Dungeon Acid - Dungeon Acid (2019)

Jean-Louis Huhta’s Dungeon Acid turns out a devilish debut album proper of Detroit-inspired
techno and 303 extrusions, plus sidewinding psychedelic dance music, recorded and edited
between 2010-2019 for his pals and admirers at iDEAL
Synonymous with Gothenburg’s iDEAL for the past decade, Dungeon Acid has become the most
vital of drummer and producer Jean-Louis Huhta’s many projects, following a musical arc since
the ‘80s which has seen him variously play with crust punk group Anti Cimex (and tour the UK
alongside Napalm Death in a van with no seats), become a member of cult Swedish rave band
Lucky People Centre, play ritual rock tribalism with The Skull Defekts, and duel with electro-
acoustic heavyweights such as Zbigniew Karkowski and CM Von Hausswolff.
Yet for all his stylistic versatility, Huhta’s heart has consistently been found in tough, driving and
psychedelic strains of house and techno indebted to Detroit since the ‘90s, and that inspiration
comes out in unexpected ways across his first Dungeon Acid album proper. Working within this
square but malleable meter, Huhta’s playfully deep character burns through in his persistently
detailed tweaks and hypnotically layered productions, where he’s unafraid to push into the red or
lower the tempo and croon like a shaman conducting ancient rites.
In 9 parts he effectively joins the dots between the psychy, punkish dance trax of Börft Records
and the Motor City mechanics of Underground Resistance, generating a singular, machine-
borne but organic flow with big highlights between jelly-limbed acid opening, through to steely
warehouse hammers, a slow and skudgy hymn to nose drip dynamics, and two belting barrels of
warped Biker Bar funk that would surely make the grade in the 313 any time between the early ‘90s
and now.
Dungeon Acid is brilliant testament to the art of marrying mutually exclusive bedfellows as much
as it is a masterclass in dare-to-be-different house and techno, all done with hard-won skills,
natural personality and warmth, with history and future at the front of the mind.