Drug culture
Drug cultures are examples of countercultures that are defined by recreational drug use. They may endorse polydrug use, they sometimes eagerly or reluctantly initiate newcomers, but their main functions are to share drug experiences, to reduce harm by providing knowledge of how to use a drug as safely as possible, to exchange information on suppliers and avoiding law enforcement. There are YouTube "channels" devoted to recreational drug use. Drug subcultures are groups of people united by a common understanding of the meaning and risks of the incorporation into one's life of the drug in question; such unity can take many forms, from friends who take the drug together obeying certain rules of etiquette, groups banding together to help each other obtain drugs and avoid arrest, to full-scale political movements for the reform of drug laws. The sum of these parts can be considered an individual drug's "culture". Many artists and musicians have used various drugs to facilitate or enhance their creativity.
Writers have explored their influence on human life in general and on the creative process. There are many writings. Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas employs multiple drug use as a major theme and provides an example of the drug culture of the 1960s. Alcoholic beverages contain ethanol. Ethanol is a psychoactive drug found in alcoholic beverages. Alcohol is one of the most abused drugs in the world used for self-medication, as recreational drug use. Cannabis has been used in the ancient past in places such as ancient India, Romania and Mesopotamia, it was used as medicine or for hemp, its main route of consumption was smoking. Over time the culture became a general "cannabis culture" formed. Cannabis culture has been responsible for the genre of films known as stoner films which has come to be accepted as a mainstream cinema movement. In the United States the culture has spawned its own celebrities, and, in North America, its own distinct holiday: April 20, marked as a day for calling for the legalization of cannabis and celebration of cannabis.
The drugs used in witchcraft are different depending on the culture. Most of the research done on drug use in witchcraft has been done in the 60s during the hippie movement, and since the ergot, theoretically taken in Salem has been somewhat disproven. However, because the research was done in the hippie and drug movement in the 70s the theory is still a part of drug culture. Ancient Greek love magic uses many rituals that show drug use in poisoning to deeper the emotion of love. Love magic was used by women during ancient Greek times to keep a man in love or to gain love by a man. In this field researchers look a lot at the agency of the women. Greek love magic relates to drug culture. There can be similarities found in today's date rape drug. However, in ancient Greek time the women would poison the men. Women would put the poisons on their robes to expose it to the men. Shamanism used hallucinogens to further their spirituality; these hallucinogens were used for different ceremonies of the Indians in the Northwest Amazon.
These ceremonies include funerals and initiation of the young. Shamans had a wider range of use for these drugs. Shamans used these drugs to find an enemy. There is a theory disproven due to timeline of events and number of those who experience the symptoms, that the Salem witch trials were caused by ergot poisoning. Ergot poisoning gives a similar effect to LSD, but like ergine the physical effects and dangers are much more substantial than the use of LSD for psychedelic research and ritual contexts. Beatnik Coffee culture Entheogens Hallucinogens Kava culture Narcoculture in Mexico Peyote § Cultural significance Tea culture
Algorithmic art
Algorithmic art known as algorithm art, is art visual art, of which the design is generated by an algorithm. Algorithmic artists are sometimes called algorists. Algorithmic art known as computer-generated art, is a subset of generative art and is related to systems art. Fractal art is an example of algorithmic art. For an image of reasonable size the simplest algorithms require too much calculation for manual execution to be practical, they are thus executed on either a single computer or on a cluster of computers; the final output is displayed on a computer monitor, printed with a raster-type printer, or drawn using a plotter. Variability can be introduced by using pseudo-random numbers. There is no consensus as to whether the product of an algorithm that operates on an existing image can still be considered computer-generated art, as opposed to computer-assisted art. Roman Verostko argues that Islamic geometric patterns are constructed using algorithms, as are Italian Renaissance paintings which make use of mathematical techniques, in particular linear perspective and proportion.
Some of the earliest known examples of computer-generated algorithmic art were created by Georg Nees, Frieder Nake, A. Michael Noll, Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnár in the early 1960s; these artworks were executed by a plotter controlled by a computer, were therefore computer-generated art but not digital art. The act of creation lay in writing the program, which specified the sequence of actions to be performed by the plotter. Sonia Landy Sheridan established Generative Systems as a program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970 in response to social change brought about in part by the computer-robot communications revolution, her early work with copier and telematic art focused on the differences between the human hand and the algorithm. Aside from the ongoing work of Roman Verostko and his fellow algorists, the next known examples are fractal artworks created in the mid to late 1980s; these are important. Whereas the earliest algorithmic art was "drawn" by a plotter, fractal art creates an image in computer memory.
