(Taken from this webpage)
SKRUFFF.COM
11/09/06
A Guy Called Gerald: Techno-phobia, Ecstasy & Reality Revealed
“Everyone sees things differently at different times. Say if there were two
people and they were standing on two planks off the edge of a cliff and these
planks were vibrating at the same frequency in the same time, then both these
people would basically be in tune with each other and they would be conscious of
each other all the time. But if one was out of synch, where one was up and the
other one was down, they would never see each other and they would never notice
that the other existed.”
Sitting in a centuries old Soho beer garden on a sunny afternoon, acid house
legend and drum & bass icon Gerald Simpson speaks softly as he outlines his
theory of reality, that reflects his creative philosophy and status as one of
dance culture’s key pioneers.
“I think it’s as I’ve got older my understanding of reality has transformed into
different things, it’s morphed,” he continues.
“When I was younger, everything was solid and it was just there, it was how it
is. Then as I started to read more and look at different beliefs and start
questioning more, I realised there was more to reality than just one level. Now,
I see it as a maze of different ideas and different levels of intensity.
Reality on some levels is more intense than on other levels, depending on your
state of mind and that reflects how you receive information,” he explains.
“Say, for example, we went ‘OK on dimension two, for want of a better word,
where I’ve woken up and am vibrating at a certain frequency at this moment, that
blue would be bluer than say on another level or another dimension with me
vibrating at another frequency. It would be a totally different thing or a
different level but that’s how it is. If you are vibrating at a different
frequency then you definitely will see different things and things differently.
Wearing a bright red patent leather jacket and shade, Gerald looks every inch
the star DJ/ producer he’s been ever since the 80s, when with 808 State and
later solo, he created some of the first UK acid house records, going on to lay
the musical foundations of what became drum & bass. Established as one of dance
culture’s few bona fide artists, he moved over to New York in the 90s, before
settling in Berlin several years ago, where he’s now firmly ensconced. And
musically, after journeying into what he himself calls coffee table music via
two recent albums on K7 he’s now back producing raw banging dance music, as
provided on his new album Proto Acid- The Berlin Sessions
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): You’ve named you new album The Berlin Sessions, is that
particularly significant?
A Guy Called Gerald: “The actual CD started just as a series of experiments.
I was doing some stuff in the studio and there were some friends that were there
who said ‘Wow, you should just play it out live’. I was basically making tracks
up live as I was going along with two laptops and a mixer. We found this little
basement in the backstreets of Berlin and about fifteen friends or so got
together and I played for eight hours. Everyone really liked it the first time
so I did it again and started really enjoying it and
the I thought I might as well record the sessions. I think it was on my birthday
or just before, I recorded a session and that was it really, so I called it The
Berlin Sessions.”
Skrufff: Are you seeing yourself at a new stage musically?
A Guy Called Gerald: “Yeah, totally. What I’ve discovered being in Berlin is
that there are people who are really getting down here, they’re dancing for the
music. I’ve been to parties there where people just want it really raw. I’ve
been to other parties where the Dj has been a little too technical and I’ve
understood what’s he’s been trying to do, though I’ve noticed over half the
crowd waiting for something to kick in. Basically I thought that’s it; they just
want the raw elements.”
Skrufff: Everyone associates Berlin with the minimal thing, are you in a
parallel scene?
A Guy Called Gerald: “I kind of fit in I think in my own little way as a really
old school DJ/ producer who is just doing his own version. I feel like I’ve
always done that in a way. When Voodoo Ray came out in the 80s I was feeling the
vibe from what was going on in Detroit and Chicago. But I don’t think Voodoo Ray
or Blow The House down or any of that stuff sounded like Chicago or Detroit.
It’s the same with a lot of the jungle stuff I did, at the time when I started
doing the jungle stuff there was a lot of the
more ravey breakbeat stuff out and the music I made was in a way my own version
of that ravey thing.”
Skrufff: Do you still enjoy playing as much as ever?
A Guy Called Gerald: “Oh yeah. Up until the start of 2006 I was just spinning
vinyl, but I decided in 2006 that was the year of the mix and I started two
laptops and a mixer instead of vinyls and Technics/ Every now and then I use
Ableton Live, but I’m using Reason more than anything, because I can really zone
in on each thing and change it. I can be really intricate.”
Skrufff: Are you now sourcing tracks over the net?
A Guy Called Gerald: “No. I’m making the tracks myself. The downloading thing
– I would do that but I’m a little bit dubious about the whole process; people
have been arrested.”
