March 1995: A Guy Called Gerald’s Black Secret Technology

Gerald Simpson’s third album is soulful drum’n’bass perfection.

I’ve changed my view on quite a few of the albums I reviewed for Manchester’s City Life magazine during the 1990s.

And there are plenty of releases I praised at the time but never listen to anymore.

This third LP from A Guy Called Gerald isn’t one of them — it still sounds as vital as when I first heard it.

That said, I think my review was possibly a bit too down on the album that preceded it.

You can make your own mind up on both records via Gerald’s Bandcamp page.

An aside: bearing in mind my intro to the review, I’m not sure why I didn’t mention that Black Secret Technology includes a track called ‘Voodoo Rage’ which samples the original ‘Voodoo Ray’.

Unlike the music, the answer to that is lost in the mists of time…

A Guy Called Gerald: Black Secret Technology

Even if you never danced to it, even if you never clocked who made it or what the track was called, you’re sure to have heard ‘Voodoo Ray’. In the late ‘80s, it became the Hacienda’s theme tune: sparse, electronic, yet warm and soulful, it was a classy…