808 State, A Guy Called Gerald and Manchester Electronic Music

Gerald Simpson recorded Voodoo Ray in 1988 in his bedroom in Moss Side using a Roland 808 drum machine and a Casio keyboard. The track was released on Rham Records (a Manchester independent) and became a top ten hit. It is one of the foundational tracks of UK acid house – built from equipment anyone could afford, made in a bedroom, released independently, changing the direction of British electronic music. Simpson was 19. The Moss Side origin of one of Britain’s most influential electronic records is part of the neighbourhood’s untold story.

808 State formed from the Eastern Bloc Records circle and made Newbuild (1988) and Quadrastate (1989) before their commercial breakthrough with Pacific State (1989) – an ambient house track that reached number ten in the UK charts. The band’s connection to the Hacienda and the Manchester rave scene was central; Pacific State sounds like what the Hacienda felt like on a good night. Graham Massey has continued to work in electronic music and remain associated with Manchester.

Eastern Bloc Records on Oldham Street was the independent record shop at the centre of Manchester’s early electronic music scene. The shop stocked imported Chicago and Detroit house records before they were available elsewhere in the UK, and the knowledge circulating there – who to play, what to play it on, how to DJ – was the education of a generation of Manchester DJs. Independent record shops as community infrastructure: this is what that looks like when it works.