Title of the album is called "Proto Acid, The Berlin Sessions" and is due out via Laboratory Instinct on 12th August 2006.
Press Release:
Earlier this year, A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald Simpson) made his Laboratory Instinct debut with a "drop-tech infusion" mix of Dell & Flugel's Superstructure that appeared on the duo's Study For A Skyscraper EP. Now the British acid house pioneer and drum'n'bass legend issues his own superb full-length on the German imprint, the appropriately-titled Proto Acid The Berlin Sessions. Having literally influenced generations of music-makers with an incredible discography that's grown incrementally deeper since the '80s, the Manchester UK native and now Berlin resident executes this infectious 71-minute jam with a masterful meticulousness.
Drenching Detroit-styled techno into sparkling electro, the set, recorded live in one session using two laptops and a DJ mixer at Gerald's Diehold Studio on February 11th, 2006, flows with a relaxed ease. With one exception 'Auto Rebuild' the third track, is a remake of 1990's 'Automannik'), the album's 24 raw, club-oriented tracks are all new and were created over the last year in Berlin. The collection departs from the style of his last full-length, To All Things What They Need, in many ways, the most obvious being the absence of singing. Asked why he decided to make Proto Acid The Berlin Sessions wholly instrumental, Simpson doesn't mince words. "On my last two albums, I felt pressured to include vocals" he replies."Nowadays, I feel singers should be put on a bale of hay with a piece of straw hanging out of their mouths while playing acoustic guitar 'keeping it real', if you know what I mean. I want to make music for clubs and sometimes you just have to get down and dirty into the machines and, to take it there, you can't hold anyone's hand. Some things just don't need a vocal. What I'm trying to do is keep myself entertained as well as give the punters something new."
Asked to describe the album's sound, Simpson says,"To me it's proto acid; it's how I feel house/techno music would have sounded if the whole rave thing hadn"t happened in England. When I was younger, I would go to soul and funk clubs and you could easily mix a techno/house track into your set without spoiling the environment. Could you imagine playing a techno track at an d'n'b club today? Things have splintered and fragmented and floated so far apart that funk seems to have dropped through the cracks. I'm one of those preserved creatures that basically loves to use genres as a palette. So when I say proto acid I'm saying this stuff has direct lineage to Chicago and Detroit in the mid-to-late 80s".
Don't think that, for Simpson, acid's definition is limited to something as obvious as the 303 either. "I find it really interesting how the TB303 has come to be fetishised as an acid machine" he says. "For me, acid was all about the tweaking of synths and riding a groove, you know what I mean? Like, before the masses thought the Transistor Bass machine was a special tool for doing acid house music, I was already bored with it and had moved on to tweaking envelopes on other Roland machinery, so I never really possessed that value for the 303 like everybody else did. I feel like I followed my own path and was inspired by what was going on in Detroit and Chicago but always did my own thing. To me, the new album is acid and acid's a part of everything I do".
On the disc itself, Simpson doesn't waste a moment but immediately invigorates the set with the pumping tribal groove of "Marching Powder" before moving on to the steely funk-throb of "The Strip" The mix's strutting electro strain makes its first appearance in"Auto Rebuild" and dominates thereafter, though its presence is subtly modulated from one cut to the next, at one moment oozing a house vibe and the next techno. While differences distinguish one track from the next (though Simpson avows that his influences are more machines than particular artists, a seemingly Drexciyan influence emerges in "Droid" and the dark synth-driven "Feel the Heat" while dub rears its head in "Xray" and "Bass-o-train"), there's clearly a unified feel to the album. "Skitzoid" casts a mechano spell, "Night Flight" breezily rocks, and the jacking cut"Voltar" broils feverishly for almost eight minutes. Bringing the mix to a chilled close, "Sweet You" floats in a billowing haze of jazzy pianos and locomotive drum brushes before vaporizing in a cloud of cymbal accents.
At this stage in his career, one might assume that Simpson has covered every base imaginable, but apparently that's not so. Referring to the new release, he says,"It's the culmination of a dream I've had since I started making music, and that's to take the studio into the club; this album is snapshot of those possibilities."
