Jean-Louis Huhta - Wormhole Of Time (2021)

Jean-Louis Huhta is best known these days as Dungeon Acid, but the Trinidadian-Swedish techno maverick has a long and varied musical past that touches on punk, industrial and funk as much as contemporary club music. The latest release on Organic Analogue digs back into the archives of his prolific 90s period to offer up kinked machine jams that spit and snarl with non-conformist noise, shining a light on a somewhat overlooked talent with his own idiosyncratic take on the techno tradition.

Huhta started out as a skateboarding teenager in Gothenburg seduced by the rebellious sound of punk, landing himself a spot in noted new wave and hardcore bands such as Anti Cimex and Cortex, where he channelled his Trinidadian roots into wild percussion on customised scrap metal instruments. As his confidence and ability grew he moved on to projects such as Texas Instruments and eventually wound up as part of touring Go-Go band The Stonefunkers in the late 80s. Throughout this time his interest in electronic music production grew, reflected in the Lucky People Center arts space and collective he helped form, and as techno took hold in the 90s he was well placed to start exploring hardware production.

By the time he settled in Stockholm, he naturally connected with scene leaders such as Jesper Dahlbäck and Cari Lekebusch, and wound up releasing his first solo and collaborative techno 12”s on labels like Hybrid, Svek and H. Productions. He regularly worked with sometime LFO member Simon J Hartley, Danijel Alpha and Dahlbäck himself (under the name Brommage Dub – a reference to the communal house in Stockholm borough Bromma where they had a generously kitted-out studio).

Huhta has continually moved between styles with an inquisitive spirit that found him working alongside respected experimental artists like Carl Michael Von Hausswolff and Wire’s Graham Lewis (in Ocsid) and joining avant-rock outfit The Skull Defekts. By 2010 he was returning to his love of pure machine manipulation once more, and started the Dungeon Acid alias to channel his particular strains of techno into recordings and live performance. Celebrated releases on iDEAL, Fit Sound, Zodiac 44, Börft, Klasse Wrecks and more have quickly amounted to a strong body of work on top of the decades of exploration that came before.

The tracks that make up Wormhole Of Time comprise both unreleased cuts and some long out-of-print jams from the ‘90s, spanning many of Huhta’s aliases he adopted at the time. Classic tracks such as “The Art Of Peace” and “Homeworld” (released as Kozmic Niggah on Hybrid in ‘96) sit alongside freshly unearthed Dr. Nobody tracks (he used the alias once for a timeless Svek 12” in ‘97). All three songs from circa-2000 10” Viva La Differenze! get a fresh airing here, but the reissued tracks are balanced out by plenty of exclusive material sourced from tapes and DATs.

To accompany this retrospective of Huhta’s pre-Dungeon Acid days, copies of Wormhole Of Time will come with a ‘zine featuring photographs from throughout Huhta’s life in music, and an interview that sheds more light on the multifarious career in music he’s enjoyed to date. The usual OA care and attention to detail is being extended to the artwork, which features a detail of a piece created by swedish graffiti legend and a long time friend of Huhta’s, NUG. From the peripherals to the sounds contained within, OA009 is the perfect early-days snapshot of an artist still consistently pushing forwards on his creative mission."