By David Sprague

-- taken from Artist Developments in Billboard Magazine, September 25, 1993 --

Soundtrack work is normally several rungs up the ladder of pop success.  But for the Toronto-based dance-rock quintet Acid Test, an appearance on the soundtrack to the acclaimed, independently released film "Highway 61" proved a fortuitous first step.

Singer/bassist Lucy Di Santo and guitarist Steve Fall, Acid Test's creative core, had been writing together since leaving another local band.  They hadn't ventured out of the basement, but when director Bruce McDonald contacted Fall to play the part of a corpse in his film, the duo made the most of the chance.

"We thought it would be a good vehicle to get our music off the ground" Di Santo recalls.  "We wrote the song 'Dance' first, and the director liked it and asked us to write a dance track that revolved around 'Mr. Skin', a character in the movie".

"Mr. Skin", the first single from the band's recently released Sire debut "Drop", went on to sell more than 8,000 copies in it's initial Canadian indie-label pressing.  But it wasn't until after its release that Di Santo and Fall put together a "proper" band - including turntable manipulator DJ Jus-Rite.

"We started with pretty much a roots sound, but we never had any real preconceptions" Di Santo says.  "These are basically tight, guitar-oriented songs, but I don't think the DJ and samples take away from that.  If anything, they add to the wall of sound.

Acid Test's next step was a traditional one for young bands - a date at the New Music Seminar.  Yet again, the bands fortunes improved thanks to a man with a camera.  "We ran into an MTV crew, who took note and asked where we were playing," Di Santo says. "They came down, and we were on 'The Day In Rock' for a week, highlighting bands that were looking to get signed."

One of the viewers they hooked was Sire A & R manager Risa Morley, who cites Di Santo's strikingly charismatic presence as one of the bands biggest assets.  "She's like a female Chris Robinson," Morley says.  "Lucy is the kind of performer that really demands attention."

Morley says Di Santo can elicit notice from a wide variety of markets as well.  To that end, Acid Test has been touring with performers as diverse as Snow (with whom they recently completed some Canadian dates) and Grace Jones.

"That's a notoriously difficult audience," Morley says.  "And while the band went over really well, I didn't realize just how well until the next band got booed off the stage almost immediately."

Having made dance club inroads with the house-flavoured "Mr. Skin", Acid test will try to crack the alternative market with a second single, the guitar-driven "Blown".

"I don't really like categories," Di Santo says. "But I think we can play to pretty much anyone, because it's psychedelic, it's funky, and it's loud."

By Eleftheria Parpis


-- taken from Creem Magazine, October 1993 --

In these days when bell bottoms, flower-power haircuts, and love beads are more a sign of the fashion-concious than the rebellious, for Canadian quintet Acid Test to glean its name from author Tom Wolfe's 1968 generational classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test may seem a bit contrived.  When front woman Lucy Di Santo, with her long black hair parted in the middle, takes the stage of N.Y.C.'s Limelight in a brown, crocheted bikini top and cut-off jeans that dangle from her slender hips (calling attention to the butterfly tattoo on her abdomen), she too perpetuates the notion that the band is trying too hard to hark back to the days of "Make Love Not War".

However, when the music kicks in, the illusion of overly crafted retro mass appeal is instantly smashed to bits, shattering the preconceptions of a prepackaged band riding the groovy train of today's '70s revival. Out of this petite Joni Mitchell-like persona comes the combined stage presence of Janis Joplin, Patty Smith, and Kim Gordon.  Aggressive and self-confident, Di Santo dances around the stage, commanding her bass to lead Acid Test into a frenetic musical  euphoria.

Guitarist Steve Fall, wearing oversized overalls and a backwards baseball cap, runs around in frantic circles as he blankets heavy layers of guitar over Di Santo's funky bass lines and drummer Jim Alty's relentless rhythms.  Mike Harland - DJ Jus' Rite - scratches vinyl, while keyboardist Atom Percy is so swept away by the stage energy that he jumps up and rides his keyboard like a surfboard.  This ecstasy on stage, catalyzed by each other's talents, says Percy, is the Acid Test experience - genuine, not affected at all. "It's what happens to us when we play. It's like my eyes just roll into the back of my head. And it's not about drugs, it's about music."

