Music for scaffolders: 808 State on Top Of The Pops

I've been watching old Top Of The Pops clips. It's how us cool people spend our leisure time. Back in the 1950s, our hobbies would have been weekends in Margate or afternoons down the bingo getting razzed on prawn cocktails. Not for us modern kids.

I actually want to talk about 808 State, which won't be a surprise for regular readers of this blog. They appeared on Top Of The Pops for three of their singles. They performed their breakout hit Pacific State in November 1989 when Simon Mayo was the presenter. When Cubik hit the charts a year later, they were compered on by Anthea Turner. And Manchester DJ Gary Davies was MC when they played In Your Face in the summer of 1991. That latter programme also featured Chris Isaak, Nomad featuring MC Mikee Freedom, and Julee Cruise doing her dreamy Twin Peaks theme. 

808 State were deliciously experimental. They still are: 2019's Transmission Suite is a cold-war cooling tower of steaming creativity: chills and thrills all the way. But considering how relatively undeveloped dance music was in the late-80s, Bob State were wild. Take, for example, their 1989 album 90. It starts with the floaty hypnosis of Magical Dream, ends with the liminal industrialism of The Fat Shadow, via the acidic chatter of 808080808. Expand the discography, and we quickly reach the squelchy acid of Flow Coma, the lift music of Lift, the gospel of 10x10, and that psychedelic guitar-mageddon of Cubik. 

808's Graham Massey appeared at the Louder Than Words festival last November. He was speaking at the launch of Matthew Collin's Dream Machines, which I've written about here. At this event, he recalled playing Cubik to a record company exec from Warner Brothers. The suit didn't seem too fussed about the track, but thankfully producer Trevor Horn took the bait. Horn signed 808 State to his ZTT label, which had previously achieved hits with Art Of Noise and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. 

"We were surprised because we didn’t sound like the pop music of the time," said Graham on the interest from ZTT Records. "Trevor Horn was a great champion of what we were doing, and such a great pioneer of sonic stuff, so we felt like he really had our back."

Horn encouraged the band to edit their tracks for a radio-friendly audience. And, of course, it worked. Graham added: "I remember the thrill of hearing [our songs] on builders’ radios, those paint-splattered radios that scaffolders had, and we were like: yeah, pop music!"

Graham described the band as four individuals with colliding record collections. "It’s opulent," he said. "It’s a lot of ideas crushed and spat out into very colourful ways. We were exploring ideas. With studio time being so rare and expensive, and the equipment being so exciting, it seemed like you shouldn’t keep doing the same thing."

And he described their 90 album in particular as an exploration of ideas and a celebration of the sampler. "The sampler was such a fresh and exciting tool that we were still learning to use. Plus I was learning to be an engineer. I was trying to ape Prince records with the tiny little delays that make psychoacoustic spaces. It wasn’t just notes and musical melodies."

Thank the lucky stars and the miraculous moons that Top Of The Pops was there to promote such zany music to the masses. The programme stopped its regular broadcast nearly two decades ago, and we are poorer as a result. However, we shouldn't be too downhearted.

A few years ago, I was at a Dreadzone gig. You might remember them for bucolic protest rave tunes such as Fight The Power and Little Britain. The gig was full of crusty old folks like me. But I found myself on the front rail next to two young women: early twenties at a push, all glammed up and ready to party

"How on earth did you find out about Dreadzone?" I asked.

"The internet," they said. They had discovered the band online, at it had become their "thing". And they didn't even need Anthea Turner to help make that happen.

Further Fats: Oh, puppies, why do you live? (2006)

Further Fats: 808 State's number tracks in number order (2013)

Smileys for miles: 10 rave culture classics that you should listen to immediately

Look at you, sat on your sofa watching repeats of the Nine O'Clock News from 1984 while munching seven-day old Jaffa cakes you found in the back of your cupboard. Jeez, what a loser. What you need, my lazy friend, are some rave-inspired records to ramp up your energy.

Here are ten tracks that, in their own individual way, bring alive the energy of rave music. Some are more directly connected to rave, and will transport you back to the days of poppers and smiley faces. Others owe some kind of historic debt to rave culture: even if you didn't experience rave back in the day, these tunes should still evoke the pill-popping hypercoloured club culture of yore. 

The highlighted links should open to a YouTube video of that track.

808 State: Cubik
Following the success of their blissful and balaeric Pacific State, 808 State put out a series of singles with a harder energy. Cubik was an unlikely top ten hit because of its cranky square-wave chords, alarmist emergency sirens and wild guitar shreds. There's footage online of young ravers partying to Cubik at Stone Roses' infamous Spike Island gig. Perfect for throwing (cuboid) shapes to.

Altern-8: Infiltrate 202
This was the masked mavericks' first hit single, and it peaked at number 28 in July 1991, just behind a new entry from Frankie Knuckles' The Whistle Song and just ahead of a new entry from Bomb The Bass's Winter In July. Crumbs, what a chart. And what an anthem. Simplistic, geometric breakbeat shapes which felt quite comical at the time, but laid some pretty serious groundwork in commercial chart rave.

Bicep: Glue
The video for Bicep's nostalgia-bazooka Glue interspersed images of abandoned rave sites with quote captions from ex-ravers. "Never had a comedown like that one," reminisces one caption. "Best days of my life," says another. "Off my box with four cans of Stella," interrupts one wag, ruining the mood. Joe Wilson's video was a perfect foil to the Bicep boys' heart-wrenching breakbeats. What a comedown. 

Chase & Status: Blind Faith
Like the Chemical Brothers, Chase & Status's partnership can be traced back to their time at Manchester university. And like the Chemical Brothers, the pair tread a neat line in roof-shattering beats. Blind Faith was a huge hit from their breakthrough album No More Idols. It was a tribute to grubby warehouse rave, bolstered by Loleatta Holloway-style live vocals from Yola. Chase & Status gonna work it out.

