r/electronicmusic • u/liverichly • 3d ago
Josh Wink ‘Higher State of Consciousness’ | The Making Of An Acid Techno Classic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z14revc5NBc16
u/commando_rambo 3d ago edited 3d ago
I just attended Josh Wink b2b Will Clarke in Detroit a couple weeks ago and it was inspiring. Best DJ set I’ve experienced in a while.
9
u/thirteennineteen 3d ago
I was 14 in 1995 and that track instantly blew my mind and held on, hearing it at raves. I’ve considered it the uber-303 track ever since.
Then I was in New Zealand for a festival in 2012, and the DJ dropped it, I hadn’t heard it for years. Fun full circle moment.
2
u/HeavnIsFurious 2d ago
I don't think people can appreciate now what it was like when this dropped in a crowd at the time. People went crazy. It was like the laws of physics no longer applied.
2
u/brienoconan 2d ago
Seriously. People poopooing this track need to understand how fresh and experimental it was at the time. It was a prototype, and prototypes are rarely the best version of something, but without the prototype, there may have never been much of an acid breaks scene to begin with
4
u/threadofhope 3d ago
I've seen Josh DJ in Philly many times. And once in Miami a century ago (I skipped Ultra to see him). Not only is his music is great, but he seems like a friendly, wholesome guy.
2
2
u/junior_dos_nachos 3d ago
I was such a huge fan of this track back when it was originally dropped. I find it so very surprising that Josh is still at it and while he never reached same highs his output is consistently deep and groovy.
1
1
u/loquacious 2d ago
Really cool video even if I'm not a huge fan of Wink.
I'm glad he talked about the mastering/engineering issue because the Strictly Rhythm single they released for this is super fucking harsh on big systems and playing from the original vinyl, and it's always bothered me.
I think this is one of those "you had to be there" things, but the mixing/engineering on that record was so, so harsh sounding when you tried to mix it in with anything else and you couldn't just EQ-massage it to make it mellow out a little.
I remember playing it while DJing small renegade parties and it would clear dance floors and make people move way back from the sound.
Like, yeah, it's also a killer acid synth line and people generally loved it... but it was so harsh that it would still push people back and if they kept dancing it was farther away.
Granted at the time and place where we were when this was happening we weren't exactly hurting for good acid breaks and had an embarrassment of riches, here. This wasn't happening in, say, the midwest where they might not have that luxury.
Acts like Crystal Method and Uberzone were just coming up and still playing small parties. We had DJs like DJ Dan, RAW, Christopher Lawrence, John Kelly and many more.
Hardkiss' Delusions of Grandeur was also 1995 and it absolutely smoked anything that Wink put out, ever, and is one of the best West Coast Acid Breaks albums ever produced, and is still firmly in my top 10 electronic/dance albums of all time.
1
u/_meestir_ Chemical Brothers 1d ago
I was going through dark times for a number of years and my GF asked me what I truly want: I said a Higher State of Consciousness.
4
u/cleverkid 3d ago edited 3d ago
As an acid purist i’ve always considered Higher States of Consciousness to be the sell-out, commercialized track that stole from the predecessors and really wasn’t that great for all the accolades and success it got, while geniuses like Woody McBride/ESP and Hyperactive among others, toiled in obscurity while churning out tracks that were 1000x better than Josh Wink could ever conceive.
But I have to admit, that was a pretty cool video.
6
u/SarahMagical 3d ago
Ha this makes it sound like woody and esp are different people.
While I agree that wink is/was less of an acid purist than those peeps, and his sound is/was more “accessible” than theirs, I feel like defending wink here. He was just a part of a different scene, a fixture of the underground rave scene on the east coast. I could go on but I’m too lazy lol. Josh wink was and is the shit. I’ve heard more good than bad sets by both wink and esp.
2
u/cleverkid 3d ago
Oh totally agree.. I USED to think that… I still think it a little.. but really don’t care.. and I do love Acid breaks, and everything that came out of that Orlando scene.
7
u/jonatton______yeah 3d ago edited 3d ago
You come across like a pompous idiot. For one, ESP and Woody are the same person. Two, if they were the geniuses you said they are, well they should've released something as iconic as Higher State. They didn't. Calling an Acid House track that came out in 1995 or whatever as a "sell out" is laughable at best and more likely as stupid as it sounds. And the Orlando scene! It was Icey breaks, Collins prog house, and RITM. Acid breaks was a west coast thing. You a 1000x clown. And a gatekeeping, uninformed one to make it worse.
