subota, 15. prosinca 2012.

Gerry Read - Jummy






Borderline poremećaj house-muzike za metalizirana tijela. 
Gerry Read je 20-godišnji eksperimentalni robot spušten na Zemlju. Ne voli plesati.




Fourth Wave come correct with the release of the debut album from boy wonder Gerry Read, whose sidelong glances at house, garage and techno have resulted in some of most ruggedly soulful dancefloor plates of the past two years. He makes the most of the album format with some well judged mood pieces: were it not for its wilfully corroded surface, beatless intro piece 'Four Miles' could be mistaken for Convextion or C2. But Read's true metier is the club, and it's in the drum-driven cuts that his most powerful talent exhibits itself: 'Evidence' and 'Give Myself To You' are fierce, filter-happy Moodymann tributes, undeniable in their appeal, while the open-hi-hat-driven 'Be Pushing' is a funked-up deep-houser that comes over like a more loose-limbed Trus'me. The most indispensable cuts are the ones that venture further off the grid: 'Moving Forward' is shimmying, side-stepping beat science in fine Shake style, 'Make A Move' rolls out on a front-loaded, afro-centric flex, and 'Let's Make It Deeper' and 'Crawl' explore louche jazz brushstrokes (again, in the shadow of KDJ). Throughout, Read pulls off that rare feat of not confusing deepness for mawkishness; for all their finesse and consistent mellow vibes, these still feel fundamentally like rudeboy cuts, and that's a remarkable achievement. - boomkat


Gerry Read is just 20 years old. But it would be wrong to call him "precocious" or an "upstart"; for the most part, the British producer stays quiet and releases tracks. His relative anonymity-- press photos obscure his face; if he's on Twitter it's a really good disguise-- and steady release schedule have a lot more in common with the old Chicago and Detroit heads than the current generation of UK producers. In rare interviews, he is intimidatingly well adjusted: When asked if he'd always listened to house music, he declined and then added, "I think people feel they have to say they've always been into loads of old shit though, as if having all these influences makes you look like you know what you're doing."
Read makes his tracks quickly, without much editing and without much gear. He claims not to dance at clubs (he does DJ), though his scruffy, noisy tracks don't necessarily lend themselves to home listening. This is the digital generation's answer to secluded, auteur behavior. You won't hear "Crawl" in a hair salon; it takes several spins to realize how much his debut album, Jummy, distracts, and how this is one of its best qualities. On Jummy, Read reveals a dedication to haze and clutter mostly absent on his early singles, and it provides a necessary counterpoint to his Spartan loops. Where most producers have to avoid jam-packing their tracks, Read struggles with adding enough material. Because on some level, presumably, he could just listen to the choppy vocal loop on "Let's Make it Deeper" forever.
Read is one of the few producers confident or careless enough to slap a genre name on his productions-- house-- so let's use that. But this is art-house, and Read spends Jummy exploring how the idioms of that genre can be suffocated and then, at the last minute, let up to gasp for air. He lacks Theo Parrish's brilliant ear for sound design (most do), but shares his hermit-like impulses and, increasingly, Parrish's abstractions of jazz and blues music. To put it another way, Jummy sounds like what Moodymann's Black Mahogani series might've sounded like if it had access to FruityLoops and Rapidshare.
Jummy is built mostly from samples, mixing big, wet drum sounds-- Read records them from his own kit-- with short, cloudy bursts of Rhodes piano and mumbled half-syllables. Throughout, the drums are bright and musical, the melodies stoned and irritable. Fans of Motor City Drum Ensemble or Flying Lotus will find common ground here, but Read is more obtuse than the former and less free-spirited than the latter. Despite the prevalence of samples, Jummy never feel like a collage. It's more ordered. Deducing Read's track architecture is simple-- he does his work in eight bars or less-- and that can make his music seem simple; like staring at a great pattern, it's best to let the simplicity wash over you and to let the geometry tickle your brain.
Tickle it will, too, because Jummy refuses to fade into the background. Credit the aggressive samples or the distinct friction created when Read pushes those drums against them. Jummy closes with "Sidecar", a ghostly, pale piece that that screams "album closer!" Its formless, dim neon proposes that Read has bigger ideas for an R&B hook than a great house track. But right now, Read is full of great, idiosyncratic house tracks and Jummy is packed with them. - Andrew Gaerig

