Forty Not Out: A Certain Ratio Interview

A Certain Ratio reflect on their forty-year life as a band so far and the release of a career-straddling boxset on Mute

As the current labour of love edition of kindred-spirited print publication Electronic Sound attests, there is far more to the extended Factory Records family story than just Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays. This doesn’t only mean the surrounding contrarian business practices and situationist antics of Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Alan Erasmus, Martin Hannett, Peter Saville and The Haçienda nightclub, as dramatised in Michael Winterbottom’s partly-truth and partly-fiction 2002 film 24 Hour Party People. Beyond such key players there are also the recorded works of The Durutti Column, Section 25, Crispy Ambulance, Quando Quango and The Wake, which are steadily and carefully being reappraised through reissues on LTM Recordings/Factory Benelux and Optic Nerve. Moreover, joining the stylistic and personnel dots between all the known/lesser-known Factory works and characters as well as still enjoying an afterlife have – of course – been Manchester’s A Certain Ratio.

Now celebrating a fortieth anniversary of operations with a sprawling and lovingly-assembled boxset of rarities and previously unreleased cuts, following on from a year or two of a comprehensive back catalogue restoration campaign on Mute, A Certain Ratio have been enjoying the fullest reappreciation treatment of Factory survivors in recent times and deservedly so.

For this belated convert, freshly discovering the primordial post-punk-funk of 1980’s half-demos/half-live The Graveyard and the Ballroom, the percussive atmospheric art-rock of 1981’s To Each, the sublime darkened disco-meets-dub explorations of 1982’s Sextet and associated fledgling singles/EPs (as spread across last year’s portable ACR:SET micro-anthology and the aforementioned newly-available 4CD/7LP ACR:BOX) has been a particular aural revelation. This isn’t to say that the ACR saga is entirely about these early Factory-affiliated works. Although perhaps less consistent in quality and durability, later Factory releases (from 1982’s I’d Like to See You Again LP onwards) and post-Factory wares (via the likes of onetime major label A&M Records and Rob Gretton’s independently-run Robs Records) have admirably encompassed dizzying dives into unrepentantly shiny bass-slapping electro-pop, squelchy Parliament-gone-baggy groove-rides, carnivalesque Latin-rhythmed party reveries, Screamadelica-soaked acid-house-soul, sleek pulsing techno, jazz fusion and plenty of other interesting places along the way.

Imaginative, intrepid and seemingly-indestructible, long-serving core ACR members Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson were tracked down via email, amidst extensive 2019 touring commitments, to lift the lid on their bounteous boxset and a corresponding four decades of doing what they do.

The newly-released boxset is the culmination of your back catalogue reissue series with Mute, that ties-up with your fortieth anniversary as a band. A clichéd question perhaps but did you ever think that A Certain Ratio would make it this far and be arguably more revered than you’ve even been?

Martin: If you had asked me if we would still be going in forty years time when I was nineteen years old I would have said no because I would have been ageist at the time and would have thought that anyone over thirty was past it. We are very fortunate that our music is timeless which helps its longevity but I think because ACR have always been forward thinking it makes people appreciate what we do even more.

How important was the extended Factory family in the formation and continuity of ACR? Did it ever smart to be overshadowed by the more commercially-successful bands?

Donald: Not at all, we see ourselves as something totally different and in a completely different orbit from most bands. We’re in a continuous state of construction and deconstruction with sound/formats and packaging, always taking chances and never standing still. When you lead the way in something that people can’t quite get a handle on, it’s always going to be difficult to gain mass public appeal. We just put out good music and play great live shows, the rest is up to you. 

How much do you think that the somewhat mocking portrayal of ACR in 24 Hour Party People has helped or hindered your place in Factory history?

Martin: 24 Hour Party People has neither helped or hindered our place in Factory history. I worked on 24 Hour Party People as the musical supervisor and it is a comedy with about 30% being factual and 70% there for the comedy factor. What has helped our place in Factory history is the five albums and numerous singles we released on Factory. When we play live a lot of the fan favourites and songs are from our A&M and Robs Records period so we don’t dwell on our Factory involvement all the time and certainly not 24 Hour Party People, which was a brilliant film by the way, but a comedy.

Before the boxset, Mute finally put your whole album catalogue back into print over the last year or so. Was this a somewhat herculean task in terms of logistics, rights ownership, locating master tapes, remastering and the like?

Donald: We own and control the copyright to all our music except Good Together and ACR:MCR which we licence from Universal. Martin has attended every ACR mastering session since the early-80s when we started producing ourselves. I have all our analogue masters and Martin has all the digital, so pulling that side together was easy. It became a big undertaking because the more we found, the more choices you then have, so working with Mute made some of those decisions easier as they understand our music from all perspectives.

Was it a deliberate decision to reissue things in non-chronological mixed batches and without the bonus material off some of the previous reissues?

Martin: The previous reissues were stand alone reissues so those types of releases will always contain bonus tracks. It was a conscious decision to keep the album listings as they were on the originals, but improve the quality by releasing them on double vinyl and making changes to artwork etc. The reason the albums were not released in chronological order was due to previous availability.