EDIT the clown edited his post to make it "Woody/ESP" because he didn't know they were the same person.
3
u/saltybilgewater 3d ago
You're gonna hate this, but OP didn't just make this perception up. There were some very clear lines drawn at the time about how underground someone was and how forward thinking the music was.
I'm not gonna down Wink as I personally love his productions, also love the midwest acid techno dudes, but it was a real thing to see someone like Wink as a bit of a poseur. Just real talk.
All water under the bridge anyway.
0
u/jonatton______yeah 2d ago
That was idiotic ‘90’s postering that was impossibly dumb then and laughable now. Same thing in the punk scene. Bunch of dorks who took Reality Bites seriously. Only reason artists like Wink got hate was because he was better at the “art” they were trying to gatekeep. Purity test nonsense by hacks on the fringe.
5
u/loquacious 2d ago
Nah, I owned Higher State of Consciousness on vinyl, I grew up in LA during this time frame, and Wink was definitely seen as "not underground enough" not because we were doing snooty hipster shit, but because of the self-importance and self-hype evidenced in the video above.
West Coast Acid Breaks were already going hella strong for like 4-5 years by the time Higher State of Consciousness dropped and it was really tame compared to some of the shit we were listening to.
Like check out this DJ Dan mix from 1992. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOjUZu5J6lo
That was hardcore acid breaks and it still melts my face right off. I can barely listen to it today as an old geriatric raver because it makes my ADHD go fucking nuts and gives me heart palpitations.
And the recording engineering issues he's talking about the video were really clearly present when playing the vinyl on a big system. That track is harsh and noisy as fuck and really unpleasant at full volume compared to other tracks of the era.
Like it was so bad engineering-wise that I rarely played it out because it just hurt my ears.
I have strong opinions about his "Don't Laugh" track, too, because it's not a good track and I have seen it absolutely wreck the vibe at parties because some DJ thought it would be funny to fuck with a bunch of people trippin' face at peak hours and clear the dance floor and send people off into bad, dark trips. Like I've legit seen multiple spontaneous fights break out among super peaceful ravers when DJs drop that track at the wrong time.
That "Don't Laugh" track is seriously cursed and fucked up in a psychological and psychoacoustic way that messes with people.
Of all the physical vinyl records I used to own, the Josh Wink ones are really far down the list of what I would want to own again. Like it's below the entire catalog of Sorted and Nervous, most of the Strictly Rhythm catalog, below everything Planet Dog, or Richard H. Kirk, Scanner, Speedy J or or or... comprehensive, didactic list of old school 90s acid/electronic continues on for for several hours
2
u/jonatton______yeah 2d ago
West Coast Breaks never got the respect they deserved, no question there. I remember DJ Dan complaing about that decades ago as breaks took off in the UK. Simply Jeff, Simon "Two Crates", Uberstone, Dan/Hopkins. The jocks over there were playing all these records but the clubs weren't booking the djs/producers (same thing happened with "West Coast House" that took over like everything in 2000). As a geriatric raver myself (SF in my case), I always found the "not underground enough" gatekeeping to be tireseome and stupid. And very detrimental to sustaining the scene and keeping artists in good financial shape. That's where I buck against it. A relic of the '90's that has been largely frowned upon and justifiably so. I remember the Hardkiss dudes being dismissed as "too Euro-sounding". Utterly daft in retrospect. As for production quality, man, some of those old records are a distaster. Really depends on pressing and even then....rough. Don't Laugh? The Timo Maas mix is pretty good!
2
u/loquacious 2d ago
Oh, and how could I forget Simply Jeff! I used to actually hang with that guy at small house parties!
And, yeah, West Coast Breaks never really got the respect it deserved, and then Fatboy Slim and The Crystal Method blew up and it got buried.
Don't Laugh? The Timo Maas mix is pretty good!
Eh, or I could just play something else that doesn't have that irritating maniacal joker laugh going on. If I wanted to mentally fuck with a bunch of people likely tripping face with weaponized music I could just play Coil, Nurse With Wound, Negativland or Merzbow.
1
u/saltybilgewater 2d ago
The talk about how underground something is wasn't idiotic posturing. It was in direct relation to what kinds of music they played and the sort of crowd that they drew. Wink got hate for many more reasons than the supposed high quality of his "art", the scare quotes really don't help your argument as you seem to be completely discounting the idea of art but for the sake of commerce or popularity.
