A Guy Called Gerald

Gerald Simpson (born 16 February 1967, Moss Side, Manchester, England), better known as A Guy Called Gerald, is a British musician, DJ and record producer.

He is best known for his early work in the Manchester acid house scene in the late 1980s and the track "Voodoo Ray". At that time, he specialised in techno music produced using equipment such as the Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser and the TR-808 drum machine.

Early Influences and Music

Simpson was influenced by his Jamaican roots; his father's blue beat, ska and Trojan reggae record collection, his mother's Pentecostal church sessions and the Jamaican sound system parties in Manchester's Moss Side area where he grew up.

He absorbed jazz fusion and electro funk at clubs, youth clubs and shebeens such as Legends, St.Alfonso's, British Legion and the Reno in Manchester, where the dancefloor in the early 1980s inspired him to study contemporary dance. Manchester was a hotbed of dance music with black club nights open every night of the week and Simpson spent his time joining in the vibe. Around 1983 with electro booming and early hip hop, breakdancing and b-boy culture making its way from the US, he left dance college to immerse himself in electronic music production. At this time music from Detroit and Chicago – from producers such as Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson was being played by Stu Allen on Piccadilly Radio and imported directly into Manchester's specialist record shops.

Gerald

Gerald is a masculine German given name meaning "rule of the spear" from the prefix ger- ("spear") and suffix -wald ("rule"). Variants include the English given name Jerrold, and the feminine nickname Jeri. Gerald is less common as a surname. People with the name Gerald include:

Given name

See also

References

Voodoo Ray

"Voodoo Ray" is a 1988 acid house single by Gerald Simpson, recording under the name A Guy Called Gerald. The single was released in the UK in 1988, in the 7" and 12" vinyl formats, on the Rham! label. In an interview with Mojo magazine in 2005, Gerald explained that Voodoo Ray was recorded over 2 days in June 1988 at Moonraker Studios in Manchester. Rham! initially pressed up 500 copies of the record and it sold out in a day.

"I was trying to keep it quiet from the dudes in 808 State," Simpson recalled, "because I was still working with them but wanted to do my own thing. It was fun just slipping out of their basement and taking the drum machine. They'd be like, 'Where are you going?' I'd say, 'Oh, I'm just going home to do some programming,' then nip off to another studio. I was trying to get a tribal sound and found this sample saying 'Voodoo rage'. That was originally the title but the old sampler I was using didn't have that much memory. I just about had enough for 'voodoo ra…', so that's what it became."

Boiler room

Boiler room may refer to:

Acid house

Acid house is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The defining feature of a "squelching" bass sound was produced using the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer. Acid house spread to the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where it was played by DJs in the acid house and later rave scenes. By the late 1980s, acid house had moved into the British mainstream, where it had some influence on pop and dance styles.

Acid house brought house music to a worldwide audience. The influence of acid house can be heard on later styles of dance music including trance, Goa trance, psychedelic trance, breakbeat, big beat, techno and trip hop.

Characteristics

Acid house's minimalist production aesthetic combined house music's ubiquitous programmed 4/4 beat with the electronic ‘squelch' sound produced by the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer by constantly modulating its frequency and resonance controls to create 'movement' in otherwise simple bass patterns. Other elements, such as synthetic strings and stabs, were usually minimal. Sometimes tracks were instrumentals such as Phuture's "Acid Tracks", or contained full vocal performances such as Pierre's Pfantasy Club's "Dream Girl", while others were essentially instrumentals complemented by the odd spoken word 'drop-in', such as Phuture's "Slam".