Music
Listen to the iconic sound of the Roland TR-808
To celebrate 808 day, listen to a few important tracks that have utilised the Roland drum machine since its launch in 1980, including music by Afrika Bambaataa, Drexciya and Kanye West.
The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer is credited with more musical innovations than you can wave a plug socket at – even after its rocky start. After flopping commercially upon release in 1980, because its programmable sounds weren't enough like real drums, the price of the machine was dropped numerous times, allowing anyone curious enough to use its unreal sounds the chance to create their own music.
Its failings, as far as many professional musicians were concerned, are exactly what appealed to other, younger, cash-strapped producers and DJs. Its machine percussion encouraged new genres and, as rhythm became ever more important with the advent of hip-hop and club music, rappers had to change their flow to match the 808's new tempos. Its bass drum also put the boom into hip-hop and, courtesy of its decay dial, the 808 conjured the heavy bass lines that dominated the genre's first decade and beyond.
But for every groundbreaking Yellow Magic Orchestra track or cult-favourite Cybotron and Beastie Boys song, the real importance of the 808 is how widely its booms, ticks, claps have been used. Below are just a few key tracks that owe it all to the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer.
Afrika Bambaataa – Planet Rock (1982)
New York City producer Arthur Baker is best known for producing Rocker's Revenge's hit single Walking On Sunshine, working with New Order on their track Confusion, and for helping Afrika Bambaataa use a TR-808 to adapt the beats from Kraftwerk's Numbers and Trans-Europe Express to create the b-boy classic – and a drum machine benchmark for future electro and hip-hop groups – Planet Rock.
Marvin Gaye – Sexual Healing (1982)
Holed up in Ostend, Belgium at the end of 1981, Marvin Gaye was attempting to clean up and escape financial difficulties, but he was also looking for new musical inspiration. He dabbled in reggae, but eventually recorded this post-disco enormo hit, which, thanks to its use of the TR-808's bass drum, claps, snare and hi-hats, served as a massive advertisement for a machine that was still unloved by the musical mainstream.
Charanjit Singh – Raga Bhairav (1982)
Charanjit Singh was brought to wider attention in 2010, thanks to Bombay Connection reissuing his 1982 album Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat. On that album, the Bollywood composer synthesised a bonkers infusion of Indian ragas and disco music using a Roland TB-303 bass melody sequencer and, you guessed it, a TR-808 drum machine. The result sounds remarkably like acid house by way of Mumbai, but the record was made years before the first acid house records emerged from Chicago.
Lil Louis – French Kiss (1989)
Chicago-born house producer and DJ Marvin Burns, aka Lil Louis, created one of the biggest dance music anthems of all time with French Kiss. Apart from the vocal moans and groans, which make it arguably more orgasmic than Donna Summer's Love to Love You, Baby, this is an X-rated instrumental pile-driver that owes its kicks and snares to the 808.
Drexciya – Andreaen Sand Dunes (1999)
Drexciya is the Detroit production duo of James Stinson and Gerald Donald, who set themselves apart from their city folk by making otherworldly electronic music that owed as much to early techno as it did their own vivid, underwater-fixated imagination. The TR-808 was central to most of what Stinson, who died in 2002, produced and the low-frequency sci-fi machine funk of Drexciya's 1999 debut album Neptune's Lair is no exception.
Kanye West – Love Lockdown (2008)
Britney Spears was first to display her appreciation for the Roland TR-808 when she sang "My heart's beating like an 808" on her 2007 single, Break The Ice. Kanye West's love is deeper, though. He named his 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak and made full use of his beloved machine, even applying autotune to his 808 beats. This is the cold--sounding, melancholy masterpiece from that album. West also made the beat for Lil Wayne's 2008 track Let The Beat Build using an 808.
DJ Rashad (feat. Spinn and Taso) – Only One (2013)
The 808 is used today by southern rap producers, and provides the rasping kick drum for trap, as on Young Jeezy's Trap Or Die or Lex Luger's minimal but hard-hitting productions. The 808 has also long been a key component of Chicago's juke and footwork genres, providing the frenetic percussion sounds and claps that ping all over the 160bpm rhythms created by DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn and others.