Brussels, BE · acid-house · industrial-dance

Lords of Acid

1 upcoming festival →

Belgian acid-house provocateurs — filthy, funny, and built entirely for a room past midnight, '90s industrial-dance sleaze still fully operational.

Lords of Acid formed in Brussels in 1988, built around producer Praga Khan alongside Olivier Adams and Jade 4U, emerging from the new beat and acid house scene running through Belgian clubs at the decade's end. Their debut single, "I Sit on Acid," set the template: a hard, repetitive acid bassline under deadpan, sexually explicit lyrics.

The debut album, Lust, followed in 1991 and became an underground hit in the United States, carried by singles such as "Rough Sex" and "I Must Increase My Bust." Its mix of raw electronics and blunt content built the group's reputation well outside Belgium's club circuit.

1994's Voodoo-U pushed the sound toward industrial dance, and later records, among them Our Little Secret, Farstucker and Deep Chills, kept shifting between rock-leaning production and straight electronic sleaze. Praga Khan has remained the sole constant through a long line of vocalists, including Jade 4U, Ruth McArdle and, on 2018's Pretty in Kink, Marieke Bresseleers.

The band's music has turned up on film soundtracks including Blade, Sucker Punch, Mortal Kombat and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. They have also recorded under other names, among them Digital Orgasm and Channel X.

Their live shows are theatrical and deliberately provocative, and the group has kept working: a 2017 series of remastered reissues through Metropolis Records, a Kickstarter-funded sixth album in 2018, and new material announced with vocalist Carla Harvey.

Read more

acid-houseindustrial-dance