Hi Acid Lovers
 
I hadn't actually thought about it when planning dates for this Spring, probably because the 18+ months lost to covid have distorted my sense of time. This April, I Love Acid is 15 years old. Which makes our April 1st party at Berkeley Suite the birthday party - https://ra.co/events/1496647

Back in 2006, I left my previous record label Seed Records. Myself, Rich & Bruce been putting on parties together since 2000, first in a bar in Islington near our place in Dalston (at that time still cheap!), then we moved onto a warehouse in Ridley Road in Hackney, then Aldwych disused tube station between 2001 and 2004. We had artists like Aphex Twin, Goldfrapp, and Mark Moore play at the tube station - along with Luke Vibert when we did a Rephlex special in around 2002. This is how Luke and I met.



After the tube station events, we held a few more parties in venues like The Spitz, Rythym Factory, and one time even in the function room of Pentonville Prison. We then started a new night called SOVIET. Our first party was with Neil Landstrumm, B12, and Modeselektor. It was a success and we then decided to go big, and hire the entirely of the Coronet in Elephant & Castle. We bit off more than we could chew, a lineup with Kenny Larkin, Phil Hartnoll, Surgeon & Regis, The Grid, and loads more. We lost a small fortune, and had a huge falling out, and this is where we parted ways as a team.

In early 2007, now no longer part of a crew, I started missing promoting and decided to do something different. I spoke with Luke, and we came up with the idea to do a party based around his track "I Love Acid" and invite a load of our mates to play. Instead of a flyer, I had CDs made with the lineup on them and distributed them in Hyponik flyer packs (at this point, using social media to promote was still not really a thing). 

Here's the CD flyer: https://www.discogs.com/release/982428-Various-I-Acid 
(you'll see from the lineup, I was only there as a promoter and didn't actually DJ myself!)
 
April 6th 2007. The party went well, all three rooms at Corsica Studios (this was before the bar and room 1 were combined into one space).
But at around 5am, someone dropped a drink into a mixer - the cost of repairing it ate up any money that had been made.
But the die was cast - I Love Acid had become a clubnight.



A few months later, Luke and I threw another party at Corsica Studios - this time a Halloween bash. The same approach, a mixture of acid styles - Braindance, acid house, techno, electro...music old and new, rather than being a direct throwback/retrospective on classic acid house. In the late 2000s, we were part of a fairly small family of nights in London doing this kind of thing, along with Wheels Instead Of Hooves, Bangface, Plex, and World Unknown.



In early 2008, a club in West London called Ginglik offered me a monthly residency. Built in an underground disused Victorian public toilets, underneat a park in Shepherds bush. Literally underground, just 250 capacity and run by a wonderful team under Col & Tammy - probably the nicest club owners I've dealt with in 20 years of promoting. For six years, I Love Acid ran every month. In 2009, Placid joined as fellow resident DJ - under his guidance the music policy matured and I personally learned a lot about the roots of acid. We had a huge array of guests, from unknown artists to huge names, all sorts of different styles. We built up a family of regulars - people who became lifelong friends. In 2012 we even held a private weekender, hiring a huge place in the countryside that slept 100 people, for two days of music & partying. I Love Acid began holding guest stages at Bloc Weekend, promoters in other cities would invite us up to collaborate on parties, we held our first events abroad in Antwerp and Barcelona, and began a decade of parties with our acid family in Malta.

A seriously magic time, one of those things you don't realise how special it is until it's over.

In summer 2014, Ginglik closed it's doors.

For our farewell party there, the last track played was Underground Resistance - The Final Frontier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WLtJDKXMCE

At this point, I started the I Love Acid record label. The first three releases were from Ed DMX & Bass Junkie (Room 13), Luke Vibert, and myself. Limited to 303 copies, hand stamped and numbered, heavyweight wax, vinyl only. I just wanted something a little bit unique and special for those who were fans. The records sold out from the word go, but the clubnight was homeless. I held a couple parties in different venues, but the vibe just wasn't the same. So I decided to say goodbye, and do a "last ever I Love Acid" at Corsica Studios, where we had first started 7 years previous. All our residents, regulars and friends. A big farewell.



Then in 2015, I had a chance to put DJ Pierre and Luke Vibert together on the same bill. They had never played a show together before. Bloc offered me their venue, and so many people had been asking for I Love Acid to return, so we went for it. That was followed by more events at Bloc with more acid legends - Hardfloor and Jon Dasilva among them. At this point, acid house was exploding with popularity again, loads of other acid nights were popping up all over - and requests were coming in from other cities to bring I Love Acid to them. Teaming up with Jon Dasilva, we started a residency in Manchester (first at Hidden, then Gorilla).



Over the following few years, more cities were added to the list: Glasgow, Plymouth, Liverpool, Edinburgh...and abroad to Berlin, Lille, Brussels, and more. The label continued to do well, we moved the London residency from Bloc to the smaller, more intimate venue Pickle Factory. In 2019, DJ Magazine nominated us for Best UK Club Event, which we won. Me and Luke collected the award at the ceremony.To get this recognition, despite being a small underground party not even in the same league as the huge mega-events that dominate the UK clubbing landscape was incredible. 



2020 was set to be a big year, with new residencies in Brighton and Leeds to join our current regulars in London, Manchester, Plymouth, Liverpool, and Glasgow - and we even organised our first US dates. But then covid hit, and that was that.

The return now has been a complicated one, many people are still very wary about being in nightclubs, a lot of venues and promoters have struggled to come back, or even not resurfaced at all. The financial side of things is tighter, and logistics of travel more complex. But the feeling inside the doors at some of the parties so far has been next level, total catharsis and unbridled joy. 

I'm hoping to be able to announce our postponed return to the USA soon. In the meantime, I'm excited about London and Birmingham next month, and I'm now going to have to do something special for April 1st in Glasgow, our official 15th Birthday party - https://ra.co/events/1496647



Thanks for reading. I hope to see you on the dancefloor
Josh Posthuman
x