Fatboy Slim: Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat
Norman Cook has enjoyed number one success in various guises, and I had plenty of choice for this list. His creativity knows no bounds, whether it's a caveman turning into a chubby lad or Christopher Walken walkin' weird. Three decades after he learnt bass so he could join the Housemartins, Mr Slim released this modern classic in tribute to the fours states of raving. It's like Eat, Pray, Love but with poppers.

Klaxons: Atlantis To Interzone
They may have just been a bunch of London indie kids, but they brought "new rave" to the masses and singlehandedly re-popularised glowsticks with the gigging public. The awkwardly-named Atlantis To Interzone enjoyed radio support but, incredibly, failed to make a dent in the UK charts. A travesty. They followed-up this tribute to rave with an ace cover of Grace's Perfecto Records classic Not Over Yet.

Nia Archives: Off Wiv Ya Headz
I could have included A-Trak's iconic remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Heads Will Roll, but this junglist remix is irresistible. Nia Archives knocked up the track when trying to entertain crowds at Manchester's Warehouse Project, no mean feat considering the number of gurning bucket-hatters I've encountered there. If her name is new to you, dive into the Nia Archives archives immediately. Your rave heart will thank you.

Pet Shop Boys: Vocal
This might be a controversial one if you're a purist. And yes, I know Vocal has all the energy of your grandad pining for the days when the high street was all butchers and shoe shops. But this track has proper rave origins: the Boys say it was inspired by a clubbing venture in Brazil in the mid-1990s. They reflected this in the video by using footage from actual raves. A great tune from the domino dancers. 

Together: Hardcore Uproar
This John Carpenter-sampling classic was released on Pete Tong's brilliant FFRR label, It was the epitome of crossover rave bangers. That "ha-ha-hardcore uproar" voice? It's not a sample: it's just Suddi Raval's doing it directly into a mic. And the crowd cheers are from a Together live recording - in the background, you can hear Suddi shouting "yeeeeeah" to hype the crowd up. Rave to its very (hard)core.

The Streets: Weak Become Heroes
This list is almost in alphabetical order by artist, so we end up with The Streets. This is the best music act named after a road since, er, 'Don't Call Me Baby' hitmakers Madison Avenue. The downbeat Weak Become Heroes is Skinner's paeon to losing himself in the club and having a KFC afterwards. It's not a very ravey way to finish this list, but you can't have the smiley highs without the post-ecstasy crash.

Main blog picture: Altern-8

Further Fats: If it goes bleep, it may or may not be EDM (2013)

Further Fats: Just how DO you act at your first rave? (2019)

Dream Machines book launch covers the entire history of everything (and talks about cassette tapes for a bit)

The Manchester launch for Matthew Collin’s new book Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain From Doctor Who to Acid House^ was an ambitious affair.

The launch was held at the Louder Than Words festival^ on 16 November 2024. It attempted to cover every beat of electronic music history, from post-war experimentalism to the rise of techno. In a 90-minute event, this mission was doomed to failure, but that's okay – we had a jolly good time attempting the impossible.

On the panel, Matthew was joined by Graham Massey from 808 State, DJ and rapper Aniff Akinola, and member of Quando Quango, Hillegonda Rietveld. A bunch of sonic superbrains, wrangled by question-master and host Ryan Walker.

There was love for Daphne Oram. They discussed Barry Gray’s puppetry electronica. There were mentions of Cabaret Voltaire and Human League, of course. Respect for the “untutored electronics” of Hawkwind, the first band Massey saw live.

They highlighted contrasts too. The opposing tones of the cold Kraftwerk and the sensuous Stevie Wonder. Electronic music as being simultaneously music of the people and music of the avant-garde. And despite bleepy music breaking into the pop charts, they discussed the outsiders and the mavericks of electronic music culture. “I love it, and I love you,” said Collins.

Remember cassette-swapping culture? They touched on how the advent of cassette players fed the hobbyist scene, as people explored new sounds on their own terms. Indeed, Akinola said his childhood was devoid of pop music because of his parents’ religious beliefs, yet the family still had a top-end Aiwa cassette recorder because his mum wanted to record her pastor’s sermons.

And the huge, huge importance of dub music. “It was a new way of experiencing music as a listener,” said Matthew. “It changed everything.” 

Dub wasn’t easy to produce during its earlier development, said Akinola. “We had it harder in the old days, because we didn't have sound systems that physically assaulted you!”

What else? The list is long. I think it was Rietveld that mentioned using an LFO wobble as a rhythm track. They chatted about Malcolm X samples. About learning to cut tape as an editing technique. Blacktronica and West London broken beat. Gary Clail and Adrian Sherwood. The influence of StreetSounds compilations. “Voodoo rage” becoming “voodoo ray”. Mantronix using scratching samples at the Hacienda, much to the chagrin of other DJs in the room. Larry Heard’s “brutal electronics” arriving in our ears seemingly without origin. 

As you'd expect, the Roland TB-303 came in for praise. Its unexpected rise as an acid machine happened because people ignored its original intention as a bassline instrument.

Explained Akinola: “Its sonics are close to a saxophone which is near to the human vocal range. So it’s almost speaking to the human consciousness. This is why I think it was such a popular instrument, when it was used in the wrong manner.”

It was a proper Manchester event, with old Hacienda ravers present in the audience. Just before the launch, Akinola and Massey realised they had gone to the same secondary school, Burnage High. I didn’t say anything. I was a Parrs Wood lad.

As I'm a former bookseller, let's do a proper plug for the book. Dream Machines is "a paean to all the originators and early adopters of electronic music", according to Stephen Mallinder. '"A perceptive and highly entertaining breakdown of the crucial development of some of the most innovative music of my dreams," says Martyn Ware.

