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It's been a long journey for A Guy Called Gerald
from the post-acid house generation classic Voodoo Ray to today's drum 'n'
bass-influenced adventures. He talks to Gal Detourn about Essence, his first
album in five years...
GERALD SIMPSON IS a talented architect of sound
who's faced problems with major labels that didn't 'get it' and worked with
luminaries such as David Bowie and Tricky. Five years after his groundbreaking
Black Street Technology comes Essence. It's a sophisticated, classy, atmospheric
vocal-led journey - featuring Lamb's Louise Rhodes, Lady Kier and Wendy Page -
utilising drum 'n' bass's dynamics, but going somewhere more interesting.
Although Gerald now resides in the Big Apple, none
of the city's brashness has polluted his manner. He is attentive, quietly
spoken, thoughtful and ever the gentleman. So why has it taken someone who seems
so together five whole years to finish this latest opus?
What's he been doing?
"Moving, growing and trying to get an angle on who I am as a person and what I'm
trying to do," he sighs, "because it's been one bad experience after another.
Someone would say, 'You should be doing it this way and the person you're
working with is giving you a bad deal.' And I'd say, 'Oh yeah, you're right,'
and go with them but end up with an even worse deal. I spent a long time sorting
out the tangles I was getting into with people. And all the time the music was
being pushed into the background."
Getting vocal
He's through that now and Essence is arguably his ' best album to date. But why
is it so much more vocal? It was a progression," Gerald replies. "The first
jungle stuff I did was 100% sampling and loop then with Black Street Technology
I had a few vocal; I made this album so it could be adapted more easy to doing
it live, so it was built around vocals."
Maybe it's a case of not wanting to stand still or needing something different.
After all, that's why he's moved around so much. "I went to London to get away
from Manchester," explains Gerald. "I needed a different space to do my work.
Then when I'd been in London for a few years, it was the same thing, I needed
more input. I needed a change, a boost. I miss England though; fish and chips
and football."
Some artists need input to make their output, ands
where else could you get more input than New York? In fact, it's given Gerald
the opportunity to gain input in a very direct way: by sampling from inside his
toilet. No, no, it's not what you're thinking. "My toilet has a vent that goes
out on to the street," he explains, "so I can mic that up and it's like a direct
link to the street; people getting busted outside my door and all sorts of crazy
stuff."
And does he record on the streets as well? "I used to carry just a MiniDisc
recorder around, but now I carry a DV camera too, so I can get pictures. One
thing I've got since I've been back in the UK is the screeching of red buses.
I've recorded loads of things in New York though. I live in an active part of
Brooklyn, so there's always things to record."
"The problem with New York is it's so stagnant and inward looking for people who
are poor. I wish Bill Gates' millions could be given to some of those kids so
they could travel. It broadens the mind, but they're usually encouraged to stay
where they are. Also, in New York they think I'm an African American. When I
talk to people they're sometimes surprised there are black people in England.
The generation I belong to grew up a little more educated that your average
Brooklynite. They have a different heritage."
Sample this!
Sampled sounds, weaved into a track, are obviously an invaluable element in the
modern musician's armoury, but Gerald's route into such practices had some
underlying ulterior motives, like saving a beloved drum machine. "Yeah," he
recalls, "I sat down and sampled all the sounds from my Roland TR-808. I was
about to take it out on the road but the sync lead was wobbly and it had been a
bit touch and go at gigs. It was replaced by the Akai MPC60 which had some
really tight sequencing ability. I really valued the 808, from when I got it
around 1985. It was always a cherished piece, but taking it out on the road
meant it got battered."
Gerald is pretty big on sampling but what sampling techniques does he use most?
"Recently I've been really getting into the cutting and pasting of things with
hard-disk recording," he outlines. "Taking sounds from the sampler, putting them
into the computer, then just chopping them up, cleaning them up and putting them
back into the sampler."
 Hit
the perfect beat
The sampler, is of course, often the starting point for the other element of his
music for which he is most known: rhythm. Gerald once said the beats represented
his frustration to know the truth about his ancestors who talked with drums. Is
he still feeling that frustration? "Totally," is his emphatic reply, "but it's
only a small segment of what's going on.
"I look at things as a whole, whereas things like that are more personal. To
just look at my own ancestry alone would be indulgent. Jungle reflected that
heritage though. I related to that music because it felt like it balanced
something out in me. It's like saying, I'm doing this house music from Chicago
and Detroit and adapting it, but it's not what I want. The house thing is a part
of me, but what about the ska or the reggae? But it's not about being black or
white. It's like it's all from the same tree, but it's branched off into
different trees."
So does he use any particular strategy when constructing his rhythmic
contortions? "I'll sample a loop," Gerald explains, "then chop it up into lots
of little bits and I'll maybe add other bits of drums that I overlay to give it
some inflection or other. Sample CDs, banging things on the floor, all sorts.
