NUMBERS: Pacific 202

808 State : Pacific 202

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Time to try something out... I get the feel that this site is, shall we say, sometimes a bit, um, dated, relishing and rejoicing in the golden years of our middle youth and earlier. OK, the tradition of scrupulously avoiding anything from the decade immediately ahead of the day of posting perhaps governs (some) aspects thereof, but I suspect most of us are stuck in comfort zones of yesteryear, and the genres therein. Well, stuff that, I love "electronica/dance" or whatever the fish it's called. As one way to old to be able to curry kudos from the correct lingo, to paraphrase Billy Joel, it's all techno to me, from the Prodigy to Swedish House Mafia. And it's great. (When it's good, that is, like all other genres, when it's bad, it's horrid, with the "charts" usually being the demonstrator of the dross.)
So, you ask, am I a fully paid up raver? Have I been to a club, loved out on Es, Ibiza eternally on my mind and Goa in my heart? No, clearly not. I listen to it in the car on the way to and back fom work. That's where I dance and where, beneath my skin, I'm screaming. (£5 book token to anyone who can source the lyric reference there, groovers!). Yup, when it's good, it's great and I love it loads.
So what about 808 State? Probably  groundbreakers in their way, they formed in 1987, the name stemming fom the drum machine de rigeur at that time. No new material since 2003, allowing this infomercial, but, as they say, still performing DJ sets etc etc. Whatever that means.
I can hear the cynics and traditionalists groaning. Where's our guitars? Where's our sensitive singer-songwriters? Don't panic, still here/there is the answer, and I'll probably post the Stray Cats or Charles Mingus next time. (Guitars? Sensitive singer songwriters? Jeez.....) Unless anyone wants different.

Samples and Found Sounds: One in Ten

808 State: One in Ten

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This is not the post I set out to do. It’s all the fault of a reader named Leopold Stotch. Two years ago, Stotch left a comment on one of my posts. It was the second part of my survey of polyrhythm, from Tricky Beats week. I had posted Help Me Somebody, by Brian Eno and David Byrne. Byrne and Eno had created an entire album of music built around samples of talk shows, radio preachers, and other spoken word found sounds. Stotch, in his comment, let me know that some of this music was sampled in turn by a group called 808 State. In checking them out, I found One in Ten.

One in Ten is technically a remix, but I really don’t like the term. It is built on a snippet of a recognizable song, but the resulting work is something new entirely. This one takes as its starting point the old UB40 song One in Ten. I suspect that the 808 State song also contains other samples that I don’t recognize. I still love the original UB40 song, but I find 808 State’s take off from it fascinating.