- Gerry Read is a natural outsider, a producer whose releases over the past couple of years have simultaneously converged with the current fad for scuzzy lo-fi house and refused to kowtow to any scene norms. Evidence, the lead single to Read's debut album, suggests a retreat from the comparatively danceable Yeh Come Dance EP, into more familiarly occluded terrain.
There's always been a sense of callowness to the young Read's productions—an impression that he's simply doing whatever the fuck he wants within the broad church of house music, only occasionally stumbling down avenues which could be read as retro-reverence. It's a sense which is compounded by the knowledge that this record was entirely assembled from home recordings. Those dusty piano chords and muted vocals weren't lovingly coaxed from some forgotten soul LP—but they sound like they could've been.
Opening with an appallingly mucky hi-hat-woodblock loop and a kick that sounds like a flaccid drum skin being thumped ineptly, that euphoric piano and vocal loop fades in gradually, before being wrenched into the foreground with some gratuitously heavy-handed filtering. We never quite reach a climax, but the vibe—concealed under layers of sediment though it may be—is an ecstatic one. Evidence might not be one of Read's strongest records, but it's a fine indicator of where the producer's real talent lies: in transforming his bedroom tinkerings into something with all the bombast of the finest dance floor fare.