Acid house is a Chicago house subgenre defined by the squelching TB-303 basslines pioneered by Phuture c.1986

Acid house is a subgenre of house music that developed around the mid-1980s among Chicago DJs. Its defining sonic signature is the ‘squelching’ sound and basslines of the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer-sequencer. Wikipedia attributes this innovation to the Chicago artists Phuture (Nathan ‘DJ Pierre’ Jones, Earl ‘Spanky’ Smith Jr., Herbert ‘Herb J’ Jackson) and Sleezy D circa 1986: Phuture is credited as the first to use the TB-303 in a house-music context. The genre then spread to the UK and Europe and fed later dance styles (trance, techno, jungle, big beat). The takeaway is that acid house is not a rhythm or tempo but a timbre-led genre — an instrument’s characteristic sound became the whole style’s identity.

Examples

Phuture’s 12-minute ‘Acid Tracks’ (Trax Records, 1987) is the archetypal early acid house record; the 303’s filter-squelch bass over a 4/4 house beat is the genre template.

Assessment

Name the single instrument whose sound defines acid house, the city and group credited with pioneering it in house music, and the approximate year.