Press release taken from ePM website here
DE 2006 LP; Laboratory Instinct: LI011LP
4:10 Droid
3:24 Nasty
2:36 The Slink
1:15 Transition
1:50 Andromeda
3:25 Skitzoid
4:41 Night Flight
2:08 Scaffolding
2:21 Bass-O-Tran
Released:
12th August 2006.
(Plusunknown tracks in locked grooves on the record)
DE 2006 CD; Laboratory Instinct: LI011CD
2:27 Marching Powder
1:24 The Strip
2:20 Auto Rebuild
1:14 Space 1999
4:10 Droid
3:24 Nasty
2:36 The Slink
1:15 Transition
1:50 Andromeda
4:37 Monday
1:21 Clock
2:42 Downstroke
2:50 Bumpt
2:42 Plaything
3:26 Merlot Brougham
2:57 Xray
1:50 Feel The Heat
3:25 Skitzoid
4:41 Night Flight
2:08 Scaffolding
2:21 Bass-O-Tran
2:45 Robogroover
7:33 Voltar
5:15 Sweet You
Released:
CD released: 12th August 2006.
LP Purchase from:
CD Purchase from:
Digital Purchase from:
"Gerald's new single is a split record with Benno Blome, where both artists perform a cover version of Chicago house's Chip-E's classic "Time To Jack".
Released via Berlin's "Sender Records", this is available on either 12" single (SENDER058), or MP3 via Beatport or Kompakt's MP3 Shop.
Review from Boomkat here:
"Time to jack" - what a call to attention, a jolt to the brain synapses, here retrieved from its auspicious mid-late-eighties chicago origins. A Guy Called Gerald was of course the man there at the time, running exclusives to an increasingly hectic Ha"ienda dancefloor, presiding over the epicentre of what proved to be an uncontrollable global explosion. By way of tribute to another inspirational forefather, his rousing original is coolly modified, the bass beefed up for a new generation, the acid mesmeric as ever, lent a fresh dynamic and frankly sounding totally awesome. For the flip welcome Benno Blome, a recent compadre from Gerald's new adoptive home of Berlin, giving the darkness of the original a more contemporary twist for the '06. With Blome you sense less of a line of continuity with the original, but offset against the raw power of the Gerald monster, working very well indeed as an alternative, melodic, elegant, dynamic, tangible and hypnotic . Buy!!"
DE 2006 12"; Sender Records: SENDER 058
DE 2006 MP3; Sender Records: SEND58 [Beatport]
6:50 Time To Jak
(b/w Benno Blome version of "Time To Jak")
Released:
MP3: 25th May 2006
German Availability of 12":
12th June 2006.
UK Availability of 12": 26th June 2006
Credits:
Published by Nanoplasmic.
Purchase from:
Release date was 29th May 2006.
Press Release for Part One is here and for Part Two here.
"Following their bi-monthly SPLIT parties at The Key, London which recently saw Kenny Larkin, A Guy Called Gerald, Ben Sims, Paul Mac, Domu and British Murder Boys join in the fun, SPLIT residents Chris Finke and Ben Sims now release their SPLIT Recordings label to go with their co-run club night and radio show.
The debut release will be "split" across two 12s of remixes of A Guy Called Gerald"s original 1988 acid house anthem "Blow Your House Down". Featuring mixes from British Murder Boys, Freaks, Paul Mac, Chris Finke, Ben Sims and Smith & Selway this first 12" collates the housier mixes from Freaks, Ben Sims and Chris Finke " as well as showcasing the original in all its acid house glory.
A GUY CALLED GERALD became a household name in 1988 when his acid house anthem "Voodoo Ray" raced up the UK charts and became an instant classic. However, lurking on the B-side was another cut that was soon to gain cult like status. As Gerald himself remembers: "The really strange thing about Blow Your House Down and Detroit was that everywhere else on the planet I went people introduced me as A Guy Called Gerald who did Voodoo Ray but in Detroit I was introduced as A Guy Called Gerald who did Blow Your House Down."