The native form of a fractal artwork is an image stored on a computer –this is true of nearly all equation art and of most recent algorithmic art in general. However, in a stricter sense "fractal art" is not considered algorithmic art, because the algorithm is not devised by the artist. In light of such ongoing developments, pioneer algorithmic artist Ernest Edmonds has documented the continuing prophetic role of art in human affairs by tracing the early 1960s association between art and the computer up to a present time in which the algorithm is now recognized as a key concept for society as a whole. From one point of view, for a work of art to be considered algorithmic art, its creation must include a process based on an algorithm devised by the artist. Here, an algorithm is a detailed recipe for the design and execution of an artwork, which may include computer code, expressions, or other input which determines the form the art will take; this input may be mathematical, generative in nature.
Inasmuch as algorithms tend to be deterministic, meaning that their repeated execution would always result in the production of identical artworks, some external factor is introduced. This can either be a random number generator of some sort, or an external body of data Some artists work with organically based gestural input, modified by an algorithm. By this definition, fractals made by a fractal program are not art. However, defined differently, algorithmic art can be seen to include fractal art, as well as other varieties such as those using genetic algorithms; the artist Kerry Mitchell stated in his 1999 Fractal Art Manifesto: Fractal Art is not.. Computer Art, in the sense that the computer does all the work; the work is executed on a computer, but only at the direction of the artist. Turn a computer on and leave it alone for an hour; when you come back, no art will have been generated. "Algorist" is a term used for digital artists. Algorists formally began correspondence and establishing their identity as artists following a panel titled "Art and Algorithms" at SIGGRAPH in 1995.
The co-founders were Roman Verostko. Hébert is credited with coining the term and its definition, in the form of his own algorithm: if else Cellular automata can be used to generate artistic patterns with an appearance of randomness, or to modify images such as photographs by applying a transformation such as the stepping stone rule until the desired artistic effect is achieved, their use has been explored in music. Fractal art consists of varieties of computer-generated fractals with colouring chosen to give an attractive effect. In the western world, it is not drawn or painted by hand, it is created indirectly with the assistance of fractal-generating software, iterating through three phases: setting parameters of appropriate fractal software. In some cases, other graphics programs are used to further modify the images produced; this is called post-processing. Non-fractal imagery may be integrated into the artwork. Genetic or evolutionary art mak
Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca or ayaguasca from Quechua Ayawaska known as iowaska, or yagé, is an entheogenic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and other ingredients. The brew is used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin and is known by a number of different names. B. Caapi contains several alkaloids that act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Another common ingredient in ayahuasca is the shrub Psychotria viridis which contains the primary psychoactive, dimethyltryptamine. MAOIs are required for DMT to be orally active. Ayahuasca is known by many names throughout Brazil. Ayahuasca is the hispanicized spelling of a word in the Quechua languages, which are spoken in the Andean states of Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. Speakers of Quechua languages or of the Aymara language may prefer the spelling ayawaska; this word refers both to the liana Banisteriopsis caapi, to the brew prepared from it. In the Quechua languages, aya means "spirit, soul", "corpse, dead body", waska means "rope" and "woody vine", "liana".
The word ayahuasca has been variously translated as "liana of the soul", "liana of the dead", "spirit liana". In Brazil, the brew and the liana are informally called either caapi or cipó. In the União do Vegetal of Brazil, an organised spiritual tradition in which people drink ayahuasca, the brew is prepared from B. caapi and Psychotria viridis. Adherents of União do Vegetal call this brew hoasca or vegetal Brazilian Yawanawa call the brew "Uní"; the Achuar people and Shuar people of Ecuador and Peru call it natem, while the Sharanahua peoples of Peru call it shori. In the 16th century, Christian missionaries from Spain and Portugal first encountered indigenous South Americans using ayahuasca. In the 20th century, the active chemical constituent of B. caapi was named telepathine, but it was found to be identical to a chemical isolated from Peganum harmala and was given the name harmine. Beat writer William S. Burroughs read a paper by Richard Evans Schultes on the subject and while traveling through South America in the early 1950s sought out ayahuasca in the hopes that it could relieve or cure opiate addiction.
