It’s not every day you get the chance to chat to a legend, I use the term ‘legend’ very sparingly these days as it is a tad overused when making reference to famous people but in this instance, I am happy to use it and I’m sure you’ll understand why.

Way back in the late 1980’s there was a music scene that swept the nation, with its quirky, futuristic sound and electronic ‘bleepery’, we were introduced to ‘Acid House’, one of the bands that took the bull by the horns and began creating music in this mould was Manchester based 808 State and I was blessed when Graham Massey from the band agreed to have a chat.

We spoke at length about many subjects including the early days of the band, Manchester’s Hacienda nightclub, the John Peel Radio Show, Top of the Pops and other fascinating topics, read on to see how we got on.

Graham, firstly, thank you for sparing the time for me, it’s an honour to chat with someone who was responsible for helping to shape the sonic landscape for so many bands since the late 1980’s, how does it make you feel when you are referred to as a pioneering electronic icon?

It’s always a bit of a relay race because you are a product of your own heroes and I never feel worthy to be in their shoes so I guess you can but try and be inspired. I am so glad that I was born when I was (1960), I’ve been on an incredible musical journey, there really was never a dull moment! There were things that happened during my teenage years that still resonate in the music that I create, be it space rock or punk (more post punk than punk as I can never really call myself a punk!) though saying that, the ethos of tearing up the rule book and non-musicians creating music was very much a major part of my journey.

Though I played with some very good musicians back in the day, I was always referred to as the ‘noise guy’ who crawled into his Brian Eno shaped hole and set about becoming a ‘sonic explorer’ and when we ever got into a studio (which was a rare occurrence back then as it was so expensive), you were at the hands of the studio engineers which to us, seemed like creatures from another planet and it was great being able to re-create the noise you made in the rehearsal room but were able to apply things like echo and reverb to it, that was a really exciting time for me.

I actually learned to be a sound engineer, I enrolled on one of the very first ever sound engineering courses and it took place at the Manchester School of Sound Recording in the mid 1980’s, it was at this time when ATARI home computers and samplers were just becoming available and this just changed everything for me. These were the tools that I had been waiting for and they allowed me to do what I call ‘slow improvisation’, where I would create something, shape it and add a dash of colour.

Acid House was already a ‘scene’ when you got started, tell me more about that and how it influenced you.

The whole British underground music scene was a very important thing for me as well in the lead up to the ‘scene’ really kicking off. Take The Hacienda (famous Manchester nightclub), people bang on about how it was the epicentre of the rave/house/dance music scene but to me, it was more than that, I found The Hacienda to be a place that played a lot of experimental music, for example, one night, Mantronix might be playing (I remember a particularly famous early show at The Hacienda) and on the next night, you might get Boyd Rice, a West Coast American guy who had affiliation with bands like Throbbing Gristle et al, and that gig was SO noisy, the entire building was literally shaking! On a Friday, you would have the dance night and although this was the first place that I encountered what would become ‘Acid House’, there would also be a lot of Latin music along with R&B and street soul. Later on, when the nights turned into more of a ‘genre’ based thing and the DJ’s were suddenly the stars, I think it seemed a little dull at times, it certainly lost something when it changed. The Hacienda was a very important place for me but not for all the reasons that people go on about all the time.

Would you say that it was the ‘Acid House’ sound that really appealed to you at the time?

I guess it was but all of the other music never really went away, but yes, it was Acid House that really resonated with me. I think it was the ‘alien’ qualities that the music had, the fact that it was produced in the key of ‘X’. It had little baggage and that was what I liked about it. House music had baggage, most house tracks had an element of gospel in it and whilst I’d be more than happy to listen to that for a long time, there was something else bubbling under which really drew me in, it sounded like the future, especially Detroit Techno which nodded towards acts like Kraftwerk and I guess it’s no big secret that the Detroit artists were exposed to a lot of the European music from the 70’s and built on it to create something different altogether, this is what excited me at the time.

When we went to America for the first time, we visited Detroit and couldn’t believe just how tiny the scene actually was! Back in Manchester, these guys were like gods! It was quite a shock that it wasn’t as prominent as we perceived it to be from what we knew from back home. I guess at the time (early 90’s) it was mainly home based DJ’s doing radio shows from the garage of their suburban homes and not playing regularly in night clubs so maybe that was why! Don’t get me wrong, like Manchester, there were places where you could find it but you just had to dig a little deeper.

