Newbuild

 

After the last post about A Guy called Gerald, something from 808 State just had to come here. The band he was a member of for that first album. Well, I don't know what the relationship with the band is like today, there were court hearings because of missing author credits for "Pacific State", the first 808 State hit, swipes and "Specific Hate".

Perhaps Gerald Simpson would prefer not to live next door to his old colleagues, even in a text about the past. But maybe it is just that: the past.

Gerald Simpson doesn't just stand only for “Voodoo Ray”. He delivered incredible albums. “Automanikk” is fantastic and the later jungle albums were simply different than others in this genre. His tracks have hardly aged at all, I personally prefer the years up to 1989/1991, simply because so much happened there musically and I certainly romanticize that time. His credits for 808 State are also well known, perhaps there was some satisfaction afterwards, also in the form of outstanding payments. Maybe there was the agreement with 808 State that it had with Rham! because of “Voodoo Ray” never existed. Gerald Simpson never got any money for “Voodoo Ray,” which seems incredible and impossible. This is my level of knowledge.

As far as I know, I actually read all the interviews and texts about AGCG, I have always perceived Mr. Simpson as a calm, reflected, emphatic, thoughtful artist who was happy to pass on his knowledge of the machines, his irritation to this time is absolutely understandable.

I first heard “Flow Coma”, of course, in one of Monika Dietl’s shows on SFB, in an exclusive Coldcut mix. A raw, wild, groovy acid piece. One of the two Coldcuts fades out briefly in the middle, chatters briefly about the piece, but rather loudly, and then cranks it up again. What is otherwise annoying comes across as completely effective here and has stuck in my ears in such a way that when I hear the piece without that voice, which is more the norm these days, I think something is missing. Wild, important acid album.

„“NEWBUILD" was made before computers dominated production. All the sounds on this album, bar a few, are triggered by the drum machine. This is why you can hear mistakes on the album as it was laid down live to two-track tape recorder. Incidentally, the master tape, long-since disintegrated, was nicked out of a skip from the back of the BBC, Manchester. It had been spliced and diced heavily enough to get binned, even before 808 got their hands on it.

The great thing about "NEWBUILD" now is that it hasn't been diminished by the passage of time. It's still dirty, cavernous, messy, full of mistakes and profoundly f***ed up - Acid house from a brief period before it all went loved-up, blissed-out, whatever. "NEWBUILD" is unhinged, genuinely lysergic, made all the more vivid by the overwhelming sense of optimism that a new music was being formed right here and right now. The tyranny of formula had not yet made its presence felt on the scene.“

• Richard Hector-Jones -

„Newbuild is a testament to the band's stop- at- nothing enthusiasm for their music, and is also the guts and determination of fiercely independent music. The tape they recorded the album on was removed from a dumpster 'round the back of the Manchester studios of the BBC; it'd been thrown away because it had been cut and spliced so often that it no longer met the quality thresholds of BBC engineers. But these three Mancunian scallywags saw an essential resource and seized it.

And it's with this spirit that 808 State imbued their debut record. The instruments were crappy and severely dated (remember, this was 1988, and the vogue for the Roland TB303 was five years in the future). Simpson, Massey, and Price recognized that the acidic spikes and snarls of the 303 and the synthetic percussion of the Roland 808 were exact replicas of the sounds they heard in their mindspaces. The trio then recorded an album that, after more than ten years of technological progression, still kicks away every other attempt at the definitive acid house album. And I mean "album," not just a collection of individual tracks sequenced together.

Newbuild takes you on an excursion through the jacked up sounds of dendrites firing, quasars spinning, and the piezoelectric sounds of an electron mist. From the opener "Sync/Swim" through the body- tingling bass pulses of "Flow Coma" and the percussive frenzy of "Headhunters" to the closing tribal techno funk of "Compulsion," 808 State challenge your preconception of how music should be and prove just how damn funky three tearaways with a beat-up drum machine can be.“

• Paul Cooper -

„There used to be a time when Newbuild could be considered the ultimate in freaky shit stuff, and there have been rumors (actively supported by 808 State themselves) that the album was a huge influence on none other than Mr. Richard D. James. But look for user reviews these days, and many of them will express disappointment. «It's almost as if I camped out in a Casio forest», a guy complains on Amazon, and he's far from the only unlucky camper. In retrospect, Grand Historians of Elec­tronica usually throw out the required five-star patches, but the rest of the crowds have simply moved on, discarding the past in favor of more «relevant», instantly gratifying pleasures.

But somehow, it makes me a little sad, even if I am by no means a fan of machine loop music, and, normally, the slightest talk about «Acid House», which 808 State allegedly helped bring around into European public consciousness or both, makes me scream in terror and run to my Bessie Smith recordings. Because, loops and rhythms and obsolete recording technology aside, Newbuild is really an excellent musical album. And, furthermore, I do not quiteunderstand what all the fuss is about: to my untrained ears, Newbuild still sounds sufficiently modern. I've certain­ly heard Aphex Twin tracks that were far crappier from a straightforward sonic point of view.

What these three merry guys from Manchester (Graham Massey, Martin Price and Gerald Simp­son) are doing here is making house music from an alien standpoint, borrowing the basics, cros­sing them with an artistic mindset that is influenced both by the astral dreams of Tangerine Dream and the industrial nightmares of Nurse With Wound, and coming up with enough in­di­vi­dual ideas to make nearly each track a stand-out. Sure, they would probably work best as top-le­vel soundtracks for arcade games — but if you find that demeaning, you can choose «sonic equi­valents of looking out the window in a spaceship flying close to light speed». That's acid house for you all right, if you are really in need of labeling.

The album never relents or slows down: it is fourty minutes of pounding grooves, seven different landscapes that shift form and color, but never speed, lest you lose the proper momentum. And what they lack in the ability to program a real tricky rhythm or polyrhythm, they gain in the pure art of invention. 'Sync/Swim' is all based around the bizarre interaction between the funky (but al­so quite heavy-metallic) bassline and the cute (but dangerous!) synthy double-note chomp-chomp that may represent little alien battleships speeding past that window of yours in regular formation — or, in a microcosmic manner, batches of viruses speeding up and down your arteries. 'Flow Coma' is less heavy, but equally mind-blowing, a real delight to see these synth patterns flow into and out of one another, weaving harmoniously melodic psychedelic patterns. And so on. The on­ly thing I am not sold on are the vocal loop overdubs — their presence on 'Dr. Lowfruit' and especi­ally 'Compulsion' is grating and distracting.“

• George Starostin / Only Solitaire -

https://www.discogs.com/master/25427-State-808-Newbuild