Ayahuasca became more known when the McKenna brothers published their experience in the Amazon in True Hallucinations. Dennis McKenna studied pharmacology and chemistry of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, which became the subject of his master's thesis. Richard Evans Schultes allowed for Claudio Naranjo to make a special journey by canoe up the Amazon River to study ayahuasca with the South American Indians, he brought back samples of the beverage and published the first scientific description of the effects of its active alkaloids. In Brazil, a number of modern religious movements based on the use of ayahuasca have emerged, the most famous of them being Santo Daime and the União do Vegetal in an animistic context that may be shamanistic or, more integrated with Christianity. Both Santo Daime and União do Vegetal now have churches throughout the world; the US and Europe have started to see new religious groups develop in relation to increased ayahuasca use. Some Westerners have teamed up with shamans in the Amazon rainforest regions, forming ayahuasca healing retreats that claim to be able to cure mental and physical illness and allow communication with the spirit world.
In recent years, the brew has been popularized by Wade Davis, English novelist Martin Goodman in I Was Carlos Castaneda, Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, writer Kira Salak, author Jeremy Narby, author Jay Griffiths, American novelist Steven Peck, radio personality Robin Quivers. Sections of Banisteriopsis caapi vine are macerated and boiled alone or with leaves from any of a number of other plants, including Psychotria viridis, Diplopterys cabrerana, Mimosa tenuiflora, among other ingredients which can vary from one shaman to the next; the resulting brew may contain the powerful psychedelic drug DMT and MAO inhibiting harmala alkaloids, which are necessary to make the DMT orally active. The traditional making of ayahuasca follows a ritual process that requires the user to pick the lower Chacruna leaf at sunrise say a prayer; the vine must be "cleaned meticulously with wooden spoons" and pounded "with wooden mallets until it's fibre."Brews can be made with plants that do not contain DMT, Psychotria viridis being replaced by plants such as Justicia pectoralis, Brugmansia, or sacred tobacco known as mapacho, or sometimes left out with no replacement.
This brew varies radically from one batch to the next, both in potency and psychoactive effect, based on the skill of the shaman or brewer, as well as other admixtures sometimes added and the intent of the ceremony. Natural variations in plant alkaloid content and profiles affect the final concentration of alkaloids in the brew, the physical act of cooking may serve to modify the alkaloid profile of harmala alkaloids; the actual preparation of the brew takes several hours taking place over the course of more than one day. After adding the plant material, each separately at this stage, to a large pot of water it is boiled until the water is reduced by half in volume; the individual brews are added together and brewed until reduced significantly. This combined brew is what is taken by participants in Ayah
Acid rock
Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. The style is defined by heavy, distorted guitars, lyrics with drug references, long improvised jams, its distinctions from other genres can be tenuous, as much of the style overlaps with'60s punk, proto-metal, early heavy, blues-based hard rock. The term, which derives its name from lysergic acid diethylamide, is sometimes used interchangeably with "psychedelic rock", but may refer more to a more musically intense subgenre or sibling to the psychedelic rock style. Acid rock distinguishes itself from other psychedelic styles by having a harder, louder, or heavier sound, developed from the American West Coast; such American groups did not focus on novelty recording effects or whimsy as much as subsequent British psychedelia, instead emphasized the heavier qualities associated with both the positive and negative extremes of the psychedelic experience.
As the movement progressed into the late 1960s and 1970s, elements of acid rock split into two directions, with hard rock and heavy metal on one side and progressive rock on the other. In the 1990s, the stoner metal genre combined acid rock with other hard rock styles such as grunge, updating the heavy riffs and long jams found in acid rock and psychedelic-influenced metal. "Acid rock" is loosely defined. Rock journalist Nik Cohn called it a "fairly meaningless phrase that got applied to any group, no matter what its style", it was used to describe the background music for acid trips in underground parties in the 1960s and as a catchall term for the more eclectic Haight-Ashbury bands in San Francisco. The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia believed that acid rock is music you listen to while under the influence of acid, further stating that there is no real "psychedelic rock" and that it is Indian classical music and some Tibetan music "designed to expand consciousness"; the term is deployed interchangeably with "psychedelic rock".
