Artist

A Certain Ratio

English post-punk band

Manchester, United Kingdom • Formed 1977

A Certain Ratio is a music group from Manchester, United Kingdom, active since 1977. Their discography on Gatefold includes 24 records.

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Albums tracked

In collections

1977

Since

Biography

A Certain Ratio (aka ACR or A.C.R.) is a post-punk/funk band from Manchester, UK, formed in the late 1970s by Simon Topping, Jeremy Kerr, Martin Moscrop, Donald Johnson and Pete Terrell. Revitalised by their 40th anniversary tour, the band returned to the studio to record their first album in 12 years - Loco - released on Mute on 25 September 2020. Along with Gang of Four and The Pop Group, ACR are recognised as one of the first exponents of punk-funk

The Arc of A Certain Ratio

The pivots — what forced A Certain Ratio to reinvent.

The Hannett Ice Age
Between 1979 and 1981, producer Martin Hannett took the band's raw, jagged ideas and froze them solid. In the studio for 'The Graveyard and the Ballroom' and 'To Each...', Hannett used space, tape delay, and extreme instrument isolation to create a claustrophobic, skeletal dub-punk sound. You hear it in the way Peter Terrell's guitar lines don't chords but rather slash through the mix like razor blades. This was the sound of a band trapped in a Manchester winter, desperate to dance but too cold to move.
The Brass and Percussion Shift
By 1982's 'Sextet', the band took production duties into their own hands and let their obsession with Latin jazz and Afrobeat take over. They added trumpets, congas, and Martha Tilson's ethereal vocals to the mix, abandoning the bleak post-punk template entirely. The basslines got thicker, the rhythms got polyrhythmic, and tracks like 'Knife Slits Water' proved they could compete with New York's No Wave dance scene. It was a massive pivot from the grey Factory aesthetic into something genuinely tropical and sweaty.
The Major Label Gloss
The signing to A&M Records in 1989 for the 'Good Together' album nearly destroyed their identity. The label pushed for slick, commercial synth-pop production, burying Donald Johnson's live drum grooves under quantized drum machines and digital keyboards. While the band was trying to engage with the emerging Madchester rave scene, the sterile studio environment stripped away their trademark grit. The result was a record that sounded like a desperate bid for chart success rather than the cult street funk they excelled at.

Influences

Parliament-Funkadelic — Bass player Jez Kerr has repeatedly cited Bootsy Collins and George Clinton as the primary blueprints for his heavy, slap-adjacent bass style. You hear this massive bottom-end obsession anchoring the otherwise sparse, icy groove of 'Do the Du'. It was Detroit funk filtered through a bleak Northern English filter.
Velvet Underground — Before they found the funk, the band's early live sets were dominated by three-chord drone and feedback. Their early guitar style, particularly on 'The Graveyard and the Ballroom', directly mimics the deadpan, relentless rhythm guitar work of Lou Reed. It is the primitive, amateurish art-rock foundation that kept their later funk experiments from sounding too slick.
Kraftwerk — The band watched Kraftwerk perform in Manchester on their 1981 tour, which solidified their desire to incorporate rigid, electronic sequencing into their live rhythm section. This influence manifest on tracks like 'Dirty Boy', where the electronic percussion sits in a perfect, cold grid. It gave their street-level funk a futuristic, industrial spine.
Fela Kuti — The band began collecting imported Afrobeat records in the late seventies, which directly inspired them to buy congas and agogô bells. You can hear Fela's massive, interlocking horn charts and endless percussion jams written all over the arrangements on 'Sextet'. They took the dense polyrhythms of Lagos and jammed them into a post-punk club context.
Chic — Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards revolutionized dance music production, and Donald Johnson's drumming was a direct attempt to capture that precise, clean disco pocket. On tracks like 'Shack Up', the rhythm section tries to lock into the elegant, tight groove of 'Good Times'. They took the uptown NYC disco polish and dragged it down into the Manchester mud.