TIMEWARP ME

LATEST RELEASES

31st April 07 - A. Cassy - Somelightuntothenight / B. A Guy Called Gerald - Bodecka (Beatstreet 01)

25th May 07 - Proto Acid 12" No. 2 (Laboratory Instinct LI012)



A Guy Called Gerald
New Album : Proto Acid - The Berlin Sessions
Released 12th AUGUST 2006 (Laboratory Instinct)

Earlier this year, A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald Simpson) made his Laboratory Instinct debut with a drop-tech infusion mix of Dell & Fl..gels Superstructure that appeared on the duos Study For A Skyscraper EP. Now the British acid house pioneer and drumnbass legend issues his own superb full-length on the German imprint, the appropriately-titled Proto Acid - The Berlin Sessions. Having literally influenced generations of music-makers with an incredible discography thats grown incrementally deeper since the 80s, the Manchester UK native and now Berlin resident executes the infectious 71-minute jam with a masterful meticulousness.

Drenching Detroit-styled techno in sparkling electro, the set, recorded live in one session using two laptops and a DJ mixer at Geralds Diehold Studio on February 11th, 2006, flows with a relaxed ease. With one exception (Auto Rebuild, the third track, is a remake of 1990s Automannik), the albums 24 raw, club-oriented tracks are all new and were created over the last year in Berlin. The collection departs from the style of his last full-length, To All Things What They Need, in many ways, the most obvious being the absence of singing. Asked why he decided to make Proto Acid The Berlin Sessions wholly instrumental, Simpson doesnt mince words. "On my last two albums, I felt pressured to include vocals", he replies. "Nowadays, I feel singers should be put on a bale of hay with a piece of straw hanging out of their mouths while playing acoustic guitarkeeping it real, if you know what I mean. I want to make music for clubs and sometimes you just have to get down and dirty into the machines and, to take it there, you cant hold anyones hand. Some things just dont need a vocal. What Im trying to do is keep myself entertained as well as give the punters something new."

Asked to describe the albums sound, Simpson says, To me its proto acid; its how I feel house/techno music would have sounded if the whole rave thing hadnt happened in England. When I was younger, I would go to soul and funk clubs and you could easily mix a techno/house track into your set without spoiling the environment. Could you imagine playing a techno track at an rnb club today? Things have splintered and fragmented and floated so far apart that funk seems to have dropped through the cracks. Im one of those preserved creatures that basically loves to use genres as a palette. So when I say proto acid Im saying this stuff has direct lineage to Chicago and Detroit in the mid-to-late 80s. Dont think that, for Simpson, acids definition is limited to something as obvious as the 303 either. "I find it really interesting how the TB303 has come to be fetishised as an acid machine", he says. "For me, acid was all about the tweaking of synths and riding a groove, you know what I mean? Like, before the masses thought the Transistor Bass machine was a special tool for doing acid house music, I was already bored with it and had moved on to tweaking envelopes on other Roland machinery, so I never really possessed that value for the 303 like everybody else did. I feel like I followed my own path and was inspired by what was going on in Detroit and Chicago but always did my own thing. To me, the new album is acid and acids a part of everything I do."

On the disc itself, Simpson doesnt waste a moment but immediately invigorates the set with the pumping tribal groove of Marching Powder before moving on to the steely funk-throb of The Strip. The mixs strutting electro strain makes its first appearance in Auto Rebuild and dominates thereafter, though its presence is subtly modulated from one cut to the next, at one moment oozing a house vibe and the next techno. While differences distinguish one track from the next (though Simpson avows that his influences are more machines than particular artists, a seeming Drexciya influence emerges in Droid and the dark synth-driven Feel the Heat while dub rears its head in Xray and Bass-o-train), theres clearly a unified feel to the album. Skitzoid casts a mechano spell, Night Flight breezily rocks, and the jacking cut Voltar broils feverishly for almost eight minutes. Bringing the mix to a chilled close, Sweet You floats in a billowing haze of jazzy pianos and locomotive drum brushes before vaporizing in a cloud of cymbal accents.

At this stage in his career, one might assume that Simpson has covered every base imaginable, but apparently thats not so. Referring to the new release, he says, "Its the culmination of a dream Ive had since I started making music, and thats to take the studio into the club; this album is snapshot of those possibilities."

LISTEN TO PROTO ACID 12 " A-SIDE PREVIEW

INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW - LITTLE DETROIT