808 State – Newbuild

Utter masterpiece of brain frying acid snap clang and squelch. Rhythms programmed with less thought for jack and his house than emulation of the snapping on and off of neural connections as burbles, growls, clonks and echoing voices scour your brain folds clean. What it amounts to in my mind is a late 80s equivalent of the rawest 60s psych, the same frazzled immediacy and lysergic urgence and emergence, messy and liberated/liberating. A high water mark for 808 state and for acid, i think, as all these ideas pour out at this same time from the collective unconscious. A similar blend of rawness and acid dissarray versus primal rhythm to, say, Interstellar Overdrive, only in this the spaces are the cavernous and dark warehouses of the mind and midwinter northern england, echoing with disorientated voices, dripping water, shorting electrics and machines threshing out sequences of fourth dimensional chatter and chants to each other. There's not often you'll find 'acid' quite as unique minded as this. Still just as effective and weird 22 years on. Also check Prebuild for some foundations, diversions, and the electronic meltdown that is thermokings. Benchmark album.

On 4 April 2008 I met Graham Massey in Los Angeles. Massonix was opening for Autechre on their american tour for Quaristice. We spoke about Newbuild and he told me that like the recent Quadrastate reissue on Rephlex, half of the Newbuild cd was mastered from a clean vinyl pressing. Graham asked me if i could tell if this was obvious. We agreed it wasn't and concluded that Rephlex had indeed lovingly remastered Newbuild.
The liner notes of the cd reveal: "the master tape, long-since disintegrated, was nicked out of a skip from the back of the bbc, manchester. It had been spliced and diced heavily enough to get binned, even before 808 got their hands on it."