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808 State AB-CD Highlight From 2004 Prebuild First ever issue of some lost tapes from the beginnings of the UK's love affair with house music; a time of incredible invention is documented on these tapes, made available here for the first time. Recordings made circa 1987-88. 808 State were central to the roots of Acid House in the UK and Rephlex has previously reissued their debut album (Newbuild, originally issued in 1988 -- an album hailed by the likes of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Luke Vibert, as one of the most influential records of all time). Now they've gone back even further! "Talking with 808 State's Graham Massey about Newbuild's Mutant Prehistory, the Bunker Archaeology of Acid House and the Dangers of Electrocution on the Manchester Party Scene from 1987-1988. Only machines can do things in precise sequence. People and circumstances tend to be a whole lot messier, which is when things start to get interesting. Technology becomes destiny. The rest, as they say, is history, and who knows where that comes from? 'From a personal viewpoint, I always saw the Acid stuff as an imitative first step towards finding an identity in electronic music,' Massey remarks of the recordings in this collection. 'Because of its limitations, it became an established form of music pretty quickly: anything with a 303 on it could sound like Acid. Once you had the machinery to do it, which we discovered we already did, it wasn't hard to make Acid House.' Wind the tape back to around '87/'88, and the machines are there. Hip Hop is a powerful carrier signal on Manchester's dance music scene. Electro is aligning the sound of the Roland 808 drum machine with the glittering promise of the future. 'The 808 had such a history before the British dance music revolution, mostly in soul music, I guess. It had connotations.' The Roland 303 Bass Line had also been around for some time before '88. However, the minute you knew it was the 303 being used on Acid records you pulled it out of the cupboard and started using it again. 'We knew we were copying American music, but often what we heard on Acid Trax compilations and dance imports didn't hit the mark. The charm of a decent Acid record didn't necessarily happen every time. There was maybe one in ten that really rocked, and it was almost accidental that a track was successful. The formula was there, and we knew that we weren't coming up with anything new when we started to make Acid records. It was more the urge to take it over the edge and do that transcending thing with it.' Prebuild follows that line of transcendence, comprising studio recordings from the period, a reel-to-reel of a radio session jammed live on air, a clutch of demos recorded by Gerald Simpson in his bedroom and a cassette of the first ever 808 State performance. An ecstatically extended fourteen-minute workout that took place at the end of a Hip Hop night at The Boardwalk Club, 'Thermo Kings' is a glistening wall of radioactive sludge, the sound of industrial waste undergoing a profound chemical change. This volatile first rush of activity was probably over within a few months, but in that period, 808 State cracked the Acid code, laid down a methodology and shifted the number of beats per minute, unleashing tracks like the fearsome 'C.I.S.' and 'K.Narcossa' on Stu Allen's radio show or dropping twenty-minute tapes into sets at the Hacienda or at warehouse parties. 'I think you have to take into account that there's a certain amount of automatic writing with that kind of technology,' Massey recalls. 'It's trial and error a lot of the time. You'd only press the record button when it was happening.' Now press rewind and play." -- Ken Hollings, London 2004. Format: CD Album   Label: Rephlex Catalog: RPLX807CD Origin: UK Listed: 2004-10-05 Activity Status: Usually Available in 1 - 3 days   Price: $13.77   More titles from 808 State : 808:90 90 (Deluxe Edition) Don Solaris Don Solaris-Deluxe Edition Ex:El Ex:El-Deluxe Edition Gorgeous Gorgeous-Deluxe Edition Newbuild Opti Buk / (Pal) (DVD) Outpost Transmission Outpost Transmissions Prebuild Prebuild (Vinyl) Quadrastate (Rmst) Quadrastate (Rmst) (12 inch Vinyl) Thermo Kings specials Decoder Ring Somersault Price: $10.32 More Info    Boris Pink Price: $10.32 More Info

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