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Live And On Acid

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Live And On Acid --- 2010-08-30

Full artwork insert. The surname is pronounced “Do-key”. He jokingly describes himself as one of the "few producers still licensed to use the 303". But with a career that started in the early days of house at New York's notorious Limelight, Abe Duque has been at the head of the acid-house and underground-techno table since his earliest releases way back in 1993. His first tracks were influenced by the madness of the Limelight's club-kid audience. From muscular and melodic techno to cocktail jazz and ambient interludes, these early tracks on his own labels Tension and Hollis Haus, his releases under pseudonyms like Kirilan, Super Secret Symphony and his releases on others' labels like Disko B, Rapture!, Morbid, and Tresor captured a particular period of clubbing history bought to a sudden halt when the Limelight was closed down by the cops. It was, Duque says, a great time for musical experimentation. Each month bought radical new types of music kit - much of which Duque still keeps in use in his underground studio "the Cave" - alongside an amazement of now classic tracks and new acts. At Duque’s Limelight night, Abuse Industries, he was part of regular performances with the live techno "chillout supergroup" the Rancho Relaxo Allstars, freeform jams which included now famous techno producers like Duque himself, John Selway and Deitrich Shoenemann. Abuse Industries itself was Abe's collaboration with the artist Andy Orel, a night so strikingly visual and challenging that its visuals were exhibited in European museums, given page after page in Germany's Raveline magazine, and used in shows by Helmut Lang. The rather insane artwork for the ‘Live And On Acid’ compilation has been done by Abuse Industries. When NY Mayor Rudolph Guiliani decided to ruin the NY nightlife Abe Duque began to release anonymous, vinyl only stamped with catalogue numbers like "ADR40" [Abe Duque Records 40] and etched on one side at the pressing plant with strange, hand-drawn messages from the man himself. A number of these appear on the compilation. This second part of Duque's career was a run of increasingly massive 12" hits like Champagne Days, Cocaine Nights; Acid, Disco Nights, and in 2004 his monster smash with Blake Baxter, "What Happened?", the track that launched Duque and Baxter out of the underground and into the spotlight selling 25,000 copies on vinyl alone. Duque then had a string of mainstream remixes - Chemical Brothers, Pet Shop Boys, Miss Kittin, Remute, Chloe, Savas Pascalidis, Knart IV, Daniel Meteo and DJ Hell (with Duque becoming a regular on Hell's Gigolos label). Duque's first album under his own name, "So Underground It Hurts “provided a launch pad for his return to wild live performances – a whiskey bottle in one hand and a 303, drum machine, two PCs and a microphone operated by the other. CD1 recreating this wild atmosphere. Released in 2009, Abes next album “Don’t Be So Mean” became the stepping stone to Abe’s new projects in 2010. The first being this compilation LIVE AND ON ACID: two CDs, one of his live show, and one a wrap-up of Limelight acid-house classics.