Skrufff: You almost sound as if you are techno-phobic?
A Guy Called Gerald: “Yeah I am. Well kind of. I’m coming from a totally
different direction. In 1986/87/88, especially ’88 I wanted to take my studio on
the road, to show people what a 303 could do, but it was impossible because I
didn’t have the funding, so I had to have a band, which to me seemed more
expensive, but it made sense to the traditional thing. Then people like Adamski
started to go out and do live gigs with a keyboard and stuff like that. Then the
record labels are like ‘Yeah, yeah, you can
use drum machines and tour’. After a while I did start just going out drum
machines and stuff like that but it was a real hassle. In most clubs, they
didn’t have the set up, didn’t have a PA, so people would just turn up with a
DAT, I didn’t want to do that, or never did ever play from a DAT, so I had to
miss out on a whole load of gigs. Whereas in the early days, a lot of the rave
crews would just turn up and do a PA and have dancers and they would put a DAT
on. I came from the more geeky technical side at the time, where I wanted
everything live and running.”
Skrufff: I’m surprised you didn’t jump on the internet immediately, being a
studio boffin. . .
A Guy Called Gerald: “Well I was more interested in the technical development of
the music. I’ve got friends who do the website, design side and all that and
even friends that have jumped from studio engineering to become web designers
and I’m like ‘Wow, that’s really cool’ but somehow I always got more enjoyment
out of actually creating something and the sound being the goal. The internet
side didn’t quite grab me as much.”
Skrufff: I notice on your biog you have an anti-vocal section….
A Guy Called Gerald: “I mean I didn’t want any vocals on this LP, because one of
the things I noticed was that in the past I’d do some music and It was really
banging and then I’d get a vocalist in to do something on it and then I’d be
like: oh, there’s not enough room for the vocal and I ‘d start taking things
out. Then, before I knew it, it would still sounds good, but when I’d play it to
people, they’d think it sounded more like a coffee table kind of vibe. I had
that kind of experience with K7 on the last LP. When I
did the Essence LP for them I thought that had a coffee table kind of vibe, so I
wanted the next one to be totally banging. So I gave them a few bits and pieces
and they were like ;No, that one’s too drum and bassy, that’s a bit too housey’.
So I wondered what I should do. They started saying ‘We’ve got some vocalists
that could come in, some guest star type people like on the first one. I was
like: ’Alright.’ So I started contacting a few people and bringing in some
vocals and by the time it balanced out it was like ‘Oh, they want something
that’s similar to the old LP’. But they didn’t know how to say it to me. Unless
I’ve got a mad big budget, I can’t employ every single vocalist to go out on the
road with me when I’m playing, so people are not going to get the true
experience of it, so it would be really cool to do an album that was totally
raw. Berlin Sessions was the starting of that.”
Skrufff: On your website you’ve posted a line ‘If you got no rhythm, don’t
dictate to people’, who is that aimed at?
A Guy Called Gerald: “There were some people that were stealing some of my
music. I can’t really mention their names. Blatantly just taking a track and
putting it out and putting their mix on the other side, basically. My publishers
at the time were not doing anything about it and I was getting really angry, so
I phoned these people up. Then I listened to their thing and It was horrible.
There’s no structure to it or anything. They are using my name on their record,
but there was no connection between me and them at
all. I’m not allowed to put other people’s music out without paying. Because it
was only little small fry to the publisher they weren’t bothered, but it made me
feel really bad so in the end I sacked the publishers and started to do the
publishing myself. We started to step in on some of these people as well. They’d
say ‘But we are only small’; yeah, same here too.”
Skrufff: In an interview recently you said ‘listening to some of the newer,
supposedly new dance music and seeing the superstar DJs who appeared out of the
pseudo house scene only fuels my rebel energy’, what do you make of the DJ
Magazine top 100- do you pay any attention?
A Guy Called Gerald: “I don’t pay that much attention to it, but for me, every
time I go somewhere, to an afterparty or to someone’s house, then they keep on
mentioning all these names – do you know this DJ? Do you know that one? They
play a mix and I’ll think ‘Christ. That’s terrible. How much are they getting
paid and why are all those people there listening to them’? Then I start
thinking here’s Gerald being like the old man, being really upset because these
kids are being sold water instead of wine, but I suppose at the end of the day,
a lot of them were born in that rave thing where I was really on the outside of
it always. Even when I meet younger people now and they go ‘Wow ’88 in
Manchester, it was really crazy and I think I remember seeing the guys from 808
State freaking out and dancing in the studio and I’d not even finished the track
yet. At the time I thought maybe they were just being really kind to me, but
they’d obviously been taking something. I didn’t know anything about that.”