What is it about bands from Manchester that help them to stand out from others?

Manchester has always had interesting bands and artists and I guess that we were spoilt because of that, take a band like 10cc, a very broad thinking band and New Order, both bands are as awkward as one another….. I think to be a Manchester band, you have to be awkward, The Fall are a classic example! You’d like to think that there would be great comradery between Mancunian bands but there isn’t, we’re all just far too busy in our own little awkward corners to do that!

You’re touring ‘Transmission Suite’ this Autumn, I’m assuming that you would have been out on the road a lot earlier had the pandemic not happened?

Absolutely, we were due to take to the road the same week when we went into lockdown (March 2020), when we finally came out of hibernation, we had to take stock and try to remember where we left off!

The tour kicked off at The Riverside in Newcastle on 24th September, how did it feel to play in front of a proper audience once again?

 It was a really good start, one of the main issues is that you have all of the new music from the album that you’re promoting along with all of your back catalogue and to play it live is a different ball game altogether and you really have to work on it to get both (old and new) played in the same set.

For us, it’s all about the flow of the music, the way it all hangs together and I think we have got the blend just right, we’re really pleased with how it was received. The bar is set pretty high with some of the older material and it is kind of ‘iconic’ and trying to plug your new album during the same show is tough. I still love to play the anthems but once you do, where do you go from there? If you leave all the anthems until the end, people might lose interest if there’s nothing to hook them in during the set. I felt that the set rolled well, a well-oiled machine!

We’ll probably end up ‘tweaking’ the set as we go from show to show as there are other things that we’d like to try out. It’s also nice to be out and about once again and getting the response from the audience, doing everything at home just doesn’t lend itself to being able to bounce ideas off people and without that feedback, you’re left a little high and dry.

I guess by the end of the tour, you’ll have the balance just right and want to carry on forever more!

Indeed, I guess the question is, how long will the fans remember the set and when will it be feasible to get back out on the road again as I am conscious that if we were to go back out too soon, they might actually remember what was included in the last set and we’d need to make sure that we mixed it up a little bit!

The rest of the tour is spread throughout October and into early November and takes in many places such as Bristol, Manchester, Brighton, Glasgow and Liverpool, is there a reason why there are lengthy gaps between the shows? Does it take you longer to recover from shows these days?

It’s much easier to do Friday and Saturday nights isn’t it? I mean an 808 State gig is exactly that but if it’s on a Wednesday night and you’ve got to get up for work the next day, you might not enjoy it as much as you might if it were on a weekend! To be honest, I’d prefer to play on a Monday afternoon but I would imagine that the booking agent went for the weekends owing to the simple fact of economics! I also LOVE playing in the morning, there’s something really fresh about doing that, I find that different ideas come to light!

Maybe an afternoon tour of matinee performances up and down the country?

Or better still, we could do a tour of primary schools! I recall in the 70’s the only bands that you ever saw as a kid were the ones that used to play in your school assemblies, we used to have Christian Rock bands turn up at our secondary school and this was a big deal when you were a young teenager….

I have spoken to many people about this interview and nearly all of them have asked me to ask you, do you still approach your music using the same kit and technology as you did back when you first started or is all that in a museum now, replaced with new-fangled computers and emulators and such like?

We do actually still use a lot of kit that we had from the early days, as we have moved on, time has addressed the old kit once again. When the shift came to move to modular synthesis, there was a big boom in the ‘hobbyist’ scene and as a result of this, many people have created interfaces that allow you to connect your laptop to old protocols which always used to be an issue but not so much these days.

There always seemed to be a fair amount of lag between the laptop and the kit and that caused us many issues but we have come a long way and a lot of these issues have now been resolved so it’s great to have the best of both worlds these days.

We managed to acquire a lot of older analogue kit at the end of the 1980’s when it was pretty cheap but we do also use a lot of kit that has been produced in the recent years, kit made by Behringer (referred to as pocket money kit).