The announcement of a debut album by Gerry Read came as no surprise, considering his flurry of activity in the last couple of years: 12" releases on Delsin, 2nd Drop, Dark Arx and Ramp Recordings sublabel Fourth Wave (including three EPs on the latter in 2011 alone) that dabbled in dub and garage before seeming to settle on house. It's admittedly been hard not to wonder whether his dishevelled, agitated approach would translate successfully to a full-length. Read has knocked out enough dance music to fill whole label schedules, but his prolific and eclectic approach seems to strain against a noticeably low boredom threshold – not something you'd think would be conducive to producing a focused album. Thankfully, though there's still plenty of hyperactive meandering in Jummy, a newfound attention to spaciousness and pacing has resulted in a surprisingly coherent work.
Read has so far avoided settling on a signature sound, with an output that's reliably antithetical to scene trends. Nevertheless, if there is a typical Read trait, it's a thick, Dickensian miasma that swarms over everything in Jummy. An urgent synth stab in opener 'Four Miles' crescendos amid showers of noise and acid rain, scummy filters cloak everything, and percussion emerges into clarity for only the briefest of moments before retreating into the soup. It's an impressionistic teaser before the real meat of the album; for all its dirty textures, Jummy is packed with serious dancefloor cuts.
A disembodied, looped vocal snatch is set against a rapturous refrain in 'Evidence'. Each element has its turn rising from the broth to lead the track, culminating in a bony hi-hat thwack. It never really peaks, but it's so soulful that it doesn't matter. Read has a wicked way with a sample: in the deeply funky 'Be Pushin (She)', the vocal is insistently looped, harmonised, faded and muted, the kick primal. 'Moving Forward' falls just short of slipping into a deep groove, its insistent percussion rising from stifled vocal samples and waves of hiss and crackle, half-obscured by sludgy filters. It's this tantalising tease-and-reveal quality, the prolonged attacks and fluctuating dynamics, that make Jummy the stuff of brilliance.
There's even an element of arrogance to Read's breakdowns, the schadenfreude of tormenting a dancefloor he knows to be at his mercy. It's club music, but it feels abstracted, informed more by crate-digging than by actually frequenting clubs. 'Let's Make it Deeper''s soulful groove surges out of hazy atmospheres with reassuring fatness; sustained to breaking point, it disintegrates before reaching a climax, the kick smouldering away. The funked-up bassline of 'Gibbon,' with its Mr Fingers overtones, might just be the catchiest thing on Jummy. But Read revels in the unexpected, so the submerged keys take such a backseat as to seem incidental, while the sound of a shaker is dramatically amplified and reverbed, and metallic beats skitter over the top like an afterthought.
Tracks like 'Idiot' can feel more like sketches than finished works. Even so, 'Purple Fire's straggled vocal and off-key synths have all the dissociative impact of daylight after a three day-and-night sweaty club marathon. 'Sidecar''s found sound collage drenches you in crackling static and decaying hiss, a fitting close to an album that on the one hand is steeped in vintage influence and yet on the other dictates its own terms completely.
Jummy, thankfully, doesn't sound quite like anything else out there. While a typical album structure of intro, interlude and outro reins in the high-entropy, lo-fi production, it thrives on imperfection. In a sea of endlessly laboured, aseptic releases, Read's fast-and-loose production is a welcome injection of instinct that reveals a real man behind the machine. Mangled and volatile and filthy though it may be, Jummy is deeply refreshing. - Maya Kalev 