According to Per Elias Drabløs, "acid rock is considered a subgenre of psychedelic rock", while Steve and Alan Freeman state the two are synonymous, that "what is referred to as acid rock is the more extreme end of that genre". This would mean psychedelic rock, heavier, louder, or harder; as a hard rock variant of psychedelia, acid rock evolved from the 1960s garage punk movement, with many of its bands transforming into heavy metal acts. Percussionist John Beck defines "acid rock" as synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal; the term encompassed heavy, blues-based hard rock bands. Musicologist Steve Waksman wrote that "the distinction between acid rock, hard rock, heavy metal can at some point never be more than tenuous". Many bands associated with acid rock aimed to create a youth movement based on love and peace, as an alternative to workaholic capitalist society. David P. Szatmary states, "a legion of rock bands, playing what became known as'acid rock,' stood in the vanguard of the movement for cultural change."
Szatmary quotes from the San Francisco Oracle, an underground newspaper published between 1966 and 1968, to explain how rock music was perceived at that time and how the acid rock movement emerged: "Rock music is a regenerative and revolutionary art, offering us our first real hope for the future."When played live at dance clubs, performances were accompanied by psychedelic-themed light shows in order to replicate the visual effects of the acid experience. According to Kevin T. McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of a crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by author Ken Kesey, their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments". The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the psychedelic subculture. Former Atlantic Records executive Phillip Rauls recalls: "I was in the music business at the time, my first recognition of acid rock... was, of all people, the Beach Boys and the song'Good Vibrations'....
That sent so many musicians back to the studio to create this music on acid." According to Laura Diane Kuhn, the heavier form of psychedelic rock known as acid rock developed from the late 1960s California music scene. The Charlatans were among the first Bay Area acid rock bands, though Jefferson Airplane was the first Bay Area acid rock band to sign a major label and achieve mainstream success. By July 1967, Time magazine wrote, "From jukeboxes and transistors across the nation pulses the turned-on sound of acid-rock groups: the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Moby Grape". In 1968, Life magazine referred to the Doors as the "kings of acid rock". Other bands credited with creating or laying the foundation for acid rock include garage rock bands such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Count Five; the blues rock group the Paul Butterfield Blues Band are credited with spawning the harder acid rock sound, their 1966 instrumental "East-West", with its early use of the extended rock solo, has been described as laying "the roots of psychedelic acid rock" and featuring "much of acid-rock's eventual DNA".
Author Steve Turner recognises the Beatles' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on their 1966 album Revolver with the track "Tomorrow Never Knows", as having "opened the doors" to acid rock. The Beatles' June 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a major influence on American acid rock groups. Originating in the early 1960s, garage punk was a mainly-American movement that involved R&B-inspired garage bands power
Psilocybin mushroom
A psilocybin mushroom is one of a polyphyletic group of fungi that contain any of various psychedelic compounds, including psilocybin and baeocystin. Common, colloquial terms for psilocybin mushrooms include psychedelic mushrooms, magic mushrooms and mush. Biological genera containing psilocybin mushrooms include Copelandia, Inocybe, Panaeolus, Pholiotina and Psilocybe. Psilocybin mushrooms may have been used in ceremonies, they are depicted in Stone Age rock art in Europe and Africa, but most famously represented in the Pre-Columbian sculptures and glyphs seen throughout Central and South America. Prehistoric rock art near Villar del Humo, offers a hypothesis that Psilocybe hispanica was used in religious rituals 6,000 years ago, that art at the Tassili caves in southern Algeria from 7,000 to 9,000 years ago may show the species Psilocybe mairei. Hallucinogenic species of the Psilocybe genus have a history of use among the native peoples of Mesoamerica for religious communion and healing, from pre-Columbian times to the present day.