You can buy the book from all good bookshops^ and some evil websites.

Further Fats: Chosen Words – R is for Rhythm (2010)

Further Fats: I too am a book killer – the Manchester Central Library book disposal (2015)

My magical dream: everything's gone all Chris de Burgh

There's an old 808 song about a magical dream that goes:

It's a fantasy taking over your mind 

So let it roll, let it roll with ease

It will take control of the rest of your soul

And explode... into a magical dream

The song about a magical dream carries on talking about the magical dream and how having a magical dream is great because it's magical and a dream. Can't remember the name of the track.

Which brings me to the subject of this blog post. Dreams. More specifically, a dream I had. People waffling about dreams can be pretty dull in the scheme of things, so feel free to scroll off to some more fascinating corner of the internet.

Last night, I dreamed I used a 3D printing vending machine for dresses. A what now? A unit where you pressed a load of buttons and it would spit out a dress. For a women. A proper figure-hugging dress like you see at awards ceremonies.

After scrolling through some templates on the vending machine touchscreen, I decided to get one. The quality of the material looked good. You could choose the strap design and the neckline and any little extras. Lovely.

I chose a red dress. Really red, like Mr Strong driving a fire engine then blushing about it. Soooo red. As Chris de Burgh sang:

The lady in red

Is dancing with me

Bum cheek to bum cheek

At least, I think that's how the song went. Looking at the preview screen, the colour was a bit too blocky, so decided to personalise it with a text pattern. Lots of small white type all over the dress, with the words "Fat Roland" over and over again. FAT ROLAND FAT ROLAND FAT ROLAND.

The machine couldn't handle things, and the text rendered badly. Overlaps, warps, random lines criss-crossing. But then I angled the text at 45 degrees and it was kind of fine. That'll do. If people wanted to read FAT ROLAND, they'll just have to look at it wonky.

At the bottom of the vending machine menu was a big PURCHASE button, alongside the final price including customisations. It would cost £450. Shocked at how expensive this was, I brought my friends in to discuss the wisdom of the purchase. We had a long conversation acknowledging the substandard quality of the final product, even though it was still a preview on a screen rather than the end print. We discussed my financial situation and whether I could afford to take the hit. We also needed to balance that with a need to serve my monstrous narcissism. 

I also asked if this is how much dresses cost in Primark because, as you can tell from all this, I don't buy dresses.

And then I fell into a deeper sleep. Drifted from REM into heavy unconsciousness, any dream sequences fading into darkness. Do we still dream when we're properly conked out? Probably not. My drapery frippery was long lost.

When I finally started waking up, a couple of minutes before my alarm, the dream briefly returned. The discussion with my friends was just finishing. Had they really stuck around all this time? I had opted to not buy the dress because that was the pragmatic and grown-up thing to do. The sense of making a decision made me feel assured as I started my day back in the real world.

Which is why I'm writing this blog post in my usual rags, and not crammed into a red dress looking like Elmo with haemorrhoids.

Cover me bad: Flow Coma by 808 State

Dear reader,

This is the blog police. It has come to our attention that there has been suspicious activity on this Blogger account for the past five days, masquerading as a blog series called Cover Me Bad.

The conceit of the series is that the writer and performer Fat Roland thinks he's brilliant at creating cover versions of electronic music tracks. The 'joke', and we use that word loosely, is that he's really bad at it, and each blog post ends in a stream of idiocy.

According to the Weblogs Policing Act 2005, this is really bad blogging. Let's use an example.

Artist: 808 State
Track: Flow Coma
Year: 1988
Reviews: [Mr Roland would then insert a genuine review here, but make it look like nonsense]

He would always print something like that. It is alleged this is a random song choice, picked from his record collection. We have evidence to believe the decision is actually more half-hearted, plucked carelessly from thin air. He clearly is not researching his blog posts.

He would then take elements of the track, in 808 State's the case the dirty acid and the skippy snares, and then imagine how he would mimic the sounds. However, instead of a serious tutorial on Ableton or similar music-making equipment, he usually resorts to bad puns or forced literalism. 

For example, taking the dirty acid and the skippy snares, he would have then talked about getting some actual acid and putting dirt on it, or placing a snare drum in a skip.

This is, at best, lazy writing and, at worst, a crime against blogging. The evidence is written in black and white.

In a recent post, Mr Roland pretended to have a conversation with his own blog, thereby breaking the structure of the Cover Me Bad blog series. This was a particularly heinous crime and we hope he doesn't do this again.

The reader is advised not to have any contact with Fat Roland's blog, otherwise the reader will be charged with accessory to poor interneting.

Yours sincerely,

The Blog Police, 999 Letsbe Crescent (near Letsbe Avenue), Blogford, Bloggington, Greater Bloggery.

What do you MEAN you haven't heard of Acid August?

As we approach the end of the month, I really hope you've enjoyed listening along with Acid August.

Pardon? You've never heard of Acid August? Have you been living under a rock?

The whole idea of Acid August is that you spent the whole month listening to acid house music and nothing else. Are you telling me you've not done this? Have you that much disrespect for Acid August?!

Admittedly I didn't mention Acid August, but it was difficult to figure out. It's the alliteration. Acid in August, Metal in March, Jungle in June and Off-Kilter Space Jazz in October. I shouldn't have to explain this to you.

Despite your wilful negligence of Acid August, I've hastily cobbled together a list of well-known acid classics you should have been listening to. Maybe you could invent a time machine to rescue the month you just wasted. Harrumph. You people.

