This page represents a little about me and my musical history. I don't intend it to be too self indulgent. Creating and maintaining this web page is a good excuse to to re live memories that are very important to me. The following text are excerpts from mails I sent to certain other 808 fans in friendly discussion of our musical experiences (Thank you Sid and Steve:). I guess I considered them fruity enough to include on my page. And besides, I had to update the site with something new!
 
"Back in 1984 I remember the whole breakdance thing exploding in Australia. I just got right into it because it was nothing like I'd heard before. Of course back then, hip hop was still closely allied with funk and neo disco sounds... not like the gangsta stuff today. There were a good few Kraftwerk rip offs too as I remember and I even tried 'The Robot' and various forms of inelegant backspin before I decided that maybe dancing wasn't my thing after all and just enjoyed the music. It went from there. I remember hearing Herbie Hancock's 'Rockit' for the first time and freaked out! Those crazy beats and scratches! It just made my head spin... for a few years after that I got into anything electronic I could find... usually sporadic patches of electro that made it into the Top 40 countdown, like 'Axel F'. So it was Art of Noise and Pseudo Echo for a few years before my English cousins arrived in 1988 for a holiday and introduced me to House music, as they termed it... they had with them a recent, tape recording of such classics as 'Rok Da House' (Beatmasters) and 'Doctor in the House' (Coldcut)... I believe it was actually Kiss FM. Again I was just thrown for a loop.

As the years passed I just became more aware of the electronic scene and it was played more actively on the radio. By the time 'Pacific' was released I was ready for something new though and it really did blow my mind! Just the chords and sentiment involved! It was like aural deja vu in a sense, I found the sounds THAT powerful!
Brit Techno advanced and I got into LFO and Orbital too...The 'AI' series on Warp came out and I was very heavily into it, as well as the Detroit sounds of Derrick May and Juan Atkins... United State 90 was the first CD I ever bought so it has rather a long and very played history. Ex:El, was released and my friend and I were on top of the world, having just started university. We spent hundreds on dance and electro and 808 State... as much as we could find in the imports anyway. It was a fine time in our lives and I have very golden memories of it all. 808 State are very much a part of those memories. I remember hearing 'Magical Dream' on 90 for the first time and I knew then that 808 State were really set apart musically from everything else at the time.
Being in Oz though, we could never get hold of the very early stuff. I was the only one in our little group to even get hold of Utd State 90, so I considered myself lucky.
It seems as though we both associate 808 with a very special part of our lives. I'll never forget it and 'Pacific' still remains right on top of my all time list, closely followed by the likes of 'LFO' and 'Chime'!"

"We both associate 808 with a golden part of our journey into adulthood. I remember when vinyl was being phased out. You could still find 'Pacific' on record and then suddenly, as if it happened overnight, CD singles were all the rage and I got hold of Utd. State 90 and 'Sadeness' by Enigma...(remember that one?). I too got into The Orb for a while. I still think 'Adventures in the Ultraworld' is a top ambient album. And I do remember my friend and I, obsessed by electronic dance music as we always have been, tromping into a CD store and listening to 'Chill Out' by KLF. At the time I didn't think much of it... too wishy washy I guess, and I had this thing against too many country and western sounds. Irony is, now I'd proabably proudly display that album. Tastes do mellow don't they!

When Warp pioneered the whole concept of 'Intelligent' electronica I thought all my Christmases had come at once and AI 1 seemed a brilliant album to begin with. Even the cover bugged me out!
"Aphex Twin... who is this guy...? He's only how old?"... we couldn't believe Richard D James and his sounds... spooky and often difficult to endure it seemed then that it was the only way to go. Then 'Bytes' by the Black Dog... Hell that's really a great album I believe. So complete in so many ways. There aren't many albums like that one! I think even Graham Massey agreed with that in one interview, calling it a "proper album". It all kinda spun along and I finally decided that AI wasn't the way to go. Progressive House didn't really catch me and AI was sounding too serious... not enough down to earth beats I thought in the end and too concerned with some form of hard to reach 'inner space'.
I fused my musical ideas with warmer sounds, almost in reaction to the cold sounding AI craze... even Detroit techno explored the warmer sounds and Underground Resistance epitomised it in 'Jupiter Jazz'.

808 State have always been in there somewhere whirring away at their own designs."