Born in Toronto of techno raves, industrial rage, '80s pop, and '90s noise - with a bit of P.Funk thrown in - Acid test achieves a beautiful mix of musical chemistry.  And if each member of the band had a choice, Fall would like to see Acid Test tour with Ministry or Soundgarden; Percy with Nine Inch Nails; Harland with Sonic Youth; Di Santo with Lenny Kravitz, The Black Crowes, or The Cult.  "We really feed off of each other and people feel it. I think skater kids can get into our music, industrial fans, ravers, '70s psychedelic fans... we're a mish-mash of styles" says Fall.

Or as Atom explains it, "You can listen to our music in a dark, candle-lit room and trip out to it, or you can listen to it at a party or a show and mosh your brains out."

Although Drop flags Acid Test's American debut (Sire/Reprise), the band is no stranger to Canadian radio, given that the first single off the release, "Mr. Skin" was originally written and performed for the Bruce McDonald-directed independent film Highway 61 and received favorable reviews and local airplay.  At the time, the band consisted only of Di Santo and Fall, so for Drop, the song was re-recorded with the existing line-up in mind.  "It was much more dance-oriented," Fall says, "so we updated it with a lot more guitars to better suit the rest of the band."

When naming the group, Di Santo says she likened the feeling of creating music with other musicians to the captivating experience she felt when first reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  "As a teenager, I read the book and was totally lost in the descriptiveness of it.  It took you inside the whole picture," says Di Santo, hoping listeners will be as taken in by Acid Test.  "IT also means finishing the test."  That's a test they all believe they're up to.

By Chris O'Connor

-- Taken from the Toronto Star, 1992 --

Warning! The surgeon-general has determined prolonged speculation on The Sugarcubes to be dangerous to your mental health.

There are, in fact, only three things about them a sane mind can safely process: They hail from Iceland, they play a surrealist version of pop music, their career seems to revolve around being a live-action Magic Roundabout cartoon as scripted by Salvador Dali.  Any further thinking on them invites confusion, angst and a generally skewed sense of relality, so caveat lector...

Acid Test though, are just as brain-friendly as their handle suggests, and spent their entire opening set on Monday trying to get the endorphins pumping and the Concert Hall going amiably mental.

But apart from a lot of (much deserved) whistling, most of the audience did their near flawless imitations of lobotomy patients, which is pretty much beyond belief: AT's mad-lab concoction of 70's disco, rave and Hendrix axe mania was tight, beat- perfect infections.  "Mr. Skin" was especially shakin' and impossibly cool to boot, DJ Jus'rite triggering samples of the Devil and glowering behind his cig like he could snap backbones with a single twist of his turntable.

Einar Sugarcube couldn't wait to toss in a little threat of his own: he'd just barely parked his big jacket and brushcut on stage when he seized the mike and yelled, Icelandic accent crackling, "I am known for my violent behaviour!".

Einar, be warned, is not the Sugarcubes' singer. That's Bjork, she of the ethreal voice that can wring a surprising amount of passion out of weirdities like "Coldsweat" and "Delicious Demon".

No, Einar is, well, Einar.  He's that element of kookiness that keeps the Sugarcubes entertaining and with a reassuringly loose grip on reality.  He's the flipside of Bjork's shy artiste: just after she's added some heartbreaking pixie vocals, Einar pops up like a troll from under a bridge, brandishing his bugle, gibbering, scaring the children.

Of course, the Sugarcubes are a band - and as this show proved, one as skilled as any "normal" band you'd care to dredge up - but without Einar they'd be just that.  "Hit" would still be a naggingly catchy tune, but it's Einar's loopy monologues and cartoony-voiced stab at "Bohemian Rhapsody" (honest!) that nudge the Cubes to a greater calling.

Live, they're a dare to junk your notions of "a good show" and gloriously regress to a time that predates cool professionalism, where the only thing that matters is acting like a right nutter and having a great time cheesing off the Serious Artistes in the process.

They might seem utterly mad - chewing on their mikes, emitting blood-mouldering shrieks and the drop of a herring, doing another a capella Queen cover - but there's an ingenious method to them.