Mushroom stones and motifs have been found in Guatemala. A statuette dating from ca. 200 CE. and depicting a mushroom resembling Psilocybe mexicana was found in a west Mexican shaft and chamber tomb in the state of Colima. A Psilocybe species was known to the Aztecs as teōnanācatl and were served at the coronation of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II in 1502. Aztecs and Mazatecs referred to psilocybin mushrooms as genius mushrooms, divinatory mushrooms, wondrous mushrooms, when translated into English. Bernardino de Sahagún reported ritualistic use of teonanácatl by the Aztecs, when he traveled to Central America after the expedition of Hernán Cortés. After the Spanish conquest, Catholic missionaries campaigned against the cultural tradition of the Aztecs, dismissing the Aztecs as idolaters, the use of hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms, like other pre-Christian traditions, was suppressed; the Spanish believed the mushroom allowed the others to communicate with devils. In converting people to Catholicism, the Spanish pushed for a switch from teonanácatl to the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist.
Despite this history, in some remote areas, the use of teonanácatl has persisted. The first mention of hallucinogenic mushrooms in European medicinal literature appeared in the London Medical and Physical Journal in 1799: a man had served Psilocybe semilanceata mushrooms that he had picked for breakfast in London's Green Park to his family; the doctor who treated them described how the youngest child "was attacked with fits of immoderate laughter, nor could the threats of his father or mother refrain him." In 1955, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and R. Gordon Wasson became the first known European Americans to participate in an indigenous mushroom ceremony; the Wassons did much to publicize their discovery publishing an article on their experiences in Life in 1957. In 1956 Roger Heim identified the psychoactive mushroom that the Wassons had brought back from Mexico as Psilocybe, in 1958, Albert Hofmann first identified psilocybin and psilocin as the active compounds in these mushrooms. Inspired by the Wassons' Life article, Timothy Leary traveled to Mexico to experience psilocybin mushrooms firsthand.
Upon returning to Harvard in 1960, he and Richard Alpert started the Harvard Psilocybin Project, promoting psychological and religious study of psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs. After Leary and Alpert were dismissed by Harvard in 1963, they turned their attention toward promoting the psychedelic experience to the nascent hippie counterculture; the popularization of entheogens by Wasson, authors Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson, others has led to an explosion in the use of psilocybin mushrooms throughout the world. By the early 1970s, many psilocybin mushroom species were described from temperate North America and Asia and were collected. Books describing methods of cultivating Psilocybe cubensis in large quantities were published; the availability of psilocybin mushrooms from wild and cultivated sources has made it among the most used of the psychedelic drugs. At present, psilocybin mushroom use has been reported among some groups spanning from central Mexico to Oaxaca, including groups of Nahua, Mixe, Mazatecs and others.
An important figure of mushroom usage in Mexico was María Sabina, who used native mushrooms, such as Psilocybe mexicana in her practice. Present in varying concentrations in about 200 species of Basidiomycota mushrooms, psilocybin evolved from its ancestor, some 10 to 20 million years ago. In a 2000 review on the worldwide distribution of psilocybin mushrooms, Gastón Guzmán and colleagues considered these distributed among the following genera: Psilocybe, Panaeolus, Hypholoma, Pluteus Inocybe, Panaeolina, Agrocybe and Mycena. Guzmán increased his estimate of the number of psilocybin-containing Psilocybe to 144 species in a 2005 review. Many of these are found in Mexico, with the remainder distributed in Canada and the US, Asia and Australia and associated islands. In general, psilocybin-containing species are dark-spored, gilled mushrooms that grow in meadows and woods of the subtropics and tropics in soils rich in humus and plant debris. Psilocybin mushrooms occur on all continents, but the majority of species are found in subtropical humid forests.
Psilocybe species found in the tropics include P. cubensis and P
Acid jazz
Acid jazz known as club jazz, is a music genre that combines elements of jazz, soul and disco. Acid jazz originated in the London club scene of the mid-1980s in the rare groove movement and spread to the US, Eastern Europe, Brazil. Major acts included the Brand New Heavies, Incognito, Us3, Jamiroquai from the UK and Buckshot LeFonque and Digable Planets from the US; the rise of electronic club music in the mid to late 1990s led to a decline in interest, in the twenty-first century, the movement became indistinct as a genre. Many acts that might have been defined as acid jazz are now seen as jazz-funk, neo soul, or jazz rap; the genre got its name in 1987 from a disc jockey in London. The name is a play on the acid house genre, popular in UK clubs in the 1980s. Acid jazz consisted of two related movements; the first was based on records released by DJs and producers that included rare jazz tracks from the 1960s and 1970s mixing them with percussion tracks and electronic dance beats. The second were groups influenced by these recordings and who emphasised a groove-based approach to music.