• Hardfloor's Acperience 1: maybe the band's most famous track, and a template many people have copied
  
  
• Josh Wink's Higher State Of Consciousness (pictured): a silly track that put acid-tweaking fun into the charts
  
  
• Hydrochloric acid: a kind of bubbling sound, especially when it's burning off your skin
  
  
• Ceephax Acid Crew's Sidney's Sizzler: a lo-fi tempo-twiddling joyful track designed to move your tootsies
  
  
• Carbonic acid: makes a fizzing sound when you open the bottle, as long as the Diet Coke or sparkling water hasn't gone flat
  
  
• Spanky's Acid Bass: Phuture's much-missed Earl Smith Jr turning in an early stomping acid house classic
  
  
• Citric acid: doesn't make much of a sound, unless you jam a lemon into your eyes for a delightfully citrus-y scream
  
  
• 808 State's Flow Coma: the Manchester boys in a moody acid mood, a feeling replicated on their most recent album
  
  
• Amino acid: something to do with compounds (I've honestly no idea) – probably sounds like Westlife
  
  
• A Sid: just a man called Sid, who looks angry and disappointed on the rare occasions someone makes an "a sid / acid" joke, while mumbling "what kind of hack joke is this"
  
  
• Maurice's This is Acid: A stone-cold classic with the added frill of rave chords and sexy gasps

Why not go through that list and tick off all the acids you have listened to this month? And in the future, please don't forget Acid August.

See you this time next month when I'll be checking on your progress in Soft Rock September.

Further Fats: 467 (2010, which also mentions Acid August!)

The alternative, picky version of the Mercury music prize

The Mercury Prize is the best metal of prize. Much better than the Wrought Iron Prize, the Tin Prize and the Ytterbium Prize. Yes, I just looked that up.

In advance of the Mercury shortlist being announced later this week, my friends at Picky Bastards have cobbled together a pretty impressive alternative list of Mercury Prize nominations

FKA Twigs is hailed as a genius, there's praise for the warm analogue tones of Michael Kiwanuka, and Ghostpoet offers a "masterclass in restraint". One album is called an "uncompromising, apocalyptic triumph" but you'll have to read the article to find out which album it is.

I've also made a suggestion: 808 State's Transmission Suite. "808 State’s first album for 17 years wasn’t just a triumph in techno," I write. "It was a brilliantly realised celebration of old electronics." Have a read of all of our alternative Mercury albums here.

While you read that, I'm going to learn about ytterbium. It's named after Ytterby in Sweden, which is a bunch of houses built on a haunted mine. Apparently Ytterbium has a "molar heat capacity" , which I can only assume is to do with setting your teeth on fire. You shouldn't put ytterbium in your eyes, which, to be fair, you can say about most things.

Have you finished reading that Mercury piece? Good. I can stop reading about ytterbium now: it's really dull.

While I'm lazily researching things, here's something else. Wikipedia tells me the Mercury Prize is named after their original telecommunications company sponsor Mercury Communications. When Technics took over as sponsor in 1998, they kept the Mercury name, even though the Technics Prize would have loads more cred because of the whole turntable thing. 

Maybe the Technics Prize can be a dance music version of the Mercury, which would make me very happy. Someone set that up, please, thank you.

The best thing I heard in June was… (drum roll, please)

I heard many amazing things in June. Here is a list.

1. A magpie warbling like a crazy little thing inside a bush
   
   
2. Game Of Thrones – the soundtrack bit, not the head-chopping-off bits
   
   
3. A chap singing the Danger Mouse theme tune in the style of Pulp
   
   
4. The sound of my bedroom fan white-noising my overheated self to sleep
   
   
5. The 808 State listen-along for #TimsTwitterListeningParty
   
   
6. Actually, yes, the head-chopping-off bits in Game Of Thrones
   
   
7. A chap chopping the head off Danger Mouse in the style of Pulp
   
   
8. Magpies hitting my fan to the rhythm of 808 state.... inside a bush

All these sounds are undoubtedly exquisite audio sculptures that make your ears feel like a carpet of velvet unicorns. Why not recreate the above sounds using cardboard tubes, a staple gun and some glitter?

Despite all that noise nonsense, there is one sound that topped them all. There is one sound that was undoubtedly the best thing I heard in June...

In fact, a whole bunch of us picked our favourite music of the month on the Picky Bastards website. One writer picked the new Phoebe Bridgers (pictured) album that everyone's banging on about. Someone else picked Lady Gaga's Chromatica. My pick? I chose Special Request's lightning-sharp Spectral Frequency, a track released a short while ago but rereleased this month on vinyl. It put a rocket up June's bum like nothing else.

Read all about the track's resonating drums and sweaty rave flashbacks on the PBs website (my choice is at the end because I always submit last). Have a read there, and have a listen below.

Get ready for Fat Roland's top 20 magical dreams

Instead of raving all night, sometimes I like to go to bed. And when I go to bed, I like to fall asleep and dream.

Shakespeare said "to sleep, perchance to dream", and I think he was waffling about death, but whatever the ruffed berk was on about, he clearly found dreams fascinating. And so do I. Especially when the dream stays in my memory in the first moments of the day; a lingering afterglow of imagined nonsense.

If I find a dream particularly memorable, I tend to post about it on Twitter. So I did some homework. I trawled through my entire Twitter history to find all of my tweets about my dreams. 

So, a special treat for psychologists everywhere, and perhaps as a tribute to 808 State's excellent 1989 track Magical Dream, here is...

Fat Roland's top 20 magical dreams

A list of my dreams as posted on Twitter over the past 11 years, in no particular order. This is all genuine. Brace yourself. 

1. The record collection

Last night, I dreamt I was showing someone my record collection - but the only record I had was I'd Rather Jack by The Reynolds Girls (pictured above).

2. Fridge problems

Last night I dreamt Robert Plant sneaked into my fridge and did a poo in my Yopp.

