Originally available only on cassette with the purchase of the book in 1989 (although two of the tracks were available on a promo 12”), Gerald’s soundtrack was near mythical until the tracks were uploaded to YouTube a decade ago. Following the book’s ’21 repress, it can finally be heard in context of the book, and taken on its own merits, with this keenly awaited first pressing. Where the sci-fi noir novel follows the drug-fuelled story of London nightclubs and fictional narcotic “FX”, Gerald’s soundtrack follows with a noir-toned suite of acid house patently produced circa ‘Voodoo Ray’, but slanted with more brooding pads and freckled with samples that really nail the atmosphere of spangled subterfuge.

Every bit a lost classic of its genre, the soundtrack revolves around five cuts, setting the tone with his ghostly warehouse jacker ‘Trip City’ and its lysergic patina of bleeps and subtly layered field recordings, before clocking up a real gem in the Belgian new beat-esque choral motifs and lunky jak of ‘Valentine’s Theme’, and loosening the hips with the kinky swivel of ‘At The Mambo’. Named after the novel’s fictional drug, the frictional ‘FX’ was actually issued as a 12” in its own right, and appears here in a slightly modified version, along with the nutty acid of ‘Soho Chance’, all plugging a vital gap in acid house collections everywhere.