A 1994 tune. If sampling is ancestor worship and citation is a procedure within "the invention of tradition", this dates the ignition point of Nuum to 1988 - which is when the very first UK house and techno tunes emerge that are not pale copies of the real thing, that have a tinge of only-in-UK about them. Only a tiny few at that point (the real flood starts in '89-90 with early bleep and SUAD breakbeat house), among them Gerald and estranged cohorts 808 State.
The title seemed wonderfully mysterious.... I used to think, "is it meant to suggest the track is like a beam - a sonic laser beam - a ray that zaps you and sends you into a voodoo trance?"
Then I thought, "actually perhaps it's a nickname or an alias... 'm'name's Voodoo Ray!'", "that's Voodoo Ray, e's a legend!", "watch out for that Voodoo Ray, a dodgy geezer".
(Accidental or unconscious echo of Velvet Underground, "Sister Ray" maybe. Or Suicide, "Mr Ray" )
Voodoo Ray - a drug dealer, a "here comes the nice" / "Mr Pharmacist" kind of personage. Ebeneezer Goode even.
Voodoo Ray - a shaman. Pagan mystic.
Voodoo Ray - someone who's done too many trips and gone doolally. A lost-eyed casualty. Bit cracked in the head. Babbles on about cosmic paranoia type stuff.
The reality is, as everybody knows by now, I'm sure, that the end of the word got cut off the sample. Track should have been called "voodoo rage". And in fact did become "Voodoo Rage" again, in a drum-and-bass era refix
the source, endlessly amusing on many levels, being this sketch about white Brit bourgeois and their projections onto black music.
