Chicago House: The Post-Disco Sound of Chicago

Think quality Disco (yes it exists!) only with synthesisers and drum machines. It is usually around 115-125 beats-per-minute, with a 4/4 beat structure and prominent groove bassline. Although it was born out of a localised club scene it is great to just listen to at home as you would any music.

Chicago House has a funk or "jack" element in the music, a "black" funky and deep soulful quality to its sound. In place of the "live band" instrumentation of early Disco, House made use of technology: drum machines, synthesisers and samplers (instruments that only require one or more persons to operate) which unsurprisingly gave the music, modeled after Disco, a raw electronic edge. Two such drum machines famous for this purpose are the TR-808 and TR-909 (featured left) the TR-707 (below) was also commonly used. Why did they do this? Well for one, paying for a band and venue is quite expensive. Also electronic music equipment can be purchased at relatively lower cost and can be reused at the artist's leisure. A more pressing reason was that the DJs were simply running out of new music to spin and out of necessity had to produce their own.

So it's basically electronically generated disco? Well, yes in a way, as it did evolve out of that sound. When compared with Detroit Techno, House music generally favours a more organic sound (as organic as synthesisers could get) as opposed to Techno's embrace of synthetic sounds. That isn't to say that all producers weren't keen to experiment. Thanks to the malleable nature of electronic instruments new sounds and playing styles could be coaxed out of the machines. Such experimentation would lead to the creation of a later sub genre - Acid House.

'Your Love' by Jamie Principle and, Jesse Saunders's 'On and On' are two of the earliest House tracks. The later in particular inspiring others (who thought they could better it) to produce their own tracks. 'Move Your Body' by Marshall Jefferson, Lil' Louis -'French Kiss' , and Steve 'Silk' Hurley -'Love Can't Turn Around' helped popularise the new Chicago sound in overseas clubs.

The creation of record labels devoted to House music was an important step in facilitating the movement of House out of the clubs and into the record crates of DJs and listeners overseas (chiefly Europe and the UK). Two such pivotal labels were Trax Records and DJ International Records. Many ground breaking and classic tracks were brought out under these labels.

This experimentation eventually led to creation of a offshoot genre of Chicago House, known as ACID HOUSE. The track 'Acid Tracks' by the group Phuture (Nathaniel Pierre Jones 'DJ Pierre', Earl Smith Jr. 'Spanky', and Herbert Jackson 'Herb J') being perhaps the most well known and influential early Acid House track.

"Phuture was me and two other guys, Spanky and Herbert J. We had this Roland 303, which was a bassline machine, and we were trying to figure out how to use it. When we switched it on, that acid sound was already in it and we liked the sound of it so we decided to add some drums and make a track with it. We gave it to Ron Hardy who started playing it straight away. In fact, the first time he played it, he played it four times in one night! The first time people were like, 'what the fuck is it?' but by the fourth they loved it. Then I started to hear that Ron was playing some new thing they were calling 'Ron Hardy's Acid Trax', and everybody thought it was something he'd made himself. Eventually we found out that it was our track so we called it 'Acid Trax'. I think we may have made it as early as 1985, but Ron was playing it for a long time before it came out." (DJ Pierre).

Larry Heard, recording as Mr. Fingers, produced the Washing Machine EP which featured a track called 'Can You Feel it?'. Departing from the usual upbeat sound this track became a reference point for a Jazzier, deeper, more reflective sound appropriately named DEEP HOUSE. Deep House continues the trend of Chicago House and is in essence the closest it has to a successor today.