I always joke that we should be known as a ‘Cash Converters’ band and we should seek out a sponsorship deal! I think the golden age for me was just before eBay came to fruition, you could literally go from junk shop to junk shop finding old analogue kit that nobody wanted anymore, it was amazing! The fun has gone out of that now as everyone is aware of the value of things nowadays and you don’t stumble over bargains like you did back then!

Just look at records these days, if I wanted to purchase original pressings from the late 80’s and early 90’s, I’d be forking out 3 figures for some and the irony is that they come with an original Our Price sticker on for £5.99!

OXFAM have got it sussed nowadays, they have an online store on eBay and I guess it’s good that they are getting more money for the rarer items rather than just via their network of retail stores. Though I do think that there is something golden about finding a record for 50p in a charity shop that rocks your world!

Your music has attracted the interest of many major stars including Bjork, James Dean Bradfield of The Manics, Elbow's Guy Garvey and more, are there any collaborations currently in the pipeline and that you can tell me about?

No! If I had any in the pipeline I wouldn’t tell you! Though to be honest, I’m the most reluctant for a collaboration, most of the time, when you add vocals, it brings the track down to earth (unless you’re Bjork of course!) It’s about an honesty in a collaboration and finding something that works for both parties. When we started doing them, it was always a spontaneous thing and then, slowly, it becomes more an expectation for you to collaborate and I’ll be honest when I say that I feel that there are a few ‘clunky’ collabs that we’ve done in the past that maybe don’t feel as genuine as they could have, it’s more about finding something that marries to the music instead of us looking to back the vocalist. I have absolutely no problem with working with vocalists on their projects, it’s when it represents a whole body of work that things sometimes get awkward. I would rather be approached than approach someone to do a collaboration.

That’s a very good solid answer to avoid having to tell me that you’re currently collaborating with someone, well done!

(laughter) – Joking aside, I have a number of tracks where vocals would make it work a lot better, you just need to sit tight and wait for the right person to come along.

You mentioned that 808 State are trying to make a future for other people to immerse themselves in and you mentioned the term ‘landscapes of futurism’, please expand on what you meant by this?

I grew up through the 60’s and the optimism of the space age really appealed to me, the music I was into (without wanting to sound too ‘prog’) back then was all about escaping earth, I’m a huge John Coltrane fan and the cosmic consciousness in his music is a driving force and that I guess, is the power of music.

When I think about the Detroit scene, it attracted me as it was how music could sound in the future, as if it was as if the music was always just over the horizon. I never really thought about looking back at past music when creating my own, I think this added more authenticity to it, it seemed more pure. I want to hear music that takes you out of yourself, music that you’ve never heard before, I guess it’s the ‘lost chord’ thing and I think that all creative composers are after that! 808 State have always been about using new technology to create music, the next ‘big thing’ if you like!

You have experimented with various styles from drum and bass and other elements to techno and doing so, have amassed a large back catalogue of music, where do you see your music going next?

The album that we released in 2019 (Transmission Suite) was somewhat of a diversion as previously, we were creating these rather grand and dense records, Don Solaris & Outpost Transmission were both very textural and melodic and were in no way ‘sparse’, I think that Transmission Suite WAS a lot sparser than anything we’ve done before, a lot more ‘graphic’ rather than textural as the previous two were.

Transmission Suite was all about ear worms and patterns and the tracks didn’t land smoothly, the tracks demanded a further listen to allow you to get your head around it, the album almost has a displacement quality about it which I like and think that it’s quite a success if I can get that feeling across.

Do you find that your later music is not so immediate as your earlier material was?

Yes, mainly because there is so much electronic music around now, you need to stand out, it would be a much easier ride if you were to just fit in with what is popular at the moment but who wants to do that? You really want to mark your mark in a genre that is so big.

One goal would be to create massive club tracks but the trouble is, there are loads of people out there that are so much better at doing this than I am. I guess I’m still looking for that gap in-between all of the different forms of electronic music, I feel it needs to have personality, humanity, it’s got to be lovable, it sounds strange but that’s what I’m after, something that enters your life and stays there for more than a month.

 The new 808 State record isn’t just for Christmas?

Yes, that’s it! Longevity is a very hard thing to chase, we thought long and hard about the album and if the track sounded too ‘easy’ or similar to something else, it was re-worked until we were happy that it sounded unique, each track needs to have a very strong identity and an ear worm to draw people back in time and time again.

