Where There's Muck

The now legendary Roland TB-303 was launched in the early 80s to provide a basic bassline for solo pub-rockers - used in tandem with a drum machine, it would replace the backing band. But its cheesy electro sound, coupled with the fact that it was fiddly to programme led to an early demise, and after two years of production, the machine was deleted. A few years later, kids in Chicago and Detroit on the look out for cheap equipment came across discarded 303s collecting dust in second-hand music shops. They found that if they messed around with it enough, the 303 could be made to make some pretty weird and off-the-wall sounds, and it was those squelching thuds, spacey dub lines and alien squeals that became the definitive sound of Acid House.

Cut to England, a couple of years on. It's June 1989 and the second of the fabled Summers of Love. A blaring front page headline of the Sun reads 'Spaced Out! 11,000 Youngsters Go Drug Crazy At Britain's Biggest Ever Acid Party'. Arriving via clubs like Shoom and Trip in London and Manchester's Haçienda, Acid House rapidly expanded into the blissed out euphoria of giant warehouse parties and huge open air raves in country fields. The subsequent media hysteria and police reaction took the music to the centre of national consciousness.

From this point it takes an inspired leap to get to brass bands, but in the fertile ambience of a London pub, artist Jeremy Deller hit upon a persuasive connection: wasn't House music the first music of solid working-class origin since the advent of brass bands 150 years ago? And weren't there numerous other crossovers and parallels between the two?

Deller drew a conceptual flow chart, linking various political, social and historical events. It made a convincing web of correspondences. Brass bands are undeniably associated with the working class. They developed around the mines and factories of the heavily industrialised North, providing a cultural activity for workers at a time when there were few other leisure pursuits. Fittingly, the instruments of a brass band have an industrial quality about them: the metal pipe work, the valves and the pistons all moving together with a machine-like synchronisation. The music as well has something of strident, industrial feel, offset by a melancholic and soulful undertow.

Pit bands might no longer have pits, but the brass band movement is still very much alive. Perhaps not quite as healthy as in the giddy heights of 1977 when the Brighouse and Rastrick Band stormed to the top of the charts with their 'Floral Dance', but brass band competitions remain fiercely contested. The national championships are held at the Albert Hall, an FA Cup-like silver trophy the coveted prize. This year's winner is the Williams-Fairey Band.

It was on virtually the same geographical ground that Acid House evolved, albeit now bleak, de-industrialised and populated by a non-working working class. The synthesisers used by House musicians are as of their time as the brass instruments were of theirs, and whilst ironically it was this same new technology that contributed to the drastic drop in labour demand, at the same time it made music making far more accessible. Record production and recording were made easy, with bedroom studio set-ups behind many of the early releases.

The comradeship of brass bands and their strong sense of pride have meant that they have long been used to symbolise the solidarity of trade unions and the working class. While House music's original political stance was more one of passive resistance, in England the Acid House scene took on a more oppositional, counter-cultural edge. Alongside the shared euphoria of Ecstasy, the music's independence from major record companies and the illegality of many of the raves fostered a sense of community amongst a generation of disaffected, Thatcher-alienated youth. At the same time as the unions were being drained of their power, the Poll Tax riots evidenced the legislation-changing power of a united youth.

Acid Brass is the name Deller gave to his fusion of the two traditions. He collected together a selection of classic House tracks, had them transcribed into musical notation, and then passed them on to Rodney Newton, a well known arranger of brass band scores. The Williams-Fairey Band was approached to perform the music, and earlier this year they filed onto the stage of the Royal Festival Hall for their first London performance.

Looking purposeful and sharp in their gold-braided uniforms, they raised their instruments, paused for an anticipatory moment, waited for the down stroke of the conductors hands, and then in. Opening number: DJ Fast Eddie's Can U Dance? A few gentle intro bars and then Blam!, mainline straight to the back of the neck, the whole band hitting on the same beat in perfect blasting unison and off with a charging steam train of a sound, the trombone slides flashing in and out with thrusting precision. Pure joy. Watching these big men playing with total expertise, you found a few warehouse party memories washing back. The resonant warmth of the full brass sound and the infectious house beat started to get people rocking in their seats. Huge applause.

Following Can U Dance? was a stirring version of 808 State's Pacific 202, with the vibrato of a cornet taking up the track's harmonium sound, euphoniums carrying the bubbling bass line, and real cow bells and xylophone glissandos replacing their original synthesised counterparts. The band played about eight numbers, running through a programme of classic House anthems, including a medley version of Todd Terry's Day in the Life and Can U Party? which pumped straight into the adrenal gland with an immediate get up and dance effect. Some tracks needed an inventive approach - the eerie vocals on Voodoo Ray were sung in echoing chants around sections of the band, while there was clapping on other tracks. For an encore they revved themselves up and played a full on, timpani drum, crescendo-building, fanfare-filled version of The KLF's What Time is Love? It was moving, passionate, phenomenal stuff.

So much so that after hearing the concert, The KLF, for some years now disbanded, decided to briefly reform as K2 and release a new single called Fuck the Millennium based on the Acid Brass version of What Time is Love? They needn't have bothered. Their recent live performance of the single included dead swans, a choir dressed as sailors and a parade of striking Liverpool dockers, relegating the Williams-Fairey band to a stage backdrop and demonstrating that Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's interest still lies in an overwhelming sense of their own importance. With Acid Brass reduced to a mere sample on Fuck the Millenium, Cauty and Drummond's publicity-seeking egotism missed the whole point. It was its 'one band one man' ethos, humanity and grass roots spirit which gave Deller's project its strength, and while Acid Brass did draw some of its poignancy from the comforting reassurances of nostalgia, it also precisely understood recent shifts towards a more community-centred culture.