Having spent more time with the back catalogue en masse in putting the reissues together, did any albums or tracks stick out as better than you had remembered them? To Each certainly feels like the most underrated to my ears…

Martin: To Each was only underrated when it first came out but all the various reissues over the years have been well-received and it eventually received the recognition it deserved. Up in Downsville and Change the Station on Robs Records are two of our best and most underrated albums, but they aren’t quite old enough to be classic yet – their time will come

Are there any collective favourite albums in the ACR catalogue?

Jez: I can’t speak for anyone else, but my favourite is Sextet.

Tell me more about how you elected to compile the material for the boxset. What was the criteria you chose? Did much get left behind? Might say, Peel Sessions and live material that have appeared elsewhere be anthologised separately sometime or is this definitive end-point for ACR archival projects?

Donald: Lots of really good things had to be side-lined while we made our minds up on what should be green lighted for this project. This gave us the chance to put together some forgotten gems and cement their place in our history with the most amazing packaging. The quest continues with more Mute projects in the pipeline such as a possible live album. ACR in 2018 started recording some new material, which we hope to release through Mute once our scheduled projects have concluded.

Would you consider the boxset a parallel history of the band? Are there any parts of it you wished had been integrated into your main catalogue?

Jez: I think the singles and B-sides laid out chronologically give a good representation of  the development of the band, and the second half with the unreleased material shows the development further. I think that ACR:BOX is a good overall picture of the band

Looking back on the band’s early-years, it feels quite remarkable how ACR shifted from post-punk origins to something far more kaleidoscopic quite quickly. To what do you attribute that shift and how did you become exposed to so many divergent influences at a time when access to music was much harder than it is now?

Donald: The idea of sharing music has been the key to each generation’s growth since back in the early days of rock and roll. Like-minded groups would gravitate towards each other and share their experiences. That’s what we have always done since day one, swapping cassettes and borrowing each other’s albums – that’s what I think helped us to develop our eclectic style that Mani from The Stone Roses calls ‘dark funk’.

The early part of the boxset also highlights the formative era with Simon Topping and Martha Tilson as vocalists. How important were they to the band’s story? Are you still in touch with them at all?

Jez: Simon and Peter Terrell started the band, Martha Tilson joined us after our first trip to New York. Simon and Peter recently joined us onstage for our 40th celebration at YES in Manchester, I also recently got back in touch with Tilly. The band would not exist if not for Pete and Simon, and Tilly provided a new voice for the band, but in truth all the people who have played in the band or managed the band have been a vital part of our development.

The two previously unreleased takes on Talking Heads’ “Houses In Motion” are standout moments. You originally planned to record the vocal with Grace Jones but you’ve only recently finished things up without her on one of the two versions within the boxset. What’s the tale behind the long gestation?

Martin: We haven’t just finished them, they have just been sat there gathering dust because there was no reason to make them available as they were just unreleased demos, of which we have many. When we first discussed the box set idea with Mute, they said they would like us to have a few unreleased tracks on it to make it interesting for fans. The original idea was to have about five or six unreleased tracks on it but this expanded as we found more stuff and we ended up with 24 unreleased tracks in the end. “Houses in Motion (Demo Version 1)” sounds really current, people can’t believe it was recorded in 1980.

Other pleasing oddities are the two sides of a single you did under your Sir Horatio instrumental dub alias. Were there ever any plans to do an album in that mode way back when? 

Martin: No, that was just a one-off. At the time we were listening to a lot of dub, especially Scientist, and we used some time we had left in the Sextet sessions to record three dub tunes, “Funaezekea” which was on the B-side of “Waterline” and “Abracadubra” and “Sommadub” which were released as a 12” on Rocksteady. We tried that idea and we moved on, we have a tendency not to expand on things too much.

Another charming curiosity on the boxset is your cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing”. How much do you remember about recording that?

Donald: It was recorded at Revolution Studios in MCR. The recording went very quickly as we had been playing it in our live shows. Martin played drums and his Latin groove feel fitted the bill perfectly. We all loved the Stevie Wonder original, which I think most people knew, but it was the little known Cal Tjader version that really inspired us. 

The new remake of “WSLU” that closes the boxset is a really lovely moment. What made you want to revisit it in such a radically different way?

Donald: ACR have been playing a stripped-down version of that song for a number of years mostly when we do radio promo or special events. I had always envisaged adding strings and removing the drums (a very Ratio thing to do) which I think gives the song a chance to breathe differently. We had already recorded great versions of this song, it was a chance to show “WSLU”’s enhanced timeless qualities.

How do you approach the back catalogue when you play extracts live currently?

Jez: Just jump in and play it.

How significant do you feel ACR’s way of doing things has been of inspiration to others?  Do you recognise your influence much in many younger bands?

Donald: I see some form of our influence spread across many bands like New Order, LCD Soundsystem, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Talking Heads, Franz Ferdinand. It’s good seeing new MCR bands like Narcissus who have name checked us as one of many influences. 

Finally, is there anything that you wished you had done differently over ACR’s existence to date?

Jez: Nothing really, apart from maybe smiling a bit more.

Martin: Not really, I’m really happy with everything we have done up to now and I’m excited about the new stuff we are recording. 

Donald: Send Factory Records on an accounting course, ha ha ha! We are the sum total of all our valuable collective experiences. To have Anthony H Wilson, Rob Gretton and Factory Records as part of our evolving history is something we are extremely proud of, they showed us the door to creativity and we kicked it wide open.

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