I often think that maybe we’re trying too hard at times, maybe there is something valuable in just not overthinking the process, sitting back and letting people make up their own minds. We had a remix done by a Northern Irish techno group called Bicep, they were doing these huge shows at the time and they remixed our track ‘In Yer Face’ in 2016 and it went ballistic! What made it strange for us is that they really simplified the track, they pulled it apart and what they put out just worked so well. Watching them perform live I quickly saw that they broke everything down to a very simple layer, when we play live, we have about 8 things going on at the same time and maybe I learned something from their approach, keep it simple!

Looking back to when you burst onto the scene in the late 80’s, we didn’t have the luxury of social media and YouTube to get your music out there, do you think that bands and artists have it so much easier these days with so many channels of communication at their disposal?

I think it’s a bit of both these days, back then it was easy as you knew where the gateways were, one was John Peel and if you couldn’t get through that, you were doomed! If you were lucky enough to get played by him, it got you all over the country INSTANTLY and you became an overnight sensation and then there was Top of the Pops and again, if you made it onto TOTP, you were flying, you would have been seen by millions of people all over the country, I would even go as far as saying that you could change the culture by appearing on TOTP.

Were you ever on Top of the Pops?

We were, a lot….and we didn’t compromise the music, to think that millions of people were watching from their living rooms at 7:30pm on a Thursday night and they saw us, they must have thought we were from another planet. The next day, kids talk about it in the school playgrounds and helping to spread the word. We used to be on quite a lot with The Orb, Orbital, Future Sound of London, A Guy Called Gerald and this is really how the early ‘rave’ scene glued itself together, it was all happening in the clubs but once you got it into the living rooms, mission accomplished.

Nowadays, the internet is such a massive thing, it doesn’t do what John Peel and TOTP did for culture back in the days when we first burst onto the scene. To even know what to aim at with the internet is beyond me nowadays, it’s important to have a goal and an aim and I guess our aim back when we started was to play at this club and play for these people who had paid to see us which looking back is crazy as it just seemed so small but it felt like after every show, you had gained a little more momentum which was the most important thing back then. You have to remember that when you’re 18 years old in a band, it really is blood and guts out there!  

Without social media, you could only really rely on ‘word of mouth’, did you find that this mechanism worked well for the band in getting you noticed?

I think that what got you noticed back then was when you made a record, out of say 20 bands in Manchester, only 1 would actually make a record and this really took you to the next level. There will always be tons of bands in every city and what you don’t tend to get anymore is a sense of competition between bands in your local area, sort of United vs City! I guess we had a sense of rivalry even within our peer group which was a great way of staying on top of your game.

Manchester has always been like a music citadel for me, the bar was always set very high and to be an ‘A-Player’ back then felt good. Nowadays, it just seems to be acoustic singer songwriters in bars and if you go into a place on the wrong night, you’re left asking yourself, “what happened? Where did all the music go that I like?” Maybe that’s because the music no longer lives in the city centre, maybe it’s found more in the suburbs and on the outskirts, waiting to be discovered.  

I wanted to ask you if you still get the same buzz from creating music now that you did in the early days?

I’d probably be lying if I said yes! As the buzz back then was very high. The trajectory of music normally sees people stop producing music by the time they reach their mid 20’s and seeing as I’m now in my 60’s, I’m not going to beat myself up over that! I’m going with quality over quantity nowadays! I still enjoy the process, I love playing live shows, the show we played at the start of the tour was like 2 years of lockdown coming out in one set and it felt incredible! Making music is still very good for you!

Lastly, What have you planned after the Transmission Suite tour comes to an end?

We have gigs booked in already for early 2022 and I’m hoping that the shows that we should have played this summer will be taking place next summer, it’s a bit of a catch up game at the moment! It will take another year to fully recover, we now have the sense that anything can happen!

I’d like to extend my thanks to Graham Massey for chatting to me, it was meant to be a 15 minute slot which turned into 45 minutes so apologies to the next journalist in line who may have only managed to get 5 minutes with him!

808 State’s new album Transmission Suite is available to stream and buy now on all platforms and formats and you can catch them on tour throughout the UK until 5th November.

Interview by Steve Muscutt