Since his emergence last year, Gerry Read has consistently lurked on the fringes of house music acceptability. His trademark production style is poised between reverence to house's atavistic roots—the thump and crackle of Chicago at its rawest—and a committed deviance from its norms. His releases, predominantly for Ramp sub-label Fourth Wave, seem perfectly suited to the functional 12-inch format—and yet their murky sonics and ramshackle construction means that only the bravest of club DJs would deploy them. An EP for Dutch institution Delsin earlier this year could be read as a seal of legitimacy; but still, it's difficult to know where to place Gerry Read—on the outside looking in, or on the inside determinedly prodding at the boundaries. 
 Does Jummy, the young St. Albans-based producer's debut LP, help to resolve this nagging duality? Not at all—and nor should it. Sure, the long-player format allows Read to flex his exploratory muscles a little, resulting in a gorgeously trippy intro and outro, the former a claggy dub techno breakdown gone rogue, the latter a borderline abrasive psychedelic beat-sketch. Elsewhere, though, this is mostly a collection of dance tracks that look to the floor for their cues but also keep it at arm's length: meaty kicks in dialogue with unsteady sheets of hi-hats; crusty soul samples weaving around Read's own home-brewed sounds; whistling filter sweeps labouring under a hardened crust of tape hiss and background hum. 
 Ambiguity lies at the heart of this music. Read has a knack for locating the mid-point between, on the one hand, the loose-limbed declamatory vibe that house has always drawn from gospel, and on the other, awkward sample-collage of the sort that unsettles rather than stimulates. The results are puzzling as often as they are pleasing—no bad thing, but you get the sense that Read doesn't always take a sufficiently firm hand with his creations. "Let's Make It Deeper," a typical example, opens in fine fettle but gradually loses its way, hemorrhaging momentum in the process. 
 Still, when he's on form, Read can pull off both funky and bizarre with an aplomb that belies his short career. "Purple Fire" is compulsively bumpy deep house with the slightest tang of danger. "Idiot" is a blissful, gelatinous mass of soft-edged samples. Both are excellent. If there's one major criticism of this record it's that its excessive length—13 tracks totalling 58 minutes—means that standout tracks can be missed through sheer volume of material. That aside, Jummy's finest moments are joyous, infectious and unsettling in equal measure. In short, everything that house music ought to be. -
 

Much of the talk surrounding the release of 20-year-old Suffolk-native Gerry Read’s debut album “Jummy” (out now on Fourth Wave) has revolved around what he has said in interviews and/or the relative lack of interviews he’s submitted to. Since the “Patterns EP” arrived in late 2010, he’s been called the UK house version of (the oft-maligned) Zomby and essentially been branded as a sort of club scrooge. Because, you know, he doesn’t like to dance. The truth is that Read’s identity isn’t anymore obfuscated than the majority of his contemporaries residing in the pseudo-anonymity of the internet. “Jummy” is Read’s first full length and a mission statement of sorts for the uninitiated. Read’s sample-based production methods and cluttered sonic aesthetic dominate throughout the album, which is easily the clearest incantation of Read’s vision to date.
At 13 tracks long, “Jummy” is an overwhelmingly busy album with nary a quiet moment. The sound palate utilized throughout is largely made up of live sounding percussion and heavily manipulated jazz samples, lending the album a viscerally physical nature. The cluttered percussion and noodling piano, guitar and brass samples invoke a contemporary big band sound, disarray with a purpose. Take “Make A Move”, a song that doesn’t grow or progress as much as it explodes from within itself. It chugs along like a struggling train, scat vocals, piano and guitar emerging from a cavalcade of hectic drum hits. The struggling train analogy actually works quite well for the album as a whole. It is direct, loud and unhinged (or derailed if you prefer), gasping and churning along with a protean ability to avoid disaster. This is where Read’s past as a drummer and metal fan come into play, allowing him to layer dozens of elements as a band would without losing site of that one driving element. On “Make A Move” that element is the scat vocals. On album standout “Evidence”, it’s the distant piano, operating within the stultified, often jarring, percussive loops.

There is a constant threat that “Jummy” will run its course too early and fizzle out in a heap of uncomfortably unorthodox percussion. By the seventh track though, the aquatic “Idiot”, that worry almost entirely dissipates. “Idiot” is more or less a backhand compliment to disco/house revivalists like The Miracle Club submerged miles under the sea. It’s the one song on the album that doesn’t really fit and the result could have been disastrous. “Idiot” has a ton of those submerged, clunky drum hits often found in Mount Kimbie or Airhead songs layered over a base of distortion and general fuzziness. The song is a short outlier in the album’s greater scheme, demonstrating Read’s control over a possibly runaway train and a commendable disregard for convention and hot-as-of-now trends.
As Read’s first full length, “Jummy” offers a concise vision of his previous 12” and an introduction to his unhinged take on house for new listeners. The album’s most intriguing element is that it doesn’t really fit within any existing context. Some songs obviously lend better to headphone listening or club play than others, but the majority fall into a rare middle zone. The context-less, or hyper-contextual if you prefer, nature of “Jummy” is what people will remember years from now when DJs have stopped playing it and everyone forgets the individual track names. - Gabe Meier

 