3. On the bus

Dreamt I met Debbie McGee on the 142 bus. She was very nice despite being overburdened with shopping.

4. The classic album

Last night, I dreamt I had a listening party with all of my friends so we could reappraise the "game-changing Manic Street Preachers album with all the Red Hot Chili Peppers songs on".

5. The brush off

Last night, I dreamt that every time I used a broom, I chucked it away. I had a bin full of brooms.

6. Career choice

Last night, I dreamed I became a hairdresser by mistake.

7. At the club 

Last night I dreamt I was at a club night. Every so often, Grace Jones would patrol the room to check no-one was smoking. 

8. At the memorial

Last night's dream: I got asked by my local pub to say a few words at a George Formby memorial event. I said yeah fine, I know all about him, I'll not prepare, I'll just wing it. As I walk into the stage, I realise I know nothing about Formby: I was thinking of Bobby Ball.

9. Waking nightmare

Last night I had a nightmare in which I dreamt Mumford & Sons was a real thing and then I woke up and it was true.

10. The race

Dreamt I was racing spiders. (I won.)

11. Definitely my ego

Last night I dreamed I was giving motivational leadership speeches in a car wreckage yard whose electronics were powered by a Nook E-reader.

12. At the pub

Last night I dreamt I went to the pub for a meal. Covid made it way too stressful. Don't touch that, don't queue there, don't lick that, don't stick that in there. Also, @jpmdaly was having a pint with Lou Reed, which just made everything worse.

13. Phone levels

Last night I dreamed my phone battery was at 25% but when I woke up it was at 46% not 25%. 

14. In Edinburgh

Just awoken from a dream in which every Edinburgh pedestrian was dressed as an egg. Big oval costumes with leg holes, but no arm holes or eye holes. Chaos.

15. Someone else's record collection

Had a dream that I was DJing, but I forgot all my records. I had to use @fullofpenguins' vinyl instead but all he had was 30 copies of Female Of The Species by Space.

16. Possibly satire

All I dreamt about last night were zombie bankers molesting me with their elephant trunks.

17. On Christmas Eve

Was intending to be a good boy and go to midnight communion, but fell asleep and dreamt of breakcore instead.

18. A bit dark

Last night I dreamt horses were on fire. I asked an elderly couple if I could borrow their duvet cover to smother the flames. They refused.

19. The grime MC

Last night, I dreamt that Jme released a new single, but it was underneath a pavement and as a result a bunch of Dutch people lost an election inside an ice cream van.

20. All too real

Dreamt last night that my blog got deleted and that the entire world banking system collapsed causing poverty everywhere. My blog. My blog!

Further Fats: Every Guardian music 'crepuscular' reference since the start of 2010, probably (2013)

Further Fats: Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy (2020)

Lapse dancing: the stories of Manchester clubbers

Maps are great. You can get big paper ones that are difficult to fold, and digital ones that ask you to rate places you've been nowhere near.

The Lapsed Clubber Audio Map is a crowd-sourced map that was launched a few years ago by the Manchester Digital Music Archive. The great thing about this map is it talks to you.

The Map contains audio and text memories of Greater Manchester ravers of their clubbing experiences between 1985 and 1995, easily covering the peak years of rave culture.

I had a pleasant trawl through some of the stories uploaded to the site. Here are some highlights from various clubbers in various venues, appended with my comments because I'm a blabbermouth who wants to make everything about me.

808 State at G-Mex: "It was a hell of a gig for us coming from out of town, us small country people... we heard all the same music that we listened to in the clubs of the back and beyond, but on a massive sound system and with a massive crowd of people."

Growing up in Manchester, it's easy to forget that the city was a bit of a Mecca for people out in the sticks. I went to the Hacienda because it was just down the road – albeit quite a long road. My earliest gig memories were at G-Mex: Radiohead supporting James comes to mind, mainly because it makes me sound cool. I probably went to awful gigs there too.

Tangled at the Phoenix: "It was small and it was dingy and there was sweat dropping off the ceilings... Everyone would end up at the garage at East Lancs getting Ribena, the king of all drinks. That was pretty much my life for about five or six years."

The Phoenix was very sweaty. We're talking Piers Morgan's armpits when he has the guilty sweats, which is all the time. I did my first ever DJing gig in their bar – I was terrible – and I remember grubby acid techno bashes in the club. I worked near the Phoenix and watched its building get knocked down. It's shops now. On warm summer nights, you can still smell the perspiration.

Daft Punk’s first UK live gig: "Daft Punk played live for the first ever time in Britain and played that song [Da Funk]... Still to this day, the B-side Rollin’ & Scratchin’ is the only song I can never listen to without vomiting."

When I saw Daft Punk DJ at Sankeys Soap back in the 1990s, a French stranger tried to roll my torso like plasticine while saying "wide boy, wide boy". I have nothing more to say about Daft Punk.

Devils Dancing: "I had this strange-shaped pill I bought, which actually turned out to be ketamine... These lights were making red shadows and all I could see were these weird devils dancing, in this weird, satanic fire dance, and my friend took me home."

I've always stayed away from the more hallucinogenic end of the drugs spectrum. My imagination has always been vivid and strange: my silly creative activities are my way of pressure-cooking that intensity out of my brain. If I didn't have that kind of release, I really would be seeing red devils all over my walls. For now, I just have slightly muted woodchip.

Dancing at Sankeys Soap: "I felt this body come up behind me and start dancing in the same rhythm as me. It got a little bit too close and so I turned round, not forgetting that I’m off me chops, and it was Zammo from Grange Hill."

So many good nights at Sankeys. And a bad trip that nearly destroyed me. Easy come, easy go. When I took on the name 'Fat Roland', I didn't even think of the Grange Hill connection. I should have gone for something different. Wide Boy, maybe. The forward Frenchman was right. Dammit.

