Let’s face it: most electronic music, when there isn’t a regular vocalist, doesn’t have much of a distinctive sound that one can associate with one particular person or group. Unless it is somebody like Nine Inch Nails or Moby (and, for the latter, only as concerns a couple of albums), it would be difficult to blindly listen to an instrumental track and correctly guess the artist.

808 State was a going concern long enough that they had their phases. I think it is telling that nobody can work in that genre for long without having to evolve. It isn’t like rock music, where the Ramones could do the same thing for decades. And neither of those observations is a criticism of either musical genre.

But 808 State had such a strong musical identity in the run from 1990’s Ninety to 1993’s Gorgeous that I have a nagging suspicion I could hear a previously unreleased track from that era and correctly ID it as being their work.

I was aware of them in 1990, when local college radio was regularly spinning “Pacific”. Then came “Cubik” from 1991 and that pricked up my ears. But it took “Lift” from the same album to convince me to finally take the plunge and buy an 808 State album, and that was ex:el.

This was one of the few cassettes I ever owned, as I largely made the transition from vinyl to CD (and then back to vinyl as soon as that became available again–but that’s another story). And it was one of the few a friend and I had on a long road trip to Florida that I would just as soon forget. In a rotation of, I think, three or four cassettes, one would think the album would wear out its welcome through repetition. Instead, it took seed in my mind and I found myself mildly obsessed with the group’s output.

In addition to that road trip, the event with which I most associate that album was an arcade expo from several years ago where I went right when the doors opened (and a few hours before my wife woke), with the sole intention of playing Atari’s low-poly racer S.T.U.N. Runner for as long as I could. Each time a game was over, I would do a quick look around, saw nobody else was waiting to play and do a continue. The soundtrack through my earbuds was this album. I was in complete heaven and, despite not being very good at the game, I somehow made it all the way through to the final level.

Really, it is the first song, “San Francisco” that best soundtracks playing such games. It has a build-up in the first few seconds that feels like engines revving at the starting line, vehicles ready to burn rubber at the signal. Some others tracks that put in my mind low-poly imagery are “Leo Leo”, “Nephatiti”, “Empire” and “Techno Bell”. One track left off the album which belongs in this group is “Ski Family”, which was relegated to a B-side (wisely, as something about it feels incomplete). The key track I would put in this category is the aforementioned “Lift”, which was regarded highly enough to see a single release.

A couple of other tracks in that vein are a single which preceded the album by half a year. “Olympic” is one of those tracks which contains the various elements I would define as all parts of the 808 State palette. This is the song I have in mind when I say they had a distinctive sound. The track paired with tune on the 12″ single is “Cubik”, which is notable for having screeching electric guitar all over it. I can’t seem to find the original source where I first learned this, but it was the introduction of analog instruments such as this which led founding member Gerald Simpson to leave the group.

After “San Francisco” bursts out of the gate, “Spanish Heart” seriously lowers the tempo, but something about it still like sounds like summer and heat to me, even if it scans more like the cool relief of night after a scorching day. Vocals from New Order’s Bernard Sumner are a perfect match for the feel of this track.

Another guest vocalist gets two tracks. Bjork adds some interesting and unusual vocalizations to “Qmart” that I am not sure are words in any language. But, you know, Bjork. It works like another instrument, and that’s all that matters. Where she really shines is on “Ooops”. It has a sound and vibe very much like “Spanish Heart”, but is the superior song, as evidenced by it being the first single released following the album. I find it interesting 808’s Graham Massey went on to co-write and co-produce two tracks for her sophomore effort Post, one of which was lead single “Army of Me”.

Something I find interesting about the music from a behind-the-scenes perspective is how the band members supposedly started with samples from various songs by others, layer their embellishments upon those samples and then pull the original material out from under the 808 material. I imagine it being like a magician pulling a tablecloth out from under many objects without disturbing any of them.

There are a couple of aspects of the album not of a musical nature which also appealed to me. First, there is the title, which I suspected was a reference to the Atari XL line of computers, and which was later confirmed. I never had one of the computers in that product family, though I did own an Atari 800 and a 130 XE. I loved those, and a big factor in their appeal was the POKEY four-voice audio chips in them and the possibilities for complex sound they introduced. What is a bit odd is I have never heard of 808 State working with XL computers, though I know they later used one of the later ST models, because of their MIDI capabilities. Admittedly ess:tee wouldn’t have been as a good of a name for this collection.

And names are important, as the group originally called themselves State 808, and that is how it appears on the cover of the “Pacific” single. But other artwork made the order of “808” and “state” ambiguous, leading people to calling them 808 State and the new moniker stuck. I think that makes a world of difference, as 808 State rolls off the tongue effortlessly, while State 808 forces an awkward pause between the words.

Another aspect beyond the music which appealed to me is that cover, which immediately brought to my mind the similar one for Yes’s 90125. Both are computer-designed, minimalist and very geometric. The Yes one is simpler and very flat, so it almost feels like 808 State’s is an evolution of it. Displayed side-by-side, the covers feel to me like two parts of a complete visual work.

And so that cover completes the early-to-mid 80’s, low-polygon gaming, Atari computing world in my mind. It is a soundtrack of my nostalgia for certain elements of the past while feeling like it is looking hopefully forward to the future.