a certain ratio
ltm biography



Manchester, 1978. In the beginning there were four: Jeremy Kerr (bass), Martin Moscrop (guitar/trumpet), Peter Terrel (guitar/effects) and Simon Topping (vocals/trumpet). Four thin boys with a name borrowed from a Brian Eno record, the intense, drummerless quartet initially drew influence from Wire, Eno, the Velvets and Kraftwerk, and gained a manager in Anthony Wilson of Factory Records.

May 1979 saw the release of their first ACR single, the dark All Night Party, although the sound and musicianship of the band would be transformed by the arrival of funky drummer Donald Johnson (DoJo) in August. Over the next few months the band gigged widely, often with Joy Division as part of Factory packages, and recorded demos with producer Martin Hannett as well as a Peel session. Their support slot with Talking Heads on their UK tour in December 1979 set David Byrne on a new course, and provided the compelling live half of their chic cassette package The Graveyard and the Ballroom. Post-punk, ACR now reflected the influence of Funkadelic, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, The Bar Kays and James Brown.

The next proper A Certain Ratio record was the epochal Shack Up, released by Factory Benelux in July 1980. Recorded for £50, the single still managed to dent the Billboard disco chart in the USA. Antilles/Island expressed interest in signing ACR, and they were invited to record with Grace Jones, but the band elected to remain with Factory and Wilson. In September ACR completed a short American tour supporting New Order, and collected an extra vocalist in Martha 'Tilly' Tilson. The debut album To Each… was recorded in East Orange, New Jersey, where an engineer accidently cleared the final mix settings. As a result the mix had to be completed by Martin Hannett in the UK, and suffered as a result.

ACR's third single was the astonishing 12" Flight, released in October 1980. Hypnotic, transcendental funk produced by Martin Hannett, and all three tracks marking ACR as the artistic equals of Joy Division.

Live 1980 captures ACR at a key point in their development, performing a tight yet atypical set before a sparse audience at the tiny Vera venue at Groningen, in the north of Holland, on the night of 26 October. The show was part of a short Factory package tour of Holland, Belgium and Germany shared with Section 25, as well as The Names and Durutti Column on select dates. It's worth putting the Ratios in proper context here, with just three singles and a cassette album to their name, and a niggling dissatisfaction with playing the same set night after night. Indeed in August ACR had confessed to Paul Morley in the NME:

"We're not as enthusiastic about what we do as we were at the start. We still like what we're playing, but we play it all the time. We've been on the road for two years now… It doesn't make a difference when you're playing the same old things over and over again. We're in a dilemma at the moment."

Hence this unusual but brilliant set performed two months later, based largely on tracks from the just-recorded debut album, and ignoring all three singles. Tilson had not yet arrived in Europe. The extended, spacier numbers such as Oceans, Loss and Winter Hill sound particularly fine, and the interplay between the dual guitars and trumpets is nothing short of a revelation. Indeed it's almost like listening to a crack jazz combo. That this tape exists, and sounds so good, is due largely to live engineer Jon Hurst, whose skill at the mixing desk was consummate. For further examples of his talent, check out the live albums by Section 25 (Live in Europe and America 1982) and Crispy Ambulance (Fin).

The European tour in October 1980 would be the last Factory package that ACR agreed to take part in, the group having already decided to withdraw their labour from the collective live label effort before the American trip. Elsewhere in this booklet you can read an illuminating account of the tour by Larry Cassidy of Section 25, including the shock theft of an ACR trumpet in Amsterdam.

The debut album To Each… surprised some on its eventual release in April 1981, in part due to the flawed production, and also because many of the best tracks from this period appeared only on singles and eps. However, the band regained lost ground with the next album, the self-produced Sextet, and companion single Waterline. Released in January 1982, Sextet attracted rave reviews, and with Tilly as their new live focal point the band took their place in the avant-funk vanguard alongside 23 Skidoo and The Pop Group.



The original Ratio quintet made just one more album, I'd Like to See You Again, cut in February and March 1982. By now Martha Tilson had departed, and Kerr and Moscrop were already working on their latin and jazz chops as members of companion band Swamp Children, soon to be re-branded as Kalima. The new music offered dry, disciplined latin disco, inspired in part by Cameo. With Tilson gone, and Topping content to play trumpet, percussion, and keyboards, the band also now lacked a willing singer.

When I'd Like to See You Again was released in October, reviews were mixed. According to the NME, "ACR aren't sounding like ACR anymore so much as the latest New York disco imports. Is that enough?" The answer was yes, and for the first time ACR were starting to sound like the American acts they'd been influenced by. I'd Like… was a short album (at just 35 minutes), yet it does contain Touch, one of ACR's most durable numbers, while the 7" version of Knife Slits Water (with DoJo on vocals) from the same sessions is arguably the best. Moreover this material really shone live, as the extract from a show at The Hacienda on 22 December 1982 included on the Factory Outing video visibly proves.

However, none of this was enough for Peter Terrel, who left in October to travel to India. He was replaced full-time by ace keyboard player Andrew Connell, who had already played live with the band. Moscrop: "We'd bought a Moog and a clavinet and all the sort of funk machines, but we didn't have anyone who could really play them." Backing vocalist Carol McKenzie briefly joined, but in March 1983 enigmatic Simon Topping quit to study percussion in Brooklyn, and later joined Quando Quango, T-Coy and M People, as well as releasing a latin-flavoured solo 12" on Factory Benelux in 1985.

The new look ACR - Connell, Johnson Kerr and Moscrop - now elected to try for mainstream commercial success. In July 1983 the DoJo-dominated single I Need Someone Tonite revealed this new approach to the public, offering a cover of Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry Bout a Thing on the flipside, but it failed to scale the charts. "We didn't know what we were doing. After Knife Slits Water we moved more consciously for jazz and latin moods." (Jeremy Kerr)

"We knew we were shit but we didn't know why… We were listening to a lot of funk records, but we couldn't play like that because they were all from America and they had big record companies and were all petty good musicians. At one time it was out ambition to be as good as them, and that was when we were just trying to be commercial." (Martin Moscrop)

After a brace of stop-gap singles at the end of 1984 (Life's A Scream and Brazilia), and now with sax player Tony Quigley on board, a revitalized ACR returned to form in June 1985 with a back to basics double-header, Wild Party and Sounds Like Something Dirty. Connell, Kerr and Moscrop then quit Kalima to concentrate on making noise with ACR, and a strong fourth album, Force, followed a year later. But that's another story…

James Nice
March 2005

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