I've plenty of memories of clubbing back in the day, so I really should upload something to the Lapsed Clubber Audio Map. Have a browse, why dontcha.

Further Fats: Store Street blues: waddling with the scrotes, the clubbers and the tokers (2007)

Further Fats: There goes the hear: Manchester has enough gigs (2011) 

In praise of 808 State's Gorgeous (which is gorgeous)

Here is a theory.

If a band calls their album Gorgeous, then everyone thinks it's gorgeous. Witness the scrabble at the record shop counter as dribbling music fans demand to feast on something gorgeous. "Look at this gorgeous album!" you scream at the haggard shop assistant. "It's called Gorgeous!"

Here is how that plays out in practice.

808 State calls their album Gorgeous. People are kinda fine with it, but are still wedded to previous album ex:el. Meanwhile, album tracks Sexy Synthesiser and the UB40-sampling One In Ten sound odd in the long-receding wake of novelty chart rave. Select magazine calls Gorgeous "over-familiar" and gives it three stars.

I have to say, though: Gorgeous was MY album. It came out in 1993, a year in which I was absorbing all the techno like a big shape-throwing sponge. It was my musical 'coming of age' year. Synthesisers WERE sexy. Calling something gorgeous DID make it gorgeous. I even wore the album's t-shirt to ribbons.

There is so much to commend about this album. The sun-soaked steel drums of Plan 9. The deep forest samba of Contrique. The hippy indie vocals on Europa being the most 1990s thing ever. The Loop Guru-style stomp of Southern Cross. And Colony being an out-and-out banger.

Following up 1991's ex:el was tough. That album had Bjork and New Order's Bernard Sumner. While Ian MacCulloch's vocals on Gorgeous's Moses had a Sumner-esque waver to them, serving to remind you of the previous album, Moses was much more of an earworm than any vocal on ex:el.

On ex:el, In Yer Face and Cubik landed with such a thump in the charts, their reverberations were felt for years. Gorgeous was softer somehow, more mature, and there was nothing that would obviously trouble the top ten. This was nice because it felt like my secret underground album: an eccentric collection of post-Balearic bangers (new)built especially for my CD player.

Gorgeous is great, and I have an affection for this album that's probably tied into my 1993 musical awakening. But I reckon I'm right. It's underrated. It might not have sultry lift music or James Dean Bradfield, but it's full of phat sounds. With a ph. And when people talk about pH scales, they're talking about science. Gorgeous is scientifically great.

I demand we reassess this album's status in the pantheon of techno history. Go up to that record counter. Feast on something gorgeous. Dribble all over the "card machine broken" signs and flyers for student club nights. Make sure the shop assistant knows you're serious. "I want gorgeous," you chant. "I want gorgeous. I WANT GORGEOUS." Recite this blog post as security bundle you onto the pavement outside.

You want Gorgeous. Say it. SAY IT.

Further Fats: A good week for old LPs - and if you say 'what's an LP', I'll set fire to your mp3 player (2008)

Further Fats: Zombie'ites! Going underground with Transglobal and Banco De Gaia (2017)

This is a box: writing new comedy material and calling everybody Doris

What a busy week. As well as putting some Electronic Sound deadlines to bed, I hosted my own quiz show.

Kind of.

On Saturday, I took to the stage for Mother's Ruin, a queer cabaret night that regularly sells out at the Royal Exchange. At the weekend, at Manchester's Hope Mill Theatre / Turn On Festival, I performed my first full fifteen minutes of new material since I began developing my Seven Inch show in 2017. And boy, it was hard work.

"You don't have to go to the effort of devising new material," said the organisers.

"No, I really have to," I said with a crazed look in my eyes.

Blow me down with a feather duster, it went well. Wonderfully fun. I can't recreate the chaos through the medium of blog text, so here is a vague description of my performance: an LGBTQ quiz derailed by pre-recorded malfunctioning audio beyond-terrible celebrity impressions, two startled contestants I insisted on calling Doris throughout, a mystery box labelled "this is a box", and a surreal use of a cartoon God.

It was a move away from my music themes of previous performances, but I still managed to get in references to Kylie Minogue, Sam Smith and, er, Skrillex. One of the comedic conceits was that I decided that each round should have its own theme tune, so I wrote a bunch especially for the performance. At the end of this blog post is a montage of the "theme tunes" plus my walk-off music, and brief but surprising mention of a modern queer icon.

If you read this in time, Mother's Ruin are back at Hope Mill Theatre this coming weekend — get tickets here.

I'm writing this bog post while listening to 808 State's 1993 album Gorgeous, which was very much my spirit animal when I was younger. I remember wearing the band's 'Gorgeous' t-shirt everywhere I went. Once a show-off, always a show-off...



Further Fats: Live latest – Royal Exchange, Mother's Ruin, the Spoken Word Showcase (2014)

Further Fats: Fats at the Lowry – a Curious trip to the North East (2017)

Best electronic albums of 2019: ten

10 – 808 State – Transmission Suite (808 State)

Joy Division. The Beatles. 808 State. Three bands that made their television debut at Granada Studios. And which of those three would you like to see again on television? What? No, the answer's 808 State, you toss-brain.

The Balearic boys are back, and everything sounds like they're in a decaying television production room, with crackly monitors, computers fizzing in the dust, endless corridors of wires that may or may not lead somewhere. Transmission Suite is, above all, a mood piece.

There's a cold war level of paranoia too. Just who is that Japanese radio voice addressing on Tokyo Tokyo? Why is the American guy so regretful on the the loping Cannonball Waltz? Are those congas closing in on us during Ujala? Yargles.

