A GUY CALLED GERALD

AUTOMANIKK CBS

A GUY Called Gerald has a busy mind. It sucks in all it finds around it, irrespective of source or owner, and spills it back out, re-arranged into brash dance shapes. Consequently there are many triumphs, and the odd disaster. Yet "Automanikk" is never dull, rarely less than intriguing. It's amazing what a lively mind can do.

Real, Gerald is as state-of-the-art as we're gonna get in today's kicking dance scene. His hums with the productive turmoil of sequencers, samples, drum machines, with not a nod to rock in sight. Gerald himself is an absence, rarely audible; not for nothing is his function here defined as "sound designer''. The phraseology is perfect. He's always apart from this, his face pressed against studio glass, omniscient and overseeing. 

Yet his nature is still key to sussing this music. Gerald is impossibly unassuming, a naive child-figure, a disposition which jars superbly with his techno-suss. It's insanely easy to believe he was still working in MacDonald’s in Manchester when "Voodoo Ray" stood in the Top 10, unaware he was due reward for his efforts. When the pop/dance world is so full of schemers, stammers, cynic, you have to wonder if Gerald should even be allowed out of the house unchaperoned.

 It's easy to claim "Automanikk" can only work in a club atmosphere, abetted by strobes, slides, visuals, vibes. Yet it's also misleading. Gerald's keen, sound experiments (which they are) don't have the frantic hook-laden urgency of Italian House; never go near any rap crossover. It's more an Acid-drenched ambient trance dance, a devout search for a good groove, and when Gerald locates one, he sticks to it like glue. At best, "Automanikk" is almost the soundtrack for the perfect club experience.

 Gerald toys with pop, as he does with everything else." Eyes Of Sorrow", with its opening rainforest sample, has the alluring muted electro-throb of Electribe 101, never even needing a hook. Indeed, it's astonishing how completely the pop new gold dream of the early Eighties has been hijacked and effortlessly realised by today's dance fraternity, with their seamless, flawless, perfectly engaging pop concoctions. The answer lay in the studio all along?

 Much of "Automanikk" is hazy psychedelia, but that's the wrong description for Gerald. He's always more than that. "To The Other Side", a busy House shuffle and shimmer, recalls The Shamen, yet with no hint of a manifesto; Gerald is far too blissed-out to agitate for change. Even on "I Won't Give In", a defiant rap, he sounds the most unconvincing rebel ever committed to vinyl, faded right back in the mix. But that's where he belongs. He's not needed.

 Not everything works. "Stella" meanders in from outer space then goes nowhere, and there are graciously "zany" moments-an appearance from mad Edward Barton, and a crack which samples his PR men talking. Yet even this is tribute to Gerald's extraordinary openness, his lateral vision. He's willing to cry anything. "Automanikk" cakes us nowhere new; we'd got this far already. But it's one brilliant benchmark. Yeah, the state of the art in dance is looking just fine.

IAN GITTINS