FMB MIXTAPE 136 | 808 STATE (iTUNES)
FMB MIXTAPE 136 | 808 STATE (320 DOWNLOAD)
FMB MIXTAPE 136 | 808 STATE (MIXCLOUD)
This week on the FMB mixtape series we welcome 808 State for a special Toyko edition of the series! As usual we asked if they could tell us a bit about the mix & what they’ve been up to recently…
808 State first visited Tokyo at the end of 1989 to promote, our then new album, “90″. Tokyo’s techno scene was fairly embryonic at that point. However, Tokyo was always a “Techno City” to us, because it was the home of our synthesiser family, “Roland”. A delegation from Roland Corporation came to meet us at our first gig in Club Quattro, on top of a department store. They gave us cassette of cover versions of our music made by Roland staff in their lunch hour – such a sweet and honourable present!
On our third trip to Tokyo we were now playing “On Air”, a large club in Shibuya. We were very honoured to receive Japanese music legend, Haruomi Hosono, as a guest at our concert. He was announced as being on the balcony and the whole audience turned around and bowed. Hosono was respected as a great artist in Japanese music, not only as a founder member of The Yellow Magic Orchestra, but also for his amazingly forward thinking back catalogue. Yellow Magic Orchestra are sometimes poorly described as “Japan’s Kraftwerk”. The fact is, they had been making equally pioneering electronic music at the same time. Take Sakamoto’s “Riot in Lagos”, featured here in this mix. It’s incredible to think this was made in 1980, and remains as playable today as it always was.
808 State have been honoured to remix several YMO related projects. Light in Darkness (808 Mix), is from a 1992 remix project, working out of Fon Studios in Sheffield. LFO, The Orb and The Shamen all contributed. There were a couple of remixes on Hosono’s 1993 release, “Mental Sports Mixes”, but they’re not featured in this mix.
La Sang De Poete is one of my favourite remixes of “The Beatniks”, the 1994 side project of YMOs Yukihiro Takahashi. That package also included a mix by Aphex Twin and Bill Laswell. Our own Tokyo Tokyo is a bit of a love letter to the city that has been very welcoming to our music over 30 years.
Up next…
808 State released new album ‘Transmission Suite’ on 11th October 2019, available at www.808stateofficial.com. We played Warehouse Project in Manchester on November 30th.
Check out 808 State’s upcoming live dates.
Tracklist:
Yellow Magic Orchestra – Light in Darkness (808 State Mix) – 1992
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Riot in Lagos – 1980
Haroumii Hosono – Unknown
808 State – Tokyo Tokyo – 2019
808 State – Tokyo Tokyo (Extended Studio Jam) – 2019
The Beatniks – La Sang Du Poete (Graham Massey Aquanatal Mix) – 1994