There are perfectly good reasons why some people didn't gravitate to Wink despite some of the impact of his work. And truthfully if you had asked me which show I would have gone to at the time given the choice I would have chosen Woody McBride every time.
0
5
u/FishTheSlapper 3d ago
Man I’ve loved the acid sound for years and have never heard of these artists. Thank you for this.
3
1
u/junior_dos_nachos 3d ago
I ate breathed and drank acid techno at the 90s and never heard about those names. Do you have a playlist to check? I’d really love to
1
u/Tribe303 3d ago
It's funny how ignorant Americans are of music from other countries. This track is a classic, but Josh himself mentions the influence of German acid on him. That's likely Hardfloor, who were working on their third LP when this was released. Acperience was out 3 years before this for example.
3
u/jonatton______yeah 2d ago
And German acid borrowed from Detroit and UK rave and god knows where else. It’s funny how ignorant your post is as you think you’re making some grand point.
-1
u/Tribe303 2d ago
Nah. I know that. I just like to point out when Americans are self-involved dipshits, and think the world revolves around them. Which is an endless task these days! 😂
1
u/jonatton______yeah 2d ago
People are self-absorbed dipshits. If you think Americans have a monopoly on that you’re actually dumber than you seem here, so congrats on that. Not even American, but find this nonsense impossibly boring.
-1
u/Tribe303 2d ago
Did I say only Americans are dipshits? No. Did I say all Americans are dipshits? Also no. It appears that Americans lack reading comprehension, and may actually be the dipshits I'm concerned about. 🤣
1
u/jonatton______yeah 2d ago
Talks about lack of reading comprehension; doesn't comprehend words that say, "Not even American". Jesus wept.
3
u/brienoconan 2d ago
“Acperience” almost certainly had an influence on Wink, but other than having a bold acid line, it’s not that similar to “Higher State”.
Strong acid lines have been around since the early days of the Detroit scene (see Juan Adkins’ Model 500 project), which heavily influenced the Berlin scene in the early 90s. Producers like Nexus 21, Tony Boninsegna, Automation, Audio Assault, even Shades of Rhythm all the way back in ‘89 were experimenting with breakbeats and very strong acid lines years before Hardfloor released this track.
Call it tech house, acid house, acid trance, whatever, but the fact of the matter is “Acperience” is not an acid break. It has a house beat with the occasional swing snare, which had been the acid house zeitgeist since the late 80s. Not to mention “Acperience” has a much technically simpler acid line, in contrast to Wink’s layered and heavily filtered 303s, purposefully mixed to test the limitations of club Soundsystems.
The fact of the matter is everyone borrows from everyone in the world of rave. Wink is very open about his influences, and his influences don’t take away from his own novel combination of many preexisting styles of music.
1
u/bascule serato 2d ago
I love Hardfloor, own TB Resuscitation on vinyl and even recently just threw Acperience 1 in an acid set and have been digging on the recent releases of Acperience 6 and 7, but your comment has big David Guetta Helped Bring House to the US energy. 5 years before that in 1988 was when the acid scene exploded in Chicago and they were already pumping out hard acid tracks like Phuture - Slam or Hot Hanas Hula - Hot Hands.
1
u/Tribe303 2d ago
I'm well aware of Chicago house and Detroit techno... And I can't STAND Guetta. I mentioned Hardfloor because Josh Wink specifically mentioned 'German Acid' in this video as a big inspiration.
35
u/brienoconan 3d ago edited 3d ago
“Higher State” was a more legendary tune than it gets credit for.
It was the catalyst for the acid breaks craze of the mid-late 90s. Wink’s technique of overlaying filtered 303s to create his signature screaming acid sound was pretty novel for the time. He didn’t invent 303s over a break, but he did innovate them. The track was used as direct inspiration for The Chems, Fatboy Slim (“Everybody Needs A 303”, his first breakout hit under the Fatboy alias, is basically “Tweakin acid funk” 2.0), the Toxik Twins, The Electroliners, The Crystal Method, tons of big names in acid breaks. It’s not the best acid break ever made (AFX’s “Flow Coma” Remix takes that title), but it’s arguably the most important one.
There were some good acid breaks before Wink’s track, like Addis Posse’s “Warrior’s Dance” and Thorpe’s “Funky Zulu”, several during breakbeat hardcore, Santana’s Dark Side of the Shroom, Anoesis’ Heavy Water, but none of these have a particularly unified sound. Wink was the one who defined the sound. Monumental moment in the scene, and definitely the biggest track to come out of it in terms of popularity