Acid jazz uses elements of jazz and hip-hop. Because of its existence as a percussion-heavy live music, it was closer to jazz than any other dance style, but its focus on maintaining a groove allied it with funk, hip-hop, dance music; the style is characterized by danceable long, repetitive compositions. Typical ensembles include horns, a full rhythm section, a vocalist that may sing and rap and a DJ. Acid jazz has its origins in the 1960s, when psychedelic styles were being incorporated into other musical genres, jazz being one of these; some cite "Six Pack" and "Soul Fiesta" by The Apostles as acid jazz records during the 1960s. Acid jazz became popular in the London club scene of the mid-1980s, with DJs of the rare groove movement, who played obscure jazz records, their main interests were in the fringe of jazz fusion, jazz funk, with lesser input from soul jazz of the 1950s and 1960s. Significant were records from the Blue Note catalogue; these DJs included Gilles Peterson, who had residencies at several London clubs in the 1980s, began in his own small pirate radio station and moved to the much larger Kiss-FM.
In 1988 with producer Eddie Piller he formed the label Acid Jazz Records. The first release from the company was the compilation Totally Wired, which contained obscure jazz funk tracks from the 1970s with updated new tracks. In 1990 Peterson left to found his own label Talkin' Loud at Phonogram; the company signed acts such as Young Disciples and Urban Species. Another British record label, Fourth And Broadway Records, was formed in 1990 and began a compilation series with the title "The Rebirth of Cool". Artists included Pharoah Sanders, Stereo MCs, the French rapper MC Solaar, Japanese production team United Future Organization and saxophonist Courtney Pine. In 1991 the genre broke into the mainstream with the success of Brand New Heavies. After one eponymous album with Acid Jazz Records the group moved on to FFRR Records for their hit singles "Never Stop" and "Dreams Come True". Other bands included Us3, whose "Cantaloop" was the biggest hit in the genre. Successful were Jamiroquai, having been an early signing for Acid Jazz Records, signed for Sony Music for their successful album Travelling Without Moving, which spawned the international hit single "Virtual Insanity".
Other live acts included the James Taylor Quartet. The initial mainstream success of acid jazz was followed by a large number of compilations that left the public confused as to the nature of and key performers in the genre. In the early 1990s local acid jazz scenes developed in the US, it reached New York in 1990 when British promoter Maurice Bernstein, his South African partner, Jonathan Rudnick opened Groove Academy as a party at the Giant Step club in the basement of the Metropolis Café in Union Square. From this Groove Academy developed into a record label and media company. Other acid jazz recording artists in New York were Brooklyn Funk Essentials, DJ Smash, Jerome Van Rossum. In San Francisco there was Ubiquity Records and in Los Angeles Solsonics. Notable acid jazz groups that emerged from this scene included A Tribe Called Quest, who borrowed from a variety of jazz sources for their Platinum-selling The Low End Theory, Buckshot LeFonque, a project of Branford Marsalis, Digable Planets, who were awarded a Grammy for their 1993 single "Rebirth of Slick".
Formed in New York in 1990, Groove Collective produced their self-titled debut in 1993 and have continued to be influential into the twenty-first century. The rapper Guru released a series of collaborative albums with major figures in jazz as the Jazzmatazz series. From Chicago, Liquid Soul achieved a national profile from 1996 when their self-titled debut LP was re-released on the Ark21 label. Acid jazz soon gained an international following, including in Japan, Germany and Eastern Europe. From Japan, United Future Organization gained an international reputation, signing an American record deal in 1994. Other notable artists from Japan included Mondo Grosso, Gota. From Eastern Europe came bands such as Skalpel from Poland; the rise of electronic club music in the mid to late 1990s led to a decline in interest in acid jazz among the record buying public, although the genre continued to have a reduced worldwide following. In the twenty-first century the movement became so intertwined with other forms that it became indistinct as a genre and many acts that might have been defined as a
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