A Guy Called Gerald - "Black Secret Technology (Reissue)" album review

	A Guy Called Gerald: Black Secret Technology (Reissue) Album Review

	Straight No Chaser Winter 1996 Issue 39 Page ??
A Guy Called Gerald Black Secret Technology Juice Box Remixed, re-released and restating a point (with two new tracks to hoot), Black Secret Technology is hack to remind us who was thinking ahead hack in '95. Gerald layers sonic textures like an architect, building foundations from dense, resonating strings, slotting percussion like strata to create towering polyrhythms that speed off into the heavens. But it's the melodies that ring in your ears long after the fact - 'Finley's Rainbow' is still as joyous and uplifting, painting a kaleidoscope of colours in sound. 'The Nile' explores a shrouded groove, CompuRhythm beats snaking hack and forth in a river of eerie beauty, while 'Cybergen' comes on like future shock, robotic vocals spiralling inwards in a jerky, freaky meter, describing the manifesto of a drug that takes you wherever you want to go. With a new album 'Aquarius Rising' due in early '97 check out a futuristic classic before the next chapter arrives. [Reviewer: MA]

	GQ February 1997 Page 37
A Guy Called Gerald Black Secret Technology "SOME PEOPLE ARE MORE sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others," warns an official-sounding voice halfway through Black Secret Technology (Juice Box), the extraordinary fourth album by enigmatic Mancunian Gerald Simpson. Yet it's hard to imagine how anyone could remain unmoved by the intoxicating range of moods, skills and frequencies contained herein. Essential listening for wide-eyed breakbeat ingénues and hardened junglists alike, this is the one piece of urban beat sculpture no self-respecting modern home can afford to be without. A Guy Called Gerald is still most widely known for his silkily hypnotic 1989 hit single "Voodoo Ray", but the constant interruptions that have beset his career make a stark contrast with that record's headlong saunter. From an ugly legal wrangle with former partners 808 State, to having his second album for Sony (the prophetically titled High Life/Low Profile) rejected on the grounds that it was "too avant-garde", to losing £10,000 worth of equipment to an electronically minded cat burglar, this man could be forgiven for thinking himself the object of the Mummy's curse. All of which renders the almost mystical air of serenity that pervades Black Secret Technology's relentless quest for innovation still more miraculous than it appears. Originally released in 1995, but now repackaged with a couple of extra tracks and some new singing - in the hope of finding the mass audience opened up by Goldie's adventures in the over-ground - this record sounds even better now that the world has had a little while to catch up with it. How do you explain the bewitching simultaneous momentums of "Finley's Rainbow"? Gerald has had a go himself: "If you're on a train and you look right at the tracks, everything's going mad, but if you look further back, at the trees, they're sailing by." BEN THOMPSON Black Secret Technology is released on Juicebox on January 13.