Gerry Read

Gerry Read first put out uneven, gritty house cuts in 2010, well ahead of the moment when terms such as outsider house and lo-fi house turned into common currency. His productions featured punchy yet off-kilter kick drums alongside raw, grainy surfaces, resulting in tracks that remained usable on the floor while diverging from standard club fare, much like certain Detroit-based artists including Theo Parrish and Moodymann yet rooted instead in the U.K. dance scene. After a string of 12-inch releases he issued his first album, Jummy, in 2012 and maintained a steady output across the rest of the decade.

Raised in Suffolk, Read spent his early years focused on football before turning to music. He started on guitar and drums, absorbing nu-metal and later shifting toward jungle and IDM. His initial forays into production centered on jungle, but a hard-drive failure prompted him to abandon that direction. Exposure to dubstep gradually reduced the tempo of his work, steering it toward an idiosyncratic take on house and garage instead. During a short family stay in Australia he placed his debut EP, Patterns, with Dark Arx in late 2010. After returning to England the next year he placed further singles on Fourth Wave and 2nd Drop. By the arrival of Jummy in 2012 his distinctive approach had drawn notice from Pitchfork and FACT.

He went on to work with Delsin and Aus Music, while also self-releasing the limited-edition set Saucepan Jams in 2013. After the 2015 Clone EP Stand by the Bomb, his cassette Chubby Cheeks came out on Nosaj Thing’s Timetable Records in 2016. Ramp Recordings issued the album New Junk City in 2017, and later EPs appeared via 2 B Real Records as well as Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Jnr.