Skrufff: You weren’t doing any drugs at the time then?
A Guy called Gerald: “Not at all. Not even alcohol. I was freaked out once when
I was at the Hacienda and I saw Derrick May eating a piece of lemon, he didn’t
take drugs either and he was one of my role models, I thought that was the right
road to go down. Everyone else in my Manchester community was taking them, but
they were cool with me not. So I totally got a different angle from everything.”
Skrufff: How long did you not do drugs for? When did you do your first ‘e’?
A Guy Called Gerald: “I did an ‘e’ in I think ’95, but I was doing more like
jungle and drum & bass then. I didn’t really join the early house years.”
Skrufff: Were you getting high on the music?
A Guy Called Gerald: “I didn’t even know the meaning of getting high, so I
suppose I must have been. I was enjoying the music and enjoying making it, I
enjoyed dancing so I took it to the level where I wanted to study it. That was
it. Music and dance; dance and music. There was nothing in between.”
Skrufff: What made you take one in 1995?
A Guy Called Gerald; “I used to get given them all the time. I was DJing
somewhere in Manchester and I was really bored. I was in the middle of doing
this remix that I didn’t want to do, and I was going back to the studio to do
it, and I thought I’ll do an ecstasy. It was really strange, I was DJing and
there was this girl on the dance floor and I remember she was all dressed in
white and I was like ‘Oh my God, she is the most beautiful girl on the planet.
Is it ‘e’ or is it her?’ I went back to the studio and I dedicated this mix to
this girl that I didn’t even know. That was the first time – ’95.
Skrufff: Did you keep on doing it?
A Guy Called Gerald; “I’ve had dabblings here and there with bits and pieces not
really. I did an experiment recently, I was playing somewhere and I think people
these days expect the DJ to be a massive taker, the one with the best pills
who’s totally off his head. I was at this gig and they asked me what I wanted to
drink and I said vodka so they brought me a bottle of vodka. Surely they don’t
expect me to drink it all, do they? So I went to the toilet with it and poured
it all down the toilet and filled it up with water. During the gig I started
drinking it, first from the glass, then I started guzzling it straight out of
the bottle. I was just playing my normal set, but I noticed everyone was just
going for it. I was thinking ‘Are they drinking or am I causing them to drink
more?’ I don’t know, maybe there is some kind of psychological thing going on.
For or years I was always wondering why people were facing the DJ anyway with
this ‘tell me what to do’ kind of vibe. I’m sure these superstar DJs got on to
that a long time ago.
Instead I was always thinking ‘Wow this bass in a minute is going to go like
this and there is hardly any compression, I’m going to have to try to take it
down to be easy on them’. Even now I’ll be at a gig and I’ll check the DJ and
say to my girlfriend ‘Watch when the DJ lights up a cigarette lets see how many
people actually light up at the same time’. He is the conductor at the end of
the day. Because I was there swigging on this bottle of vodka, people were like
‘He’s getting really into it’.”
Skrufff: Switching topic entirely, have you ever seen a ghost?
A Guy Called Gerald: “No.”
Skrufff: Do you believe in ghosts?
A Guy Called Gerald: “Yeah, to a certain extent I do. I believe that they can
exist. If you ever get a chance to read Reality Revealed it’s really
interesting. There’s a chapter on religions and how they are and….I think it
might be chapter one where it’s called a Tape Analogy, it basically gives you an
analogy of reality as basically like a video tape running across a playback head
and light being the tape and everything we capture here being the playback. They
give you a really strong argument and within this they
explain things like ghosts and poltergeists. There’s been incidents where
there’s been electrical storms and a blade of grass has pierced a pane of glass
without breaking and it’s basically there and no-one has got an explanation.
What they try and do in Reality Revealed is explain some of these things that
none has explanations for. There’s a woodsman and he cut a tree in half and a
live frog jumped out. The frog was alive for a little while then he died, but
somehow it broke the rule of within this dimension where two things can’t exist
within the same space, but somehow…..”
Guy Called Gerald: Proto Acid- The Berlin Sessions is out now on Laboratory
Instinct.
http://www.aguycalledgerald.com
Jonty Skrufff (JontySkrufff.com )