I don't feel the acid house parallel works quite here. that review @luka linked yesterday criticised Ben Watson for severing the umbilical cord between house and disco. But, again, one has to ask which era of disco. Because embrionic disco as much as it was anti-rockist, was still about sophistication. So in a very crude sense Ben Watson has a point. It was in this sense acid was a breakthrough, because disco is about songcraft and melody, not discordant interplay.
To come back to this, one could argue that whilst yes, Todd Terry style cut up sampledelic house hints at a break with disco, it is not completely anti-disco. It is disco taken to its absolute limit. Orchestras refracted and turned into particle showers of jouissance. Acid Traxx to me in a very real sense is anti-disco. There is no desire, pure electrical current. Disco is hypnotic, but it isn't trance-dance in this sense. Even the Night Moves track from 83 is still disco at the structural base.
Hence at least within the house continuum there is never really a vertical ascent upwards after around 92-93, but a horizontalist tension. Whereas techno, hardcore and jungle go up. The new takes time to emerge from the old, and never completely (far from in fact) renders it irrelevant. It is often a field of contestation.
N.B: when I say anti-disco I am not saying that a conscious rebellion against disco took place, but that acid intensified the machinic side of disco so far that disco was sublated into something new. I am unconvinced that autotune rather than the format itself can serve the same purpose.
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