopter A Guy Called Gerald's "Voodoo Ray" while the U.S. charts bear out that we all but ignored our homegrown sound (though we charted Marshall Jefferson's “Move Your Body” as blanched by the Belgian act Technotronic as "Pump up the Jam"). No historian or music critic would ever categorize 1989 as Chicago's "second summer of love".
Beginning in 2007, singles began emanating from a British label and act known as Paranoid London. The duo of Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley, flashed an unfettered enthusiasm for—and emulation of—the mad whinnying frequencies of the 303, but coupled it to an ethos that in the 21st century might more closely align with punk. They didn't do any press, didn't promo their music, didn't upload mixes to Soundcloud to build buzz, and when they released their debut album at the end of December 2014, there was no digital version. While the group were much discussed in Europe and the UK, there was nary a ripple nor mention made stateside.
A year on, the ten track album is now readily available digitally and on CD. For an electronic music culture increasingly bloated, glitzy, and insufferable, Paranoid London is a refreshing punch to the nuts. The tracks that Delgado and Whalley craft are simple as a prison shiv, not adding layers of gloss or paint to its acid-house, but stripping it back to its basics. Almost every track is erected from the same blocks: handclaps bright as tin foil, dry snares, sharp hi-hats, concussive kicks, all of it buoyed by queasy undulations of bass. They emulate Trax and those shoddy, shady days of Chicago pressings to the point that you expect a chunk of rubber to be embedded in the records themselves.
There are spot-on acid house bangers like "Headtrack" and "Paris Dub 3" that evoke peak Junior Boy's Own releases as well as late-'80s Chicago. On the latter, the duo collaborate with Paris Brightledge, a vocalist on early tracks by Sterling Void and Joe Smooth. The coup de grace is the deadpan intonation of Mutato Pintado; on the wet cardboard thud of "Transmission 5", he switches out words that range from the inane to the lurid: "skin on my shoes...feeling good...lipstick...hair in my hand...late night..." and at one point, he croons about "playing by the rules" then suppresses a small chuckle.
Playing by the rules of making classic acid house while also laughing at them, setting up expectations and then undercutting them: It's what Paranoid London does best. “Lovin U (Ahh Shit)” is a love song but the title sends mixed signals, approximating the cross purposes of hook-up culture. "You've got the green light/ right past the stop sign" DJ Genesis sings in her monotone, juxtaposing "forever loving you/ just a little bit." Its sentimental in a way that works with the group’s decidedly cheeky unsentimental manner.
Earlier this summer I got to see Paranoid London play live as part of Amsterdam’s Dekmantel festival. They were sandwiched between two legends: DJ Harvey and Derrick May. But after a weekend of DJs coolly manipulating laptops, turntables and drum machines, there was something visceral about PL's live set, less clinical, more chaotic. The crowd churned like a mosh pit rather than a dance floor and rather than throw cake into the crowd, Mutato Pintado brandished a bottle of vodka lifted from backstage and began to pour full cups of it, passing it out to the crowd.
