A CERTAIN RATIO have shared a new track, “Yo Yo Gi”, from their eagerly anticipated new album, ACR Loco – and it comes with a dazzling video; watch below.
Culled and edited with visual distortion and colour casting from rapid transit systems, railway interchanges, road junctions, flickering at speed through timelapse, it’s a dizzyingly urban vision from Manchester’s original exploratory funk fusionistas. It’s named for a suburb of Tokyo, from whence much of the footage was filmed.
And the song is a fantastically loose-limbed and multi-hued journey in its own right, taking that ACR funk space and filtering it out through a contemporary electro sensibility.
The bass and the percussion are crisp, tight, necessary and right in your marrow: I hear caps doffed gracefully to the Mancunian past in tiny textural nods here and there to 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, others. It joins Jaga Jazzist, Romare and others in forging a beautiful and insistent new funk form for the future. Of course, now all we need is a bloody dancefloor.
A revitalised and boxfresh ACR is set to release its first studio set in a dozen years, ACR Loco, through Mute on September 25th. If “Yo Yo Gi” is anything to go by, it’s gonna be up there mixing it for one of the releases of the year.
It was put together by the current core lineup of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson, with live incarnation associate members Tony Quigley on sax; the much-missed Denise Johnson on vocals, and Matt Steele on keyboards. There’s also additional guests scattered across the album, including The Smiths’ Mike Joyce.
To tie in with the LP’s release, that same day ACR will stream a performance of the album in full from the Hope Mill Recording Studio in conjunction with an exclusive premiere of their 2019 hit-laden gig for the Manchester Warehouse Project’s Haçienda night.
The band will also be in conversation, with a Q&A, for which questions are invited from fans; and to finish, expect one of the band’s infamous ACR Soundsystem DJ sets. Book your ticket here.
A Certain Ratio’s ACR Loco will be available on CD, cassette and limited edition coloured vinyl, the colour of which will be a randomly packed white, blue, red and turquoise, each colour of varying pressing numbers. Order yours via Mute, here.