There's still time for the classic 808 State sound in the cheery lift music of Skylon and the careening rave chords of Trinity. But considering their 17-year hiatus, and a theme that harks back to the days of Tony Wilson on telly, Graham and Andy have produced a fantastically forward-thinking album.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

An acid-tweaking return for 808 State

One of this summer’s bestest things is the return of 808 State.

You might know 808 State from that saxophone thing they did back in the olden days. They also helped define modern techno through the rise of Detroit house and the Hacienda. Wikipedia also says 808's Graham Massey was a member of the Barbie Girl Danish pop band Aqua, but I’m pretty sure they’re linking to the wrong Aqua there.

The band’s comeback album is Transmission Suite - their first for seventeen years. In the past, they’ve blurted out quite dense techno, but this new material feels looser. It’s acid-tweakin’ paranoid rave gubbins by grizzled Mancunians who get drug flashbacks when taking their Rennie’s. Sometimes old ravers slow down, but there’s plenty of improvisational energy in this new material.

They recorded it at the old Granada studios in Manchester, formerly home to TV broadcasts like Coronation Street, World In Action and, er, The Chase. The nicest thing is you can feel Manchester’s club history running through Transmission Suite like day-glo varicose veins: it’s giving me flashbacks of gigs at the Boardwalk and Sankeys Soap.

There's also a strong feeling of paranoia in their new work - very appropriate for our current times, I think. Have a nosey at their moody video for Tokyo Tokyo and you'll see what I mean.



Further Fats: RIP Tony Wilson aka "Mr Manchester" 33AD to 2007AD inclusive (2007)

Further Fats: How do you solve a problem like Madchester (and Fac251)? (2010)

Bluedot's getting in my face for 2019

Bluedot Festival has just announced its 2019 line-up, and it's a corker.

Firstly, they've got Kraftwerk in 3D. Normally, the klanky kids are in 2D, spooling out onto the stage from a fax machine.

And then there's Jon Hopkins. He twists his knobs with great gusto, which makes me think he'd be great at juicing lemons.

They've booked the lads from 808 State. When they say “in your face”, I'm not sure if that means going in through the mouth or entering up through the nostrils. I'm about to find out.

And there's Anna Calvi and Omar Souleyman and Maxine flipping Peake. And New Order. We're sure going to have a “fine time” with these guys. Geddit?! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The festival is just a taxi ride away for me, and I feel like the luckiest festivaller in the cosmos. Check the festival out here.

Further Fats: Posts on this blog about Bluedot Festival

Bleep Years day eighteen: 808 State's Lopez (1996)

This Thursday, I will be waffling about the 1996 IRA bomb for the Manchester Histories Festival. You remember '96, don't you? It's also today's randomly-chosen year for Bleep Years, my two decade trawl through the jukebox of my mind.

1996: 808 State's Lopez

From the 303 acid of Flow Coma to the storming techno of Nimbus, 808 State had long proved their status as Madchester's ravers-in-chief. 1993's warm and adventurous Gorgeous is probably one of my top ten favourite albums. Their 1996 album Don Solaris was a more ethereal affair: think Hacienda classics by stoned beach bums.

Don Solaris' track seven, Lopez, featuring the vocals of James Dean Bradfield Out Of The Manics, was by no means the best track on the album. However, it was the one I'd find myself humming down the street in a year which not only saw 808 State headline a massive party five days after the IRA bombed the heck out of Manchester, it saw the death of my father.

And so, I give you some lyrics from Lopez, which may explain why this one song summed my 1996. (Before this gets too weepy, I should also point out that my dad, who had an extensive record collection including Acker Bilk, Ella Fitzgerald, Cleo Laine and a huge classical collection, bloody hated techno and railed against the invention of the drum machine with some vigour.)

Each sun feels like the last:
Death is proclaimed at sunset
by a final light,
Which darkness fills
With every shade.
Solitude bides time.
Joy gives me my last regret.
Joy gives me my last regret.

So Greater Music Police have been tweeting every 999 call...

Call 1: Report of murder of deputy sheriff and his immediate superior. One suspect in custody. Keeps asking what rhymes with 'lion'.

Call 2: Silly-haired man found igniting blazes. Has apparent tourettes.

Call 3: Five black Americans arrested for using course language to police officer. Seemed to object to our "badge and mother-effing traffic gun."

Call 4: Four post-punk Londoners Three reggae-pilfering new wavers* arrested impersonating officers of the law. The blondest one waffled about tantric sex: re-arrested for being a gobshite.

Call 5: Scotsman and Liverpudlian caught driving around in an old police car, towing an ice cream van. Cargo included heavy artillery, a list of northern cities and several dead sheep.

Call 6: Eccentric man-child caught breaking and entering before attacking a woman, leaving bloodstains on the carpet. Victim's name is Annie.

Call 7: Australian woman found bludgeoned by river. Rose found in mouth of victim. A wiley Hugo Weaving lookalike was seen fleeing scene.

Call 8: Welshman complaining of theft of sun from heart. Was asked to remove balaclava but refused.

Call 9: Young men in chemical masks found in a hypnotic st-8. Had to activ-8 back-up. Won't stop bloody dancing.

Call 10: Smirking gangsters caught running around robbing banks. Evidence of cartoon-dog-based drug taking.

Call 11: Fight broken up between reptiles and local petty criminals. Eye masks seem colour co-ordinated with Teletubbies. Started doing dance routines. Probably mentally unstable: did not intervene.

Call 808: Report of sample theft by Manchester ravers...

If you want some time to figure some of these out, try to ignore the tags below this post!

*see comments section

Chosen Words: Z is for Zang Tumb Tuum*

Despite my previous grumblings over the commercialisation of techno, there was a period when techno was quite publicly acceptable - and it can be summed up in three words: Zang Tuum Tumb*.