One time I got a good sound by bringing a paving slab into the studio and
dropping a light bulb on to it from a height. There's not one way of doing it."
 Gerald's
drums might be loose and flowing in one sense, but they're also so tight they
sound like they snap into place. It's a trait familiar to many drum 'n' bass
records and Gerald has mastered it well. But how's it done exactly? "To get a
'feel' on some of the stuff," Gerald reveals, "I'll put it out of time, but
because the loop's a little bit out, I'll have to end it before it's supposed to
end, so I clip the last sound, and that gives that jolting, snapping effect."
Getting an organic and free-flowing feel to the music is very much part of what
A Guy Called Gerald is about. And although he uses a computer sequencer you
won't be surprised to learn that screen-based sequencing is not Gerald's
preferred method, but not necessarily for the obvious reason.
"When I was younger," he recalls, "maybe using
Cubase VI on the Atari, ha, those were the days, for some strange reason it
always used to knock me out sitting in front of the screen. I found I had to go
back to using the TR-808 or 909, because they had built-in sequencers. Nowadays,
I only use Cubase for automation of my desk. I've tried chopping up drum loops
on Cubase but it gets a bit tedious."
 I'm
a bass man
He might be known for drums, but let's not forget
that bass sound too. Essence not only features smooth sub bass punches but also
a cool slice of double bass too. "Yeah, that double bass sound is actually from
a keyboard," explains Gerald, "from a Yamaha RX3 or something like that.
"For bass sounds, I usually use about three different things to make that low
sound. The sub-harmonic part is just from a raw tone. I used to use the Roland
SH-101, but now it comes from a number of things, like the Akai S900, 'cos you
can go really low before it starts breaking up."
So what does Gerald use to get started on a track? What is his creative
scratchpad?
"Hmm, it changes," he muses, "but at the moment I'm
using a Korg ER-1, one of those Electribe things, but before I used some little
Yamaha MIDI writing things. I also started using the MPC60 as a scratchpad. I'd
go to gigs and do a live thing and save the good parts. I also dump a load of
stuff on to two-inch tape then sample back the good parts. I like the warm
quality of it."
Means to an end
However, as much as Gerald Simpson loves talking,;
technology, he's the first to recognise that music technology is not an end in
itself, but rather the means through which artists can make culture.
"Yeah, music is a vessel," he asserts, "and if you
can translate an idea via a machine, then you should do it, but as individually
as possible. It's not about keeping up with the Joneses. See, music is
important. The first sound we heard was our mother's heartbeat. We were a mass
of cells evolving into a piece of intelligence, and our first awareness of
anything was sound. The first awareness that your consciousness has of anything
other than itself, is sound, so that's why it's important."
 Vintage
please
"I do virtually have my own museum of analogue gear, but it's all here in the
UK. I'd quite like to do a project with some of that stuff one day. There are
vocoders, loads of old keyboards, old Rolands like SH-02s, different SH-101s,
modified 303s. They're maybe worth a bit now, but when I started it was simply
the only way I could afford to do it, you know, to go round to these second-hand
shops and buy old equipment.
"Back when I did an interview with Roland's magazine, they'd ask things like,
'If you had an ideal keyboard what would it be like?' This was back when
everyone was raving about digital. So I told them it'd be better if you could
turn the knobs and get direct control, to combine the digital with analogue
control. Now those machines do exist.
"I think there's something classic about a lot of
that old gear though. Like today, even with the Nords, you still have to
struggle to get the frequencies, but with the older stuff. it's there."
Gerald on:
Major labels
"I think the labels are starting to understand the scene a bit more, now it's a
younger crowd. But they're gonna have to catch up on the whole computer thing.
They're too insular. They're supposed to go out and look for talent, but I think
they've got to the stage where they're happy to just manufacture that talent.
Then they buy the press, the radio system, the charts. You could have Elvis
singing on your record, but if you're not in with the right people..."
Gear nightmares
"I tell the truth, because these companies need to know what works and what
doesn't. I'd say there's always some good in machines, but I remember a Tascam
DAT that just broke down. The other thing, with the Akai samplers, the screens
don't really last that long and it costs loads to replace the backlight. Also,
there's the Roland JP-8000. It has really weird MIDI problems and throws out
weird MIDI messages."
Sponsorship
"I'd love to get endorsements, then I'd keep up to date! I could road test gear
for them. I think these people should seriously think about sponsoring me to
endorse their products, because for years people have been asking me what gear I
use and how I use it. I remember having to let loose the secret that the 303 was
the acid machine, back in the 80s. I should definitely be testing gear."
Spirituality
"I think everyone is spiritual, but a lot of people don't really see it or take
any notice of it. I don't mean it in a religious way like some of the
profit-making organisations around, but in the sense of people looking at things
as a whole. I admire some of the things Buddhists do."
IM
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