A GUY CALLED GERALD
Voodoo Ray
(RHAM Records EP)

There is a particularly credible music biz rumour-come theory that certain Northern towns – Manchester being the prime example – have had their water supply treated with small doses of mind - expanding chemicals. Youths born in the psycho '60s astral travelled through the sordid '70s and emerged in the Ecstatic'80s with a head start on the Southerners when it came to neo-psychedelic electro mischief.

Everyone from Happy Mondays to the severely disorientated Morrissey conform to the theory in some way. Enter A Guy Called Gerald, out of his box on the limitless possibilities of a bank of keyboards and a sampler OD. The end result is not so much Acid House as Acid Habitat. 'Voodoo Ray' stretches a simple female vocal chant over an out of time electro workout that sounds like an old Cabaret Voltaire out take. 'Escape' steals lock, stock and barrel, from West Coast electro cultists, Negativland and sounds, to these addled ears, like Holger Czukay in an aquarium.

The Czukay comparison extends onto side two where the naffly titled 'Rhapsody In Acid' becomes a techno-Tibetan mantra for new age Zen monks with a head full of magic mushrooms. Throughout. A Guy Called Gerald staunchly upholds the mind-expanding Manc theory combining a boffin's head with an acid casualty's cerebral cortex. Another ghost in another machine.

[Reviewer: SEAN O'HAGAN]

A GUY CALLED GERALD
'Voodoo Ray'
RHAM

If acid house has a future it will sound like this. An eerie arabic wail straight out of Ofra Haza meets a funky steel band down in the jacking zone. A Guy Called Gerald (so casual! so offhand! how do they think of these names?!) takes mystery to bed and wakes up with something far more exciting than the sulphuric copyclones who're drowning the charts in their acid bath. Nice one, guy.

Matthew Collin

[Reviewer: Matthew Collin]

A GUY CALLED GERALD
'Voodoo Ray'
(Rham)

Already the subject of much grapevine gossip, Manchester's A Guy Called Gerald at last unleashes his handiwork on the public. Call it House if you like, but there's more here than that. Low production values glare but 'Voodoo Ray' transcends its limitations. Rhythmically compulsive yet curiously brittle, AGCG bring dance music perilously close to the frontiers of art/noise esotericism.

Let me put it another way. This is the kind of industrial funk that people with rose-tinted hearing aids are always telling us that Cabaret Voltaire used to make. Got it?

[Reviewer: DAMON WISE]

A GUY CALLED GERALD
Voodoo Ray EP
(Rham)

Manchester's eccentric electro dabbler A Guy Called Gerald has produced a genuinely original debut that shapes House, Bhangra and Acid into a frenetic echoing exploration of contemporary dance habits.

The title track 'Voodoo Ray' plays on your nerves as if they were piano strings, producing tingling resonances of pure stimulation via its combination of haunting Indian vocal motifs and technological impurity. A truly off centre gathering of unlikely turntable fellows here, including Tibetan chanting and tribal rhythms. Weird.

[Reviewer: Unknown]

A Guy Called Gerald
4 Track EP
(RHAM)

Watch this Manchester boy closely. One of the most innovative and original dance records of the year. Forget "Trance dancing" and feel those rhythms!

[Reviewer: Graeme Park]