ZTT was a label that brought 808 State to massive acclaim, bringing us tracks like In Yer Face and Pacific State. By the time 808 State had released Don Solaris, we'd had brilliant techno crossovers from the Prodigy (XL Recordings) and Moby (Instinct Records).

And yes, this final post in the Chosen Words series is going to be serious, without any surreal aphorisms or digs at easy Bluntesque targets. That's because I'm worryingly evangelical about techno, IDM and electronica, but we now live in a mainstream music culture where the genre (and this blog) seem to waddle around the edges without getting its porky toes wet.

At the time of writing, there is a saviour in the form of dubstep's Magnetic Man. I Need Air gathered some serious radio play, while Mad would be the best single of 2010 if it hadn't been given away for free all over the internet.

But without the mad creativity of labels like ZTT (now reduced to re-releases of older stuff like Art Of Noise, it seems), there won't be swathes of the public that realise, yes, this music is actually quite good.

I once DJed at a wedding reception at a blizzard-buffeted Belfast castle, during which I played a whole set of Aphex Twin and Venetian Snares and the like. I was the main wedding reception DJ! About a tenth of the besuited attendees went running for the hills, but the number of positive comments I got afterwards from non-techno people (rockers, folkies and golden oldies) was quite incredible.

Embrace the electronicness, my friends. You can either start by browsing the 700+ labels further down the right-side of this blog (although there's plenty of, erm, non-electronica in there!), or you can keep your internet tuned to fatroland.com as I continue to puke my techno brain all over your metaphorical wedding shoes. And f'goodness sake, keep buying the music, won't you?

Top five Chosen Words posts:

- choose (geddit?!?!) for yourself: see the series in its entirety here.

* The two versions of the abbreviation are interchangeable.

A Team Doyobi bundle: £12.99 ... carrying a puppy under your ludicrously tanned arm: priceless

If fatroland.com has become known for anything for the past eight years, it's shopping.

There's nothing I like better than mincing down King Street, my beemer parked in a disabled space, to look disdainfully into shop windows full of clothes for retarded stick insects. Daddy's credit card, expensive shades, puppy under arm. That's how I shop.

Good job, then, the real world has Bleep, the online electronic music shop. Recently, they launched a 'bundles' sale, which is a brilliant way of getting rid of all the dross you can't shift otherwise.

I suspect all the fried gold has sold, but there's a decent set of silverware left. There's 808 State's Quadrastate, which had that saxophone tune, bundled with their Planet Mu Rephlex rarities album Prebuild.

There is a vinyl album bundle from the godfathers of chiptune Team Doyobi. I think their music is deeper than the lazy chiptune tag, but anyhoo it's worth a punt because they're key players on Manchester's Skam Records.

And if you prefer plastic, there's a CD pack featuring a brace of albums from London producer Kevin Martin: one under his King Midas Sound collaborative moniker, and one as the quite-frankly-brilliant The Bug. I still think The Bug's London Zoo is one of 2008's essential releases.

Along with a couple of slices of brutalism from Venetian Snares and a wee bit of vinyl from the Ant and Dec of techno Carl Craig and Kirk Degiorgio (note to editor - please delete the Ant and Dec bit: it makes no sense), the bundle sale is still worth a poke with your music-buying stick.

Visit the sale here or click on the links in this piece. And no, I'm not paid by Bleep: I just like 'em. Oh crap, they're towing my BMW - looks like this shopping trip is over. Later, dahlinks.

Aphex Twin + Britney + Beastie Boys + 808 State + anything, really

If you mashed-up this blog with a successful blog, the internet would probably explode.

Some things shouldn't be mixed. I remain convinced that most MTV mash-ups were a calamitous waste of cathode rays and I have heard too many DJs ruin two separate tracks by smashing them together until the clubbers were sliced to death from airborne shards of shattered vinyl.

I always beatmixed until I started DJing my particular brand of electronic complexity some years ago. I then boasted that my record collection was beyond any sensible time signature and tracks could not be mixed or mashed into each other without the result sounding like some elephant in chainmail parkouring over corrugated shed roofs.

But that hasn't stopped people trying, particularly with the Cornish king of electronica, Mr Aphex Twin. Let's have a look at some of them, shall we?

Aphex Twin mash-ups
This MIA versus Aphex Twin mash-up sounds impressive at first, but it's a little muddy and the Aphex track, Windowlicker, inevitably ends up drowning out the genre-hopping vocalist.

This AFX  mash-up with classic jam-pumpin' house band Technotronic really is just a DJ finding the right BPM and making sure the audio train stays on a very narrow track. Same for this mix with Daft Punk.

When you throw Aphex's Windowlicker (again) with Vanilla Ice, Missy Elliot and Britney Spears, the result is a lot more pleasing. Especially when there's a cut-up video to go with it. My gosh, though, it doesn't half look dated now.

Someone has melded Aphex Twin with the Beastie Boys and Tokyo electro-popper De De Mouse to produce a track that has a higher feelgood factor than if the entire cast of Glee got pilled up and spent a night sweating and hugging and gurning at Sankey's Soap.

Jack Conte has done his own mash-up of Aphex Twin and Bright Eyes, but to my purist ears, it is ever-so-slightly spoilt by the Bright Eyes bit. And the Jack Conte bit.

Never mind all that. The bestest Aphex Twin mash-up I can find is this shaky mobile clip of Tim Exile blending AFX and 808 State. If I had heard this in a club, I would have been riding his back in seconds shouting "ride 'em cowboy" whilst dribbling all down his hairy back like a mentalist.

DJing at its best. Do you know any better mash-ups (or "mashups" as Wikipedia would have it)?

Edit: As seen in the comments below this post, I missed something pretty obvious. 100dbs take on Aphex Twin versus Snoop Dogg, Q Tip and plenty more is worth a (NSFW) look-in.