Capitol Records Releases Soundtrack for the Irvine Welsh-Penned Film ``The Acid House'' on Aug. 10.

HOLLYWOOD--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Aug. 3, 1999--

Disc Boasts New Tracks From Oasis, Belle & Sebastian,

Beth Orton & Primal Scream 

The legions of fans and critics who took "Trainspotting" to heart when it was released in the United States three summers ago will have plenty to rave about when "The Acid House," directed by Paul McGuigan, makes its long-awaited premiere in August 1999.

Based on author Irvine Welsh's 1994 novel of the same name, and set in the dead-end working-class housing projects of Muirhouse in North Edinburgh, Scotland, "Trainspotting" catapulted him to international notoriety as it became THE British film event of 1996.

The second-highest-grossing homegrown U.K. movie in history (behind "Four Weddings and a Funeral"), it reinforced Welsh's reputation as "the poet laureate of the chemical generation" (as proclaimed in The Face), and "the first writer to take up the challenge of defining this chemical generation" (as echoed in the U.K. style magazine i-D).

Welsh's other major work of 1994 was "The Acid House," a collection of short stories drawn from his experiences in the same dingy ghetto of squats and smoky underground saloons. The three one-act stories chosen from the book that now comprise the film -- "The Granton Star Cause," "A Soft Touch" and "The Acid House" -- unleash the same vicious black humor as its predecessor.

The locale for both films, a desolate landscape that houses a rampaging drug epidemic, and one of the highest HIV rates in the world, is also a world where music provides some of the only deliverance from the desperation of everyday life.

The musical soundtrack of "Trainspotting" played an integral role in the film's action, lingering on the psyche long afterward as it revived the mystique of vintage Iggy Pop ("Lust for Life") and Lou Reed ("Perfect Day"), focused new attention on Primal Scream, Blur, New Order and Leftfield, and spread the message of electronica via the music of Underworld and Bedrock featuring KYO.

The results were RIAA gold sales of more than a half-million copies in the United States alone, and the penultimate beatification from Entertainment Weekly, which crowned the album "the `Saturday Night Fever' of the Ecstasy generation."

Welsh, a native of the same colorfully squalid community that he lays bare in his novels, was encouraged by Alex Usborne, the producer of "The Acid House," to write his first screenplay in the graphic dialect of the North Edinburgh estates. At the same time Welsh, who has been known to do occasional stints as a club deejay (he even released a single, "I Sentence You to a Life of Dance") understood that music would be a fundamental part of the script itself.

"It's incredible what Irvine Welsh's name can do for opening doors," said Usborne, referring immediately to "Going Nowhere," a specially written track recorded by Oasis and contributed to "The Acid House" by Noel Gallagher.

The soundtrack, which will be released by Capitol Records on Aug. 10, boasts new and exclusive tracks from Belle & Sebastian ("Slow Graffiti"), Primal Scream ("Insect Royalty") and Deconstruction artists Beth Orton ("Maybe Baby") and Death In Vegas ("The Cantino Sessions"). The Verve is represented by "On Your Own," Dimitri From Paris with "Toujours L'Amoure" and The Chemical Brothers' "Leave Home" is heard in standard form and a remix by Darren Emerson and Rick Smith of Underworld.

There is an inspired duet by Nick Cave and his original Bad Seeds-mate Barry Adamson on "Sweetest Embrace," while "You'll Never Know" is a superb partnering (also previously unreleased) of Texas and the Soul Renegades that reworks their "Ill Behaviour." Among the other artists included on the soundtrack are the Gyres, the Pastels, Arab Strap, the Sons of Silence and Bently Rhythm Ace with "This Is Carbootechnodiscotechnobooto."

"The Acid House" will open on Aug. 6 at the Film Forum in New York and in Los Angeles at the Nuart Theatre on Aug. 13, and nationwide through Zeitgeist Films throughout the late summer and fall.