Name: A Certain Ratio
Members: Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop, Donald Johnson, Tony Quigley, Matt Steele
Interviewees: Martin Moscrop, Jez Kerr
Nationality: British
Current release: A Certain Ratio's 1982 is out March 31st 2023 via Mute.

If you enjoyed this A Certain Ratio interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit the group's official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Martin: Sometimes the song can start from a drum rhythm, guitar riff, bass line, keyboard riff or a jam. Other times the idea may come from something that someone has created on their own, using Logic (music software), and then the rest of us will add to that idea. A good example of this is with ‘Holy Smoke’, which Donald brought to the table and then everyone added to.  

The idea for ‘Afro Dizzy’ came about the day I heard that Tony Allen had died. We had always wanted to work with Tony on a song so I bought a sample pack of his drumming and built the idea around his rhythm. It was the first song we collaborated on with Ellen Beth Abdi, she had been singing with a Manchester Afro Beat outfit called Agbeko and seemed like the ideal person for this song. Ellen also wrote the lyrics for this song so it was a great start to her creative process with the band.

‘Tier 3’ on the album was inspired by an EP by Jeff Mills and Tony Allen called ‘Tomorrow Comes The Harvest’. I loved the way that they had Jeff Mills electronic drums panned on one side and Tony Allen’s real drums on the other.



[Read our Jeff Mills interview]

I programmed some drum rhythms and Donald played against these. We then built the song around these two drum pads. If you listen to that song on the album, you will hear how the drums have their own space in the stereo field
 
For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?
 
Martin: There are not always real concrete ideas to start off a song apart from maybe a drum beat or riff and then the song will be built around that.  

Sometimes they start from two or more of us jamming together or from an idea someone has been working on by themselves. Sometimes we may start something “in the style of”. ‘SAMO’ was originally called ‘Talking Heads’ because we thought it sounded like Talking Heads and Jez intentionally came up with a bass line that was inspired by Tina Weymouth’s style.

We have a song on our album called ‘Tombo in M3’ which started with a Jam that Donald and Matt our keyboard player did in a soundcheck for a gig in a 7/4 time signature. One of our favourite artists of all time, Airto Moreira, has a song ‘Tombo in 7/4’ so we called ours ‘Tombo in M3’ because of the postcode for Oxygene, the studio where we recorded and mixed the majority of the album.
 


Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?
 
Martin: There is very little preparation and most things happen spontaneously. We try and write and record as quickly as possible and we don’t dwell on ideas. We will work on something for a day and then put it to bed and come back to it a few days/weeks later and finish it.

We very seldom scrap an idea and for the last two albums and 3 EPs we haven’t really done demos.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?
 
Martin: We have no rituals at all, we just love playing and recording so it comes naturally.

We need something a bit stronger than coffee if we want to take our minds to a different place.
 
What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

Jez: When it comes to lyrics, for me the first line of text is vitally important.

I have about 10 to 20 notebooks filled with random phrases, stanzas and one-liners that I have accumulated over the years. I always keep a book handy in case something pops into my head, or I overhear a conversation or a phrase from a film or TV programme, so that I can jot it down.

These books provide me with the opening line of an idea, or if not the opening line, a line of sufficient resonance that it leads to a complete song lyric.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Jez: When we are recording a song, I tend to put the lyric on after the music is structured. I like to sit just outside the control room and listen to playback with several of the current notebooks open around me, and as the music is playing, I will sift through the notebooks, looking for the line that excites me.

At the same time, I will be tinkering with melodies in my head, and when the two parts, the lyric and the melody come together, then I have the start of the idea. I like to be able to finish the song very quickly and most of the new songs we have been writing have been written in the studio in this way.

An example of overhearing a conversation leading to a complete song is when I was travelling into Manchester one day on the 42 bus from Didsbury. I was on the top deck sitting behind two guys deep in conversation, when suddenly one guy says “Everyone here has got three sides at least”, which became the first line of a track called ‘Everything is good’ from the album Mind Made Up.



Alternatively, the title track for our current album 1982 did not come from the notebooks or from a conversation. The idea for the track came when Martin sang into a vocoder the word, “1982”. It was instantly something we knew that was right, and it became the chorus of the song . All I had to do was come up with a verse and this came from remembering the period of 1982 and what was happening in mine and the band’s life at that time.

Another track from the album, 1982 is called 'SAMO'. This track was inspired by the tag lines and writings of Albert Diaz and Jean Michel Basquiat. They were school friends and between 1978 and 1980 they intrigued the inhabitants of New York City with their words and phrases. The graffiti was of a different ilk from the usual taglines, their words spoke to the people and made people think that there was an alternative.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

Jez: What makes a good lyric for me can come from various standpoints. I suppose first if it’s memorable, if it’s amusing or if it’s just a good story. Also, you have to take into account the music along with the lyric and the juxtaposition of these two can really accentuate the effectiveness of both. Sometimes less is more as far as lyrics go.

