When I bought this record I didn't read the eBay listing properly. I thought I was buying the recent "Music on Vinyl" purple vinyl, but what turned up was the original limited edition from 1993. The record is in very good condition and even arrived replete with the bonus "disco" 12".
The album proper kicks off with "Plan 9" which uses a prominent acoustic guitar sample to create the melodic spine of the track. The presence of Pizagogo strings suggests 808 State got plenty of mileage out of their Roland D-50. "Moses" features a vocal by Echo and the Bunnymen singer Ian McCulloch and has some nice ideas. However, you get the feeling Bernard Sumner wasn't available this time around and they had to settle for second best. The next track, "Contrique" is a bit of a jumble of breakbeats, a sample of Joy Division and an analogue bassline. It's passable but nothing more than an album filler.
I have always enjoyed "10 X 10" as it features an original vocal and a killer house piano riff - I've never been able resist a piano break. Single "One in Ten" is a dance remix of an old UB40 track which shouldn't succeed but somehow does. Things go a bit 'wistful pop' with "Europa" but "Orbit" brings us back to more familiar territory.
I find "Black Morpheus" intriguing as it is, to all intents and purposes, a techno track - but it has clarinets playing all over it. The next rack of note is "Nimbus" which has some fantastic arpeggios but it doesn't really extrapolate on the initial idea. The first disc finishes with "Colony" which lacks a vital spark that normally marks out 808 State's music. The curiously titled "disco" 12" that accompanies this release features 5 extra tracks, all of which fail to make much impression. There are some good tunes here but the lacklustre second half of the album pulls the score down a little. 3/5
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