Luke Vibert

Thur Nov 13

Holocene

You might say the word "acid" resonates with British producer Luke Vibert. But it doesn't make his mind flash back to hippies turning on, tuning in, and dropping out; rather, acid is the sound originated by Chicago house trio Phuture on their 1987 single "Acid Trax," which sparked a brand of ecstatic electronica marked by the ungodly squelches emitted by Roland TB-303 synthesizers. That unforgettable sound--alternately like a sumo wrestler's bowels rumbling after a wasabi-heavy meal or a rubber band stretched across the equator and being plunked repeatedly--drove thousands of ravers bonkers and inspired many to use it in their own music.

Vibert's new album, YosepH (Warp), pays homage to the 303, which fueled many of the anthems that animated England's 1988 Summer of Love, and consequently catalyzed rave culture worldwide. But on YosepH, Vibert places the squelch within electro's downtempo, ultrafunky context, marinates his neck-snapping rhythms in a season's worth of Star Trek sound FX and tributes to Louis and Bebe Barron's bleepy Forbidden Planet soundtrack, with enough loopy vocal and EZ-listening samples to double you over with glee.

"If people started making nice, funky acid stuff, it'd be quite nice, but I definitely don't mean to kickstart [an acid revival]," Vibert says. "I love the sound of the Roland TB-303 and have enjoyed making tracks with it for a while now, but have never really found a suitable home for a whole album of that kind of analog music until signing up with Warp."

Revered by electronica heavies like Aphex Twin and Autechre, Vibert has become known as a producer's producer. For the last decade, he's been lacing cheeky humor into tracks that flit from genre to genre with nomadic restlessness and maverick inventiveness, though some people have knocked Vibert's music for being too goofy. ("Where are they? I'll kick their heads in," Vibert cracks.)

With a track called "I Love Acid," an album title that ends in pH, and a perverse trippiness to all of his music, Vibert must've partaken of the hallucinogen. But no. "I've never made tracks under the influence of anything other than booze or spliff," he says. And Bush never sniffed a line.