For example, in the song ‘A Trip in Hulme’ on the current album 1982, the lyrics are very minimal and because of this I think they have more impact.

As regards my ambitions and challenges to writing lyrics, I always think there is room for improvement and once you have the original idea, there is always room for editing without being too over analytical.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Martin: If the idea has come from one person then the rest of us will add to that idea and start making it sound like ACR. It’s important that our music has each person’s identity in it, that is what makes ACR so unique. We are all very strong minded people with inspiration gushing out of us so we don’t have a problem with an initial idea turning into a finished product.

One of the songs on the album, ‘Constant Curve’, is a collaboration with Andy from Emperor Machine and Ellen Beth Abdi. We recorded the initial idea and then sent it to Andy who added all his synths and electronic percussion. We then got Ellen to sing on it and it turned into the type of outcome I had pictured at the start of the journey.

It started as a jam from the drum beat of an old song of ours called ‘Back to The Start’ and me Don and Jez jammed drums, bass and guitar and then everything else was built on top of that.
 
Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Martin: It can work both ways really. Sometimes we know where we want the idea to go and have total control over the process and other times we have no fucking idea and we just keep trying things until the Eureka! moment arrives. You know when it does because there is usually a lot of back slapping going on and when we come in the following day you can feel the excitement ion the room.  

The title track ‘1982’ is a good example of starting off with an idea of what we wanted to achieve but ended up with something totally different. It started life as something we were doing for Jacknife Lee in the style of an old song of ours called ‘Knife Slits Water’.



It ended up being something very different and we didn’t give it to Jacknife because we liked it too much and wanted it on our album.
 
Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

Martin: We love our music to go in as many directions as possible and come from as many sources of inspiration as possible.

We try and get inspiration from as many different continents as possible on our albums and if you were to ask what genre we are, the closest thing I would think of would be world music.
 
Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?
 
Martin: Time marks the end of the production process.  We set a date to finish recording and a date to finish mixing. I’m really good at time management and I will book studio time based around work rate and deadlines.

If you set yourself deadlines to work to then you won’t go on forever making minimal changes that don’t make much difference to the final outcome. I always ask Paul at Mute for a deadline so we have something to work towards and then we always deliver early.
 
Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

Martin: We do like having a bit of a gap between the recording and mixing process so we can come back to things with fresh ears. We never dwell on things for too long because all the best ideas happen quickly. There are always two or three songs that don’t make the album but we will never get rid of those ideas. They will see the light of day at some point.

The process happens something like this

1) Day 1 - record drums, bass, guitar …
2) Put it to bed and start something else
3) Listen to the day one idea at home, outside of the studio and start formulating ideas
4) Come back to it a few days later and add more ideas including vocals, overdubs, collaborations etc
5) Have a break from it for a few days
6) Mix the song and move on

We tend to spend 1-2 days recording a song and up to one day mixing a song
 
What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?
 
Martin: Production is very important but it comes naturally to us and I always have a vision in my head as to how the song should turn out sounding, especially in the final stages of recording. Production isn’t as important as the idea itself and sometimes the best sounding stuff is the most underproduced.

I served my time as an apprentice maintenance and test electrician in the ‘70s so I have always been into the technical aspect of producing a record. In the early days I was always asking Martin Hannett and the engineers questions like: what does that piece of equipment do? How does the signal flow get from there to there? How did you do that? I used to look at patchbays and try and learn where everything was and how to get the signal from A to B.

Sextet was the first album we produced ourselves and I gave the engineer such a hard time. He wasn’t going far enough with EQ and effects and in the end he kept on saying “show me what you mean.” So I would get on the desk myself and get the sound that was in my head without having to explain it to him.

I have attended all our mastering sessions for nearly 40 years now and mastering isn’t rocket science. You can’t polish a turd so it’s very important to get everything right in the recording and mixing stages. Then, mastering is just about making the track sound louder and making sure the frequency range is correct
 
After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?
 
Martin: We usually start recording the next record as soon as we have finished the last one so we never have a sense of emptiness.

As soon as we finished recording 1982 we started writing and demoing the next album in my studio. We will be working with a producer on the next album so it’s the first album we have demoed since Force in 1986
 


Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?
 
Martin: I have loved music since I was very young so making music has always been an exciting process and still is.

Being creative is everything and being diverse is very important to me. The thing that makes ACR’s music stand out is the fact that it is so diverse.