What do you get if you cross a brass band with acid house? Acid Brass, of course. This unlikely subgenre is the creation of British artist Jeremy Deller—whose work is often informed by pop music—and the Fairey Band, which was established 75 years ago by employees of the Fairey Aviation Works in Stockport, UK.
Merging these two disparate genres of musical history might sound like the sort of idea that would crop up in the pub after a few drinks, and that’s because it did. Deller and a few friends had a conversation and the idea emerged, they thought it had legs, and so the project was born. This was back in 1997, and Deller created an installation, the flow chart below called A History of the World, and a collaborative album Acid Brass: a Collection of Acid House Anthems which toured and featured classic dance anthems from the late 80s/early 90s interpreted by a brass band, along with Rodney Newton who did bass arrangements.
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The music was from a time when white gloves and whistles were unconditionally waved in the air and everyone wore terrible baggy clothes and watched The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, all without a hint of irony or nostalgia or reinvention. But like bright baggy clothes and the Fresh Prince, Acid Brass has had a brief re-emergence—at least in the microcosm of a UK TV channel. Due to Jeremy Deller’s current exhibition, Joy in People, at the Hayward Gallery in London, the BBC’s The Culture Show recently discussed the Acid Brass project with him and the band in the video above—band members recall the heady days of touring which included Björk dancing in the aisles, women rushing the stage, pole dancers, and a few post-gig ales.
While the idea may sound like a Monty Python sketch, it wasn’t just about the humor. As Deller remarks, “This could work as an idea, but also as a musical project. It wasn’t just funny—there’s humor in it obviously. There’s meant to be humor and absurdity like in a lot of things I do, but there’s totally something about it that resonated beyond just being a music project. I was actually trying to prove a point beyond music, maybe about music’s relationship to history and social history.”
Acid house came at a time, in London anyway, when people had been suffering under Thatcherism and wanted a chance to go out and get messed up and forget about their lack of prospects, because enough drugs will do that for you. British brass bands were traditionally found in small provincial towns where they’d compete and provide entertainment before people had radios and TVs. And in Acid Brass, these two British traditions met to make an unlikely new subgenre that celebrated both and reflected the escapism they provided for their communities.
Here’s a couple of our fave tracks from the project, below:
KLF – “What Time is Love?” Kevin Saunderson – “The Groove That Won’t Stop” 808 State – “Pacific 202”Jeremy Deller, Joy in People, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. On now till 18 May.
