To All Things What They Need

A GUY CALLED GERALD; LAURENT GARNIER

One brave, partially successful album in The Cloud Making Machine and one balmy delight, To All Things What They Need, by dance music veterans still innovating after all these years

By Joe Muggs

It's over 15 years since "A Guy Called" Gerald Simpson and Parisian superstar DJ Laurent Garner were first caught up in the acid house lunacy of Manchester's Hacienda. Since then, dance scenes have risen and fallen, gone global, attracted snobbery, adulation, hype and vilification, and been declared dead any number of times — while the true pros have just kept on keeping on.

To All Things What They Need is the freshest thing that Moss-Side-via-Berlin innovator Simpson has done in years. From the spacious dreamscape whisperings of To Love via the heavenly bubblebath or electronic sounds in First Try to the relentless dub of Pump, the tempo is varied, and the textures are deliciously warm, inviting and human. Vocals by Ursula Rucker and Finley Quaye add queenly beat poetry and Hutchence-like sleaze respectively. Constantly alive and evolving, the intricate melodic trippiness never allows monotony to take over, and genre purism is gleefully trampled in the pursuit of sheer beautiful electronic sound.

Garnier's album treads similar ground down to the apocalyptic beat poet on First Reaction (V2). However, the approach is more portentous and prog-rocky: the soundscapes more drawn out, the keyboard noodling, the occasional beats clankier. Individual tracks - say Barbiturik Blues jazzy trip-hop, or the fizzy ambience of Act I Minoraure Ex - sound pretty tasty, but eventually the meandering makes one with Laurent would pull his Gallic socks up.

Still, it's undeniably innovative. proof, like Gerald's gorgeous album, that the old dogs of acid house have still got new tricks in them.