Acid Junkies is a dance act from The Netherlands. Their music is all about having fun: nowadays the only motivation for them is that they enjoy making the music and playing it for a crowd. The do not conform to any hipster styles or fashion, they just make and play the music they like. Live, they present themselves with a mix of solid techno music, played live and edited and enhanced with fragments of all kinds of dance music, spanning the last 20 years. From synthi-disco, via EBM towards house and techno.
The band members
The Acid Junkies started in 1992 as producer Stefan Robbers’ solo project. He is one of the artists responsible for turning the city of Eindhoven from Philips Light Bulb City into Techno City through his records as Terrace, Florence and REC and of course through his own Eevo Lute Muzique label. It was his way of saying ‘thanks’ to all the originators from Chicago that injected such large doses of psychedelia into house music. The Part 1 EP on Eindhoven¹s famous Djax-Up-Beats label became an instant success and soon the Acid Junkies were a real band. His partner in crime for this operation is Harold de Kinderen, who provided Stefan with the Roland TB 303 he used for the first Acid Junkies EP and who has been a full band member since that day.
Live
So together the Acid Junkies became a regular band, one that also performs on stage. Night after night they direct the crowd from behind their piles of analogue synthesizers on stage. The Acid Junkies can play an audience like one of their synths and can bring the biggest cynic into full-blown ecstasy. They have performed live shows at just about every major rave in Europe, like Germany¹s prestigious Mayday, as well as major Dutch festivals such as Lowlands and Dance Valley. The band also conquered Chicago, where they shared the stage with their one-time heroes Roy Davis, Robert Armani and Woody McBride. Ranging from old skool acid bleeps to high tech electro with a scent of industrial and EBM-Body music, they can go anywhere they want with their music and that is exactly why they do it. On stage, they use only analogue synthesizers and drumcomputers, an occasional laptop and hardware effects. Much of the music is improvised and developed during playing which makes each show unique and always surprising.
Releases
Over the years they have recorded six Studio albums, a live album and dozens of singles and EP’s. This all started on the infamous Djax-Up-beats label, hailing from their hometown Eindhoven. They released their first albums and remixes back in ‘the nineties’. Next in line was the A3i0c3d Tracks label from the Ruhrarea in Germany. Acid Junkies played on many of their events and released several EP’s and albums on their label. This went parallel with AJ Records,a digital label founded by Acid Junkies themselves. Nowadays, Acid Junkies are constantly developing new acid techno tracks in the studio and releasing on the Japanese Acidworx label, amongst other labels.
On singles and albums, the band’s music has gone through a sort of evolution: Having started with the purest acid house music from the USA as a source of inspiration, the Acid Junkies add more and more modern elements to their music over the years. As a result, an entirely new sound has come into existence, both technically and musically. The name of the band might be the only memory of their past, musically speaking the band already steps into the future.