Starting off with the Detroit bass funk of the original "88 version we then run in to the frenzied claps and shuffled beats of Chris Finke"s rework before the mighty Freaks get their robotic claws into the tracks piano riff and finally Ben Sims strips it down to its bare rave components for a quality inaugural release.
Rolling in with a sterling techno mix from Tronic"s Smith & Selway the dynamic duo take the original"s core rhythm and re-upholster it with some spanking new production. Next up is Ben Sims infamous Killa Productions providing a cut up and filtered stormer whilst Surgeon and Regis " aka British Murder Boys " get dark and industrial and finally Paul Mac turns it into a full on Chicago acid monster!
"Blow Your House Down" has for those in the know been just as influential as it"s A sides compatriot in shaping the music of clubland today. Split Records are delighted, nay chuffed to bits, to be launching their label with Gerald"s classic track at the helm.
The next Split party @ The Key, London will be on Saturday 3rd June with Steve Rachmad, James Ruskin, Ben Sims, Chris Finke plus a very special guest. www.splitmusic.net"
UK 2006 12" Single; Split Music: SPLIT 001A
["Pre-release", however standard 12"]
5:08 Blow Your House Down (Original)
5:50 Blow Your House Down (Chris Finke Mix)
6:37 Blow Your House Down (Freaks Mix)
4:19 Blow Your House Down (Ben Sims "Soko" Mix)
Released:
27th April 2006.
Credits:
Written and produced by Gerald Simpson.
UK 2006 12" Single; Split Music: SPLIT 001B
["Pre-release", however standard 12"]
6:35 Blow Your House Down (Smith & Selway Mix)
4:54 Blow Your House Down (Killa Productions Mix)
5:22 Blow Your House Down (British Murder Boys "M6" Mix)
5:00 Blow Your House Down (Paul Mac Mix)
Released:
8th May 2006.
Credits:
Written and produced by Gerald Simpson.
The 12" single will be out on 10th April via Laboratory Instinct, and will have a catalogue number of LI009EP.
You can listen to the resulting mix on Laboratory Instinct's myspace webpage here.
"A Guy Called Gerald contributes a remix for Christopher Dell and Roman Flugel's Study For a A Skyscraper EP. The mix is what he calls a "drop-tech infusion" of Dell and Fl"gel's entire album. Out 10th April on Laboratory Instinct www.laboratoryinstinct.com"
"If you liked the recent Dell and Flugel album on Laboratory Instinct as much as me, you will love this new record, good vibes with added jazz influences and a new breed Gerald mix for the floor. Vibraphone player Christopher Dell joins forces with Roman Fl"gel the producer also known as Acid Jesus and Alter Ego here, the first and second tracks "4 Door Body Cell" and "Study For A Skyscraper" remind me of the jazzual inclines of the first N.S.I. 12" on Cadenza and the new Koss record on Mule Electronic. The Study For a Skyscraper track is easily the most jazzy, and both tracks are exclusives not featured on the Superstructure LP. The A Guy Called Gerald Remix of Study for a skyscraper removes itself from the jazzier influences and heads off down the road of the new German sounds, showing Mr Simpson at ease with the new minimalist tendencies. The best tracks for me are the Dell and Flugel original mixes, brilliant jazzy workouts and with the input of Christopher Dell, it has a depth to it that the Gerald version should match on the dancefloor. Winner.... "
DE2006 12" Single; Laboratory Instinct: LI09EP
Tracks:
5:06 Study For A Skyscraper (A Guy Called Gerald Infusion Mix)
Released:
11th April 2006.
Credits:
Remixed by A Guy Called Gerald.
Purchase from:
Two new tracks were made available as MP3 download via the BeatPort digital music site on 3rd January 2006: Sufistifunk Robogroove These can be purchased (together with "Flo-Ride", "Is Man In Danger", "The John Peel Sessions", "Black Secret Technology", "Hot Lemonade" and the "Voodoo Ray EP" from the Beatport website for £1.99 per track.
UK 2006 MP3 Sugoi: SUGOI-02 [Beatport]
7:04 Sufistifunk (Original Mix)
4:19 Robogroove (Original Mix)
Released:
3rd January 2006.
Credits:
Written by A Guy Called Gerald.
Purchase from:
