''Black Secret Technology'' is the fourth

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by UK electronic producer A Guy Called Gerald, released in February 1995 to widespread critical acclaim. It has since been described as the best

jungle A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...

album of all-time by publications such as ''

Fact A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...

'', '' Pitchfork'' and ''

Freaky Trigger ''Freaky Trigger'' is an Internet publication and e-zine that focuses on popular culture with topics varying from music to cinema. It was founded by the music critic Tom Ewing in 1999 and features Pete Baran and Mark Sinker as editors. From 2000 ...

''.

Background and release

Following Gerald's pioneering work in

acid house Acid house (also simply known as just "acid") is a subgenre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago. The style is defined primarily by the squelching sounds and basslines of the Roland TB-303 electronic bass synthesiz ...

in the late 1980s, ''Black Secret Technology'' showcased his movement into

and

breakbeat Breakbeat is a broad type of electronic music that tends to use drum breaks sampled from early recordings of funk, jazz, and R&B. Breakbeats have been used in styles such as hip hop, jungle, drum and bass, big beat, breakbeat hardcore, and UK ...

production. The album's liner notes, written by Gerald, reference the music of ancient African tribal cultures as inspiration: "methods of rhythm helped early man to get in touch with the universe and his small part in it ..I believe that these trance-like rhythms reflect my frustration to know the truth about my ancestors who talked with drums." In 1996, the album was repressed on CD and LP formats with new cover artwork and the bonus track "Hekkle and Koch" placed as the album's opener. In 2008, a remastered edition of the album was released, this time with the original 1995 cover art and the removal of both "Hekkle and Koch" and the unlisted hidden track "Touch Me". The album's famously "murky" mastering was improved slightly, according to critics.

Reception

Since its release, ''Black Secret Technology'' has received widespread acclaim and has been described as a "candidate for "best

album ever." In a 1995 review, Andy Smith of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' proclaimed that Simpson was "among the first of his peers to corral

he genre He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

on to a satisfying album" as he had previously done with

, calling it “enthralling." '' Select'' placed the album on their list of Top 50 albums of 1995 at number 16. Discussing the 1997 reissue, Ian Harrison of ''Select'' stated that "there're few records in this fast-moving genre that could sound as good as this does now," adding that "the album will one day have him listed among Sun Ra/ Lee Perry/ George Clinton cosmic clubhouse of interstellar visionaries." In 1999, Tom Ewing of ''

'' described it as the "best jungle album ever," stating that Gerald "latched onto a more turbulent tradition, the jazz-funk-electronica of '' Pangaea''-era

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of music ...

or ''

Sextant A sextant is a doubly reflecting navigation instrument that measures the angular distance between two visible objects. The primary use of a sextant is to measure the angle between an astronomical object and the horizon for the purposes of celes ...

''-era

Herbie Hancock Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and composer. Hancock started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. He shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he help ...

, and the music he made boiled like theirs." He ranked "Finley's Rainbow" as the sixth best single of the 1990s. In 2010, ''

'' magazine ranked it the fourth best album of the 1990s, calling it "gloriously knotted, soulful and uniquely psychedelic;" ''Fact'' critic

Mark Fisher Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsm ...

wrote that the album "succeeded in simultaneously being of its moment and transcending it," praising in particular "the way that Gerald transforms the jungle sound into a kind of dreamy OtherWorld music .. humid, tropical, full of strange bird cries, seething with nonhuman sentience." Tim Finney of '' Pitchfork'' wrote that "there is simply no other single-artist jungle album that pushes consciousness-altering beat programming as far, as fearlessly, as it is pushed here." Lee Arizuno of '' The Quietus'' called it "one of the best dance albums ever made," adding that "what stands is psychedelic rhythm with a purpose: to reconnect in the midst of a formless and hectic present, to present a human glow in the midst of a harsh environment."

Track listing

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1995 albums A Guy Called Gerald albums