Seventeen years after Outpost Transmission, the pioneers of British electronic music have followed up with the simply-named Transmission Suite. Reduced to only two members (Graham Massey and Andrew Barker), 808 State, after having tried to shake up their formula by introducing singers, go back to their roots with an eclectic record that would seem like commercial suicide to the new generation of producers: acid house (Tokyo Tokyo), drum’n’bass (Skylon), electro-funk (The Ludwig Question), deep house (Huronic), polyrhythmic techno/kuduro (13 13)… For Graham Massey, this diversity reflects the contemporary scene in their city of Manchester, where DJs can transition from Bauhaus to dubstep with no pre-warning. “It’s interesting to see eras overlap. Today, we have access to so many things that a DJ can pass from one time period to another, whereas before, it all depended on what you had found at the record store the day before” explains Graham Massey. That’s not to say that the album doesn’t lack coherence; there’s an all-pervading retro tinge with strong flavours of artisanal electronic and experimental music based around Roland machines. A great record for anybody feeling nostalgic about the 90s, when techno was still in the making. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz