acr:mcr

A CERTAIN RATIO have shared a new track from their eagerly anticipated new album, ACR Loco. Revitalised by their most successful tour in over two decades, the band returned to the studio to record their first album in 12 years – due for release on Mute on 25 September 2020.

Listen to ‘Yo Yo Gi’ – an irresistible slice of ACR which fuses funk, techno and world music, in the way that only ACR can do – and watch the video, inspired by the Tokyo suburb it was named after from their visit earlier this year: https://youtu.be/pwW0DKsnT-I

The band have also announced details of a very special online event, An Evening with A Certain Ratio, on 25 September. To mark the album release, the band will play their new album in full at the Hope Mill Recording Studio following 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 (questions are invited from fans) and to finish, expect one of the band’s infamous ACR Soundsystem DJ sets. To book your ticket, visit: www.livefrom.events/ACR

ACR Loco was recorded by the core line up of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson with contributions from the ACR live line up – Tony Quigley on sax, Denise Johnson on vocals and Matt Steele on keyboards. Additional guests include Sink Ya Teeth’s Maria Uzor and Gemma Cullingford, Gabe Gurnsey (Factory Floor) and Manchester luminaries Mike Joyce (The Smiths) and experimental multi-instrumentalist Eric Random.

“This album is a culmination of everything we’ve ever done,” explains Kerr. The album distils the different directions and styles that have run throughout the band’s career – one that began in the late ‘70s with Factory Records first ever 7” release. “Digging into the past for the boxset [ACR:BOX was released in 2019 on Mute] must have rubbed off on us and influenced the current album,” says Moscrop. “I think it helped spark up our imagination. It allowed us to work in some of the past as we move forward into the future.”

Keen on the joys of collaboration and sharing, it makes sense that adding the ACR touch to other artists via a series of reworks led to their latest album taking shape. Recent reworks of tracks for the likes of Barry Adamson, The Charlatans and Maps saw the band return to the studio to unpick those original tracks. “The reworks were crucial,” says Donald Johnson. “They got us back in the studio and forced a union and a bond. They allowed us to start getting a groove again.” Kerr mirrors this. “We love doing the reworks because it’s just us doing our thing,” he says. “The three of us jamming is really the basis of it all. Once you get that groove there’s no stopping us.”

The new 10-track album is out on CD, cassette and limited edition coloured vinyl. The vinyl will be available in one of four colours: white, blue, red and turquoise, randomly packed, with each colour of varying rarity.

ACR LOCO TRACKLISTING

Friends Around Us
Bouncy Bouncy
Yo Yo Gi
Supafreak
Always In Love 
Family
Get A Grip
Berlin
What’s Wrong
Taxi Guy

Listen to ‘Always In Love’: https://youtu.be/8-xSJzgyNAA

An Evening with A Certain Ratio

7pm – ACR live at The Haçienda, The Warehouse Project (2019)

7.45pm – ACR in conversation

8.15pm – ACR perform ACR Loco live

9pm – ACR Soundsystem

10.30pm – ACR:END

Following the unexpected passing last week of Denise Johnson, long-time ACR collaborator and friend, a fund has been set up to assist with funeral costs: https://uk.gofundme.com/f/denise-johnson-funeral

Denise Johnson

31 July 1963 – July 2020 

Our beautiful and dear Denise has died suddenly at her home in Manchester. 

She had been ill in the week prior to her death but told friends she was “much better” on Friday. She was found on Monday morning and the cause of death is not yet known.

Although best known, and famous around the globe for her work with Primal Scream on their albums Screamadelica and Give Out But Don’t Give Up, she first came to ACR’s attention when we heard her beautiful voice on ‘Just a Little More’ by Fifth of Heaven in 1988.

Shortly after, she worked with Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson on an early Acid House track called ‘Acid to Ecstasy’ by ED209, released on Dave Rofe’s DFM label.

Denise also worked on Ashley & Jackson’s The Sermon and Solid Gold which Martin produced, before joining ACR in the studio to appear on the album ACR:MCR where her vocal skills come to the fore on ‘Be What You Wanna Be’.  

The rest is history and historic for ACR, Denise then appeared on ACR:MCR (1990), Up in Downsville (1992), Change The Station (1997), Mind Made Up (2008), She had also been in the studio with us recently and her beautiful voice is on our forthcoming album ACR Loco.

She has been an integral part of ACR’s live line-up since 1990 and has appeared over 200 times with the band in those 30 years, adding her uniqueness to the ACR catalogue pre and post 1990.

She provided guest vocals for New Order, Electronic. Gay Dad and Bernard Butler, to name but a few. She was also a staunch Manchester City supporter, loved them with all the passion you could hear in her singing voice.

More recently, she’d been performing acoustic sets with guitarist Thomas Twemlow, featuring covers of great Mancunian songs by artists such as Cherry Ghost, 10CC and New Order. They opened their Bluedot 2019 set with The Carpenters ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ – an appropriate choice for a gig in the shadows of Jodrell Bank’s Lovell Telescope. Her debut album, titled Where Does It Go, is due out in September.  

She’s irreplaceable as a person and an artist, ACR are devastated at this loss, we’ll miss her infectious sense of humour and the soaring beauty and passion she brought to our music and our lives. 

ACR – Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson