Archive for the Reissues Category
In a week during which retrospectives on 80’s electronic and hip-hop are the trend, it only seems fitting and appropriate to re-examine Manchester-born 808 State’s first (ed. note: it wasn’t their first single oops!) (and most well-known) recording, “Pacific State”. Mixed, remixed, repackaged and reissued innumerable times, the original version (which appeared on 1989’s EP Quadrastate) loses no power or edge with time. The perfection of their execution makes “Pacific State” the supreme benchmark of acid house: lush, synthetic harmonies blended with driving TR-808 rhythms.
I’d say we’re pretty lucky that Rephlex Records has just reissued a fully remastered edition of Quadrastate complete with additional tracks. If you dig what you’re hearing here, you’d do well to head on over to Amazon and pick up the remastered edition to hang on to.
The reissued Quadrastate is available from Amazon by clicking here.
Back before samples had to be wait eons to be cleared, back in a day when uptown hip hop crews and downtown punks were checking out each other’s shows trying to learn a thing or two, there lived Steven Stein and Doug DiFranco — two pioneers whose adventures would transform them into the hip-hop superheroes known as Steinski and Double Dee.
Rabid music fans and hip-hop enthusiasts with day jobs on the edges of the biz, they got their “big break” in 1983 by winning a Tommy Boy Records remix contest for Play That Beat, Mr. D.J. by G.L.O.B.E. and Whiz Kid. The remix has come to be known in the annals of hip-hop as “Lesson 1 - The Payoff Mix” — an incomprehensible sampladelic jam of breaks from funk and disco records that reads (just as the name suggests) like a time capsulized history lesson. It was from works like these that, much like the graffiti kids tagging stray subway trains with spray paint cans, a cult of “illegal art” in music was born. More music and full review after the jump.
