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Earlier this year, A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald
Simpson) made his Laboratory Instinct debut with a 'drop-tech infusion'
mix of Dell & Flügel's Superstructure featured on the duo's Study For A
Skyscraper EP. Now the British acid house pioneer and drum'n'bass legend
is set to issue his own 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
that's grown incrementally deeper since the ‘80s, the Manchester UK native
and now Berlin resident executes the infectious 71-minute jam with a
masterful meticulousness (elaborating on the running time, Simpson says,
“I tried to keep it compact and tight. Usually, on laptops I like to do an
eight-hour set.”)
Drenching Detroit-styled techno in sparkling electro, the set, recorded
live in one session using two laptops and a DJ mixer at Gerald's Diehold
Studio on February 11th, 2006, flows with a relaxed ease. With one
exception (“Auto Rebuild,” the third track, is a remake of 1990's “Automannik”),
the album's 24 raw, club-oriented tracks are all new and were created over
the last year in Berlin. Simpson doesn't waste a moment, immediately
invigorating the set with a pumping tribal groove (“Marching Powder”)
before moving on to the steely funk-throb of “The Strip.” The mix's
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.
“Skitzoid” casts a mechano spell, “Night Flight” breezily rocks, and the
jacking cut “Voltar” broils feverishly for almost eight minutes. At this
stage in his career, one might assume that Simpson has covered every base
imaginable, but apparently that's not the case. Referring to the new
release, he says, “It's the culmination of a dream I've had since I
started making music, and that's to take the studio into the club; this
album is snapshot of those possibilities.”
1. Proto Acid The Berlin Sessions is obviously different from your last
full-length To All Things What They Need. Did you deliberately set out to
create something different from it, or did the tracks simply develop that
way of their own accord?
It was prepared in a way that it could be performed in a club. I was
invited to a series of small sessions with friends where I would jam live
and I prepared tracks especially for these nights. All I can say is the
secret to this formula is there never is a final mix. What I mean is,
every time I perform this material live it's always different. You may
recognize the melodies and some of the loops but every time they're
crafted together in a different way. This particular session is just one
jam.
2. Though some of your past releases would be classified as drum'n'bass
and house, this one sounds to me like a Detroit techno-electro merger. How
would you describe the overall style of the album?
To me it's proto acid; it's how I feel house/techno music would have
sounded if the whole rave thing hadn't 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 r'n'b club today? Things have
splintered and fragmented and floated so far apart that funk seems to have
dropped through the cracks. I'm one of those preserved creatures that
basically loves to use genres as a palette. So when I say proto acid I'm
saying this stuff has direct lineage to Chicago and Detroit in the
mid-to-late 80s.
3. Aside from a few snippets here and there, the new album eschews vocals.
Why did you decide to exclude vocals?
On my last two albums, I felt pressured to include them. 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 guitar—keeping 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 can't hold
anyone's hand. Some things just don't need a vocal.
4. Interestingly, track 13 (“Bumpt”) signals the set's first presentation
of a conventionally recognizable 'acid' sound.
I find it really interesting how the TB303 has come to be fetishised as an
acid machine. 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 acid's a part of everything I do.
5. What influences would you say emerge during the set? (I hear Drexciya,
for example, in “Space 1999.”)
My influences are more machines. I'll hear a sound and then I'll build a
whole story around it.
6. What prompted the move to Berlin and what's
the experience been like thus far? Do you find Traum and Kompakt
influences, say, seeping into your work as a consequence of living there?
I decided to move because I feel like I shed weight when I
move—psychologically and materially. I moved here because the clubs never
shut; I need to get my groove on and there's nothing like a 12-hour stint
in the studio and going out and getting your groove on before going to
bed.
I love living in Berlin. I love the clubs. I like the Sender and Boxer
Sport labels a lot and a lot of the other small labels doing electronic
music here. I'm not too much into Kompakt's main stuff. I try to enjoy
other people's music without being too influenced by it. The thing about
Berlin is, it's all about electronic music and club music, and there are
very few cities in the world left like this. There are other scenes here
as well but the underground is alive and kicking.
7. Given that you've amassed such an extensive discography, how difficult
is it for you to come up with and get excited about new material that's
different from what you've done before?
In the past it was slightly harder to do than today. I noticed a sequence
over the last decade of old stuff being regurgitated over and over again
and, at first, I thought it was just that people didn't mind hearing it
over and over again but then I realized that the older people get bored
and fuck off and new people get excited about the same old thing. What I
try to do is keep myself entertained as well as give the punters something
new.
8. You've seen not only a lot of artists come and go but trends too. Did
you ever find yourself being seduced by such trends or at least drawn
towards or influenced by them or did you always have the discipline to
focus completely on your own direction without being sidetracked?
I suppose I look at it in a different way. I see all these trends
influenced by me and a few others who were pioneering the way in the early
days so I suppose there's no need to follow really. I think it's healthy
that these 'scenes' exist and probably a good idea that they disappear
after a while. I think if you come from the generation I come from, it
seems a little bit immature to follow trends.
9. What are you listening to at the moment and what else can we expect
from you in the future?
Really abstract stuff... sound libraries... I'm making myself a collection
of Roland Juno 106 sounds using soft synths to regenerate the sounds. I
get really excited about these things because I can build a tune out of a
sound.
You can expect new music from Sender Records, from Perlon, from my own two
labels Sugoi and Protechshon. I'll be launching A Guy Called Gerald
Records for a reissues series, and there'll be a tour after the new album
is released in August.
10. There are so many artists who don't receive recognition commensurate
with their contributions (Terrence Dixon and Hieroglyphic Being come to
mind as two examples). Are there any artists you can think of that haven't
received their due?
Yeah, loads of them but it's just one of them things, as an artist you can
either look at that in a negative way like I didn't 'win' anything, any
recognition, or you could look at it in a way that if people really like
the music they will tell people they like about the music. I find that if
I like someone I will try and turn them onto something that I like; that's
how it all works for me. The media at the end of the day can be bought.
Any old knobhead from some trumped-up record label can buy his way into
being 'the best _____ in the world' and I suppose it gets them loads of
bookings but at the end of the day it depends on your goals and your
ethos.
A Guy Called Gerald
Laboratory Instinct
June 2006
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