Acid Jazz

Acid jazz is the late-1980s and 1990s London club fusion of 1970s jazz-funk, rare-groove soul, hip-hop sampling and house-tempo dance rhythms. Tempos sit around 95 to 110 BPM. The standard ensemble pairs a funk rhythm section (electric bass played slap or fingerstyle, drum kit, often hand percussion), Fender Rhodes or Hammond B-3 organ, brass section, and lead vocals in a relaxed R&B register. Many tracks borrow short samples of vintage jazz-funk records as the foundation for new arrangements. Productions push the bass and keys forward and treat the kick drum as a steady pulse rather than a peak event — the music is engineered for clubs where people are drinking as much as dancing.

The label Acid Jazz, founded in 1987 by Eddie Piller and Gilles Peterson in London, gave the scene its name (a tongue-in-cheek reaction to acid house). DJs at clubs like the Talkin' Loud sessions at Dingwalls in Camden played 1970s Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, Lonnie Liston Smith and Brand New Heavies records alongside contemporary remixes. Jamiroquai (1993 debut Emergency on Planet Earth), the Brand New Heavies, Incognito, Galliano and the US group US3 (Cantaloop, 1993, sampling Herbie Hancock) became the scene's commercial faces. By the late 1990s the original London scene had largely dispersed, but its influence is audible in subsequent neo-soul, broken beat and the contemporary London jazz revival around Shabaka Hutchings and Ezra Collective.

Listen for the bass line as the song's protagonist — Jamiroquai's Stuart Zender and the Brand New Heavies' Andrew Levy treat bass as a lead instrument, walking and slapping between chord voicings. The horn writing borrows short Tower of Power–style stabs rather than long statements. Many tracks open with a sampled break (drums alone) before the band enters. Vocal phrasing leans on Stevie Wonder–era soul rather than on contemporary R&B.

Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity (1996) is the genre's mainstream apex; Cosmic Girl (1996) is its dance-floor anthem. Brand New Heavies' Brother Sister (1994) is the most representative full album. US3's Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) (1993) is the canonical sample-based example, built directly on Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island.

The label name Acid Jazz was reportedly coined as a joke at a London club night where a DJ played Mr. Bongo–style jazz-funk records after a set of acid house — but the term stuck and ended up labelling a whole scene. Acid is meant ironically; the music has nothing to do with LSD or the chemical squelch of acid house.