GERRY READ - Untitled (No. 1 Edit) / Legs (Kevin McPhee Remix), Fourth Wave
Fresh house moves from prodigious talent Gerry Read. 'Untitled No.1 Edit' is a tough, tricksy, uncompromising groove wrought out of metallic percussion clatter, with added carnival spice, hiccupping vocal clips and super-heavy subs. Another young'n, Kevin McPhee, who's impressed with his releases on Idle Hands and [Naked Lunch] supplies a rolling, dub-wise refix of 'Legs'. Top tackle for the deeper house heads.
GERRY READ - Yeh Come Dance, Delsin Records
At just 20 years old, UK house boy wonder Gerry Read has made a real name for himself. Having already impressed with his releases on Fourth Wave and 2nd Drop, he now makes the move to Amsterdam's Delsin Records - that his sound travels so well an so effortlessly is testament to its musical depth, which crucially doesn't come at the cost of an essential rawness and roughness. 'Yeh Come Dance' is irresistible basement house that tantalisingly threatens to fall off the grid, 'Crawlspace''s spacious sound design, sci-fi synths and ultra-criss drum hits stand comparison with Jus-Ed, and 'Boz…
GERRY READ - All By Myself / What A Mess, Fourth Wave
Fresh and crispy Electronic House with bags of soul from the Fourth Wave regular. 'All By Myself' almost sounds like some minimalist Pepe Braddock or Theo Parrish experiment, shaving the drums to a slinky shift while keys and bassline are smudged to a hazy, hypnotic blur beneath hushed and jazzy vocal. Similarly the teasing Jazz vibes of 'What A Mess' lend themselves to strong Matthew Herbert comparison, with the sort of textural detailing and studied swing of a producer far beyond his years. Aces.
GERRY READ - We Are / Narry, Fourth Wave
Unique minimalist Tech-House sound designs from the increasingly on-point Gerry Read for Ramp's Fourth Wave offshoot. With 'We Are' Read slips somewhere between the texturhythms of Matthew Herbert or Farben and the low-slung swing of Joy O and Theo Parrish, all simulated surfaces and speaker-pushing bass shapes with a real crispy shake. Flipside with 'Narry' the Herbert analogue is clearly apparent on a nudged, looping House groove with bags of augmented soul flavour.
GERRY READ - Roomland (Youandewan Mix), 2nd Drop Records
Gerry Read sustains the pressure of his Fourth Wave and Dark Arx 12"s with a slick Techno swinger backed by a Dubstep remix from Youandewan. The kinked 4/4 flow and wide dub chords of the original feels kinda like Andy Stott-meets-Sven Weisemann-in-Bristol, whereas the remix opts for an old skool Burial flex with gritty finish applied to quicksilver 2-step syncopation.
GERRY READ - Untitled / Legs, Fourth Wave
Fresh, percolating, electronic House music from Ramp's cool Fourth Wave offshoot. 'Untitled' nudges and teases classic Chi'/T'roit House patterns with respectful but modern embellishments for up-to-date effect, while 'Legs' is more smudged and shifty for a more lost-in-it effect kinda like a Shake or Actress groove, a cool balance of physical psychedelia computed for the 'floor.
GERRY READ - Patterns EP, Dark Arx
Debut 12" from Gerry Read on London's Dark Arx imprint. Compared to their first two occulded releases from Dark Arx and Binary Sequence, this one is a relative ray of sunshine, twisting up some crooked post-Techno Garage rhythm with convective chords a la George Fitzgerald or Joy O on 'Last Time', or tucking more broken yet House-y drum programming under exothermic melody on 'Patterns'.
HOT COINS - Geek Emotions (Gerry Read / Ajukaja Mixes), HOT COINS
**Limited edition, vinyl-only** Gerry Read and Ajukaja take on Danny Berman aka Red Rack'Em's 'Geek Emotions', taken from his upcoming Hot Coins LP. Ajukaja's remix is sensual, joyfully sunny but with enough hypnotic potential to keep the deep heads happy. Read's mix is a killer, probably the closest we've heard anyone come to the notoriously elusive Actress sound: grubbing bassline ducks and wriggles with dusty, faded-but-seductive beats and heat hazy strings in lushest fashion.
MAYA JANE COLES - DJ-Kicks, !K7 Records
**This is the digital edition, the vinyl version contains 8 selected tracks** UK house heroine Maya Jane Coles has become a massive deal over the past couple of years: the fact that she's been put in charge of helming a DJ-Kicks comp - an honour that usually falls to much longer established artists - is testament to this. Its cleverly blended 21 tracks together represent a fine distillation of her swaggering, techy house sound, one informed by bass music but not overwhelmed by it; it moves effortlessly from the deeper styles of Adam Stacks, Standard Fair and Virgo Four (as remixed by Ca…
GERRY READ / 23HZ & NUMAESTRO - Roomland (Distal Remix) / Zumo (Sully Remix), 2nd Drop Records
Sully and Distal deliver exceptional reworks for the consistently ace 2nd Drop crew. A-side Atlanta's Distal takes Gerry Read's crafty shake-down 'Roomland' and transforms it into a hyperactive Footwork ace, flushing out any politeness with rampant drum edits and a hardcore attitude. Flipside, in the hands of Sully, 23Hz and Numaestro's 'Zumo' becomes a fluidly robotic 2-stepper, all hydro bass licks and body rollin' syncopation from the top pocket. Deadly plate, we tell ya!
GERRY READ / 23HZ & NUMAESTRO - Roomland (Distal Remix) / Zumo (Sully Remix), 2nd Drop Records
Sully and Distal deliver exceptional reworks for the consistently ace 2nd Drop crew. A-side Atlanta's Distal takes Gerry Read's crafty shake-down 'Roomland' and transforms it into a hyperactive Footwork ace, flushing out any politeness with rampant drum edits and a hardcore attitude. Flipside, in the hands of Sully, 23Hz and Numaestro's 'Zumo' becomes a fluidly robotic 2-stepper, all hydro bass licks and body rollin' syncopation from the top pocket. Deadly plate, we tell ya!
GERRY READ - 90's Prostitution Racket, NO LABEL
**Translucent Yellow Vinyl** Read's most in-demand tune to date finally lands on vinyl! The brazenly titled ''90s Prostitution Racket' in yet another example of his sweetly rugged approach towards classic House memes. Crisp but loose drums, hand-cut edits and the use of a straight-up classic vocal hook add up to a string friday night sound.
 
