manchester 88-89
here we have the beginnings of UK born house + techno music,
specifically from Manchester, the epicenter of acid-house, and my favorite city in the UK.
"Blue Monday (So Hot Mix)" by 808 State -- 808 is Graham Massey, Andrew Barker, Darren Partington, plus former members Gerald Simpson (a.k.a. A Guy Called Gerald) and Martin Price. Massey was running a basement cafe and was learning sound engineering at Spirit studios on Tarif Street in Manchester. It wasn't long before Martin was organizing Hip Hop crews into club nights and bringing them to the studio to record. Gerald Simpson and MC Tunes formed one such crew. Gerald had a Roland 808 drum machine, the sh101 mono synth and a 303 Bass Line machine - when they all got together, acid house was born. This song was originally recorded for 808 State's early live performances in Manchester. Apart from being lost acid classics, the track provides a glimpse into the scene in its earliest days, of which Massey says "They were staples because they were easy to programme. There was a lot of hostility to what we were doing early on. Change will always do that." Gerald said the "So Hot" mix was originally done to play Jon da Silvas' "hot night" at the venerable Hacienda - the legendary club opened by Factory Records boss Anthony Wilson, Rob Gretton and New Order... (for a quick and dirty history of the 70s-90s Manchester music scene, see 2002's 24 Hour Party People.) To hear tons of unrelased 808 State demos and live performances, check out 808's sounds page. Check out Rephlex's re-issue of this acid classic here, as it will be re-released in all fine record shops next week! For a good introduction to the State, check out their best of disc, but to go back to the start, check out rephlex's reissues of Newbuild and soon-to-be-released Prebuild. (NB: Massey would later associate himself, production-wise anyway, with Bjork on her Post album.)
"Voodoo Ray" by A Guy Called Gerald -- At 16, Gerald Simpson formed a b-boy group in Manchester with some friends who were doing soundsystem battles. Soon after he teamed up with another group called the Hit Squad, who would later become 808 State. Despite his contributions to 808's work, Gerald wasn't credited on their first album, Newbuild, until much later, and he co-wrote their hit song "Pacific State" with Massey for their second album. At the same time, he was pursuing music on his own as A Guy Called Gerald. He recorded "Voodoo Ray" and his Hot Lemonade album as AGCG for Liverpool's Rham label in 1989 - a lot of folks consider this to be the definitive acid house tune, because it is a perfect snapshot of the moment... because of this perfection, Voodoo charted in the top-ten in the UK and top-ten dance charts worldwide at the same time as 808's "Pacific State" - AGCG was also an early contributor to the dark sounds of Drum 'n Bass, with 1993's 28 Gun Bad Boy, and he had another hit right at one of the style's peaks, with 1995's Black Secret Technology. His first three albums are all slated for re-issue sometime in the very near future, and he has a bunch of material out on the venerable !K7 label, with another new EP out this fall, and a full-length album slated for early next year. This version of the song comes from the WARP 10+1: Influences CD - the warp label's 6-CD tenth anniversary collection, which I very very strongly reccomend - the influences discs are amazing, with all the early Detroit techno, NY/Chicago and UK house; discs 3+4 (Classics) have all the first warp releases (before I got these CDs, I never knew Nightmares on Wax was making rediculous techno before he became a downtempo-stoner), and discs 5+6 are all remixes! Also, for those of you who are still lucky enough to be living in Manchester, Gerald is DJ-ing at Dry Bar on Sep. 19th, as well as at Stylus at the Music Box (my favorite club in manchester itself - home of the unibombers' 'Electric Chair' night - woot!) on Oct. 8.