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.