GERRY READ - Yeh Come Dance, Delsin Records
At just 20 years old, UK house boy wonder Gerry Read has made a real name for himself. Having already impressed with his releases on Fourth Wave and 2nd Drop, he now makes the move to Amsterdam's Delsin Records - that his sound travels so well and so effortlessly is testament to its musical depth, which crucially doesn't come at the cost of an essential rawness and roughness. 'Yeh Come Dance' is irresistible basement house that tantalisingly threatens to fall off the grid, 'Crawlspace''s spacious sound design, sci-fi synths and ultra-criss drum hits stand comparison with Jus-Ed, and 'Bozza'…
GERRY READ - All By Myself / What A Mess, Fourth Wave
Fresh and crispy Electronic House with bags of soul from the Fourth Wave regular. 'All By Myself' almost sounds like some minimalist Pepe Braddock or Theo Parrish experiment, shaving the drums to a slinky shift while keys and bassline are smudged to a hazy, hypnotic blur beneath hushed and jazzy vocal. Similarly the teasing Jazz vibes of 'What A Mess' lend themselves to strong Matthew Herbert comparison, with the sort of textural detailing and studied swing of a producer far beyond his years. Aces.
GERRY READ - We Are / Narry, Fourth Wave
Unique minimalist Tech-House sound designs from the increasingly on-point Gerry Read for Ramp's Fourth Wave offshoot. With 'We Are' Read slips somewhere between the texturhythms of Matthew Herbert or Farben and the low-slung swing of Joy O and Theo Parrish, all simulated surfaces and speaker-pushing bass shapes with a real crispy shake. Flipside with 'Narry' the Herbert analogue is clearly apparent on a nudged, looping House groove with bags of augmented soul flavour.
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GERRY READ - Roomland (Youandewan Mix), 2nd Drop Records
Gerry Read sustains the pressure of his Fourth Wave and Dark Arx 12"s with a slick Techno swinger backed by a Dubstep remix from Youandewan. The kinked 4/4 flow and wide dub chords of the original feels kinda like Andy Stott-meets-Sven Weisemann-in-Bristol, whereas the remix opts for an old skool Burial flex with gritty finish applied to quicksilver 2-step syncopation.
GERRY READ - Untitled / Legs, Fourth Wave
Fresh, percolating, electronic House music from Ramp's cool Fourth Wave offshoot. 'Untitled' nudges and teases classic Chi'/T'roit House patterns with respectful but modern embellishments for up-to-date effect, while 'Legs' is more smudged and shifty for a more lost-in-it effect kinda like a Shake or Actress groove, a cool balance of physical psychedelia computed for the 'floor.
Out of stock
Listen






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