DDR003 in Bandcamp Essential Releases, March 1, 2024

I’m going to be honest with you: The first time Illegal Rave Tapes came up in my playlist of upcoming release promos, I thought it was a compilation. Take a stroll through the aisles of any physical record store (or even a glance at our own Best Reissues column)  and you’ll quickly discover that nearly every nook and cranny of music history has been excavated at some point or another, parading an endless cast of overlooked geniuses across the stage for their hard-earned 15 minutes. Why not ‘90s rave? It wasn’t until I glanced over at the tracklist to see who was behind the manic, Aphex Twin-y stutter beats and spooky synths of “The Shakes” that I realized that all 15 tracks here are the work of one person—and that there are apparently 119 more where these came from. Indeed, John Lee Richardson–aka Acrelid—spent 13 years stockpiling hundreds of tracks, all of them inspired by the glory days of glow sticks and pacifiers. And he captures the sound so well, he fooled me into believing it was the real thing. It’s not just that the music is on point—the way the Twilight Zone string surge strikes terror into the aptly named jungle banger… “The Twilight Zone,” or the way the synths wobble like Weebles between the grooves of “Imaginary Garden.” Acrelid also nails the errata, never better than on the hilarious “Rave Clubs And Things,” which layers samples from what sounds like an early ‘90s BBC “rave panic” documentary aimed at terrified parents amidst a gaggle of icicle synths and insistent rhythms. It’s a blast from start to finish. It’s unclear what Acrelid has been up to in the years since, but his Bandcamp page offers endless wormholes to disappear into.

–J. Edward Keyes  (Rave Correspondant, Bandcamp)

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