Customer Reviews

Gorgeous

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This record brought me fully back into the fold of "Electronica". I had heard the Orb's "Little FLuffy Clouds" years before, but until I heard a smattering of the tracks on Gorgeous, I had written techno off as useless keyboard wanking.

And then I heard "Europa". The song is so beautiful I almost started crying. Yes, the songs are shorter, simpler and more vocally oriented than a lot of current techno, but this is definitely one of the albums to get.

Not all the songs hit. "Sexy Dancer" and "Sext Synthesizer" feel like throwaways to me, while "Moses" is downright annoying. But then there are "Colony", "Plan 9", "Black Morpheus" and "Nimbus." All are beautiful, intriguing, intricate and catchy.

The songs that carry this album are the lucid and twinkling "Southern Cross", the heart-rendingly sweet "Europa", and the instant club rave-up "10 X 10". "Timebomb" is a great song as well, speedy and hard-rocking.

This album has it's low points as well as the highs, hence the 4 stars. But to me it as essential an electronica record as The Orb's "Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld" or Astral Projection's "Dancing Galaxy". I highly recommend it.

808 State were giant influences on techno and rave, this CD may not contain the groups most prolific moments (as the earlier two had), but nonetheless it's a great listen. I actually find the reworking of UB40's "One In Ten" into a 140 bpm techno track as kind of neat. And, being a fan of Echo & the Bunnymen, like the cameo of Ian McCulloch on Moses. The rest of the CD is pure intrigue. Great synth sounds. Count the analogs. Nice rythms.

Why does everyone think so low of this album? I read reviews of it and people just dismiss it as pop trash, a sort of wanna-be "Ex:El."
What utter nonsense. No, this isn't on par with the greatest 808 works, and while it does have some tracks that are good filler for live shows but probably shouldn't be on albums ("Sexy Dancer" is the most glaring example here), these are complex, creative beats and soaring synths. I would love to hear this stuff performed at a club. Tracks like Plan 9 and Nimbus are brilliant displays of technical skill with soul. There's also an organic grind to many of the songs that, chronologically speaking, fits in perfectly as a stylistic transition from the spacey sounds of "Ex:El" and the gritty "Don Solaris." A smattering of talented vocalists adds to the complexity and variety of this playlist.
So once again, I must say that some of the quaint, dated sounds of this disc and the inclusion of a couple unworthy tracks are not grounds for throwing an album away. There are some gems here.

This album as a whole is not that great but there are some great songs here. PLAN 9 is cool and contains some cool acoustic spainish guitar dub but my favorite track maybe even of all 808 songs is BLACK MORPHEUS. this song is so mellow and groovin. I love the bass clarinet and saxaphone on this. I only wish 808 had more songs like this!

10X10 is good along with SOUTHERN CROSS and ONE IN TEN these tracks carry the album.

To make no bones about it: this music is simple and dated, not unlike early works of Moby and Prodigy. This apparent gripe makes many of these tracks downright catchy as all heck. Many take on an angelic aura; others are considerably less inspired. Whereas I usually complain about vocals (let alone actual lyrics) in techno, the human touches add to these tracks and are pivotal in breaking synthy monotony. This probably sounds harsh, but I like the album well enough--as a whole it's just not top rack techno, though.

808 State had five widely-released records in their first 10 years. Four of them (Newbuild, 90, Ex:El, Don Solaris) are essential, ground-breaking must-haves. This is the other one.

Of all their records, this one is the most uneven and has aged the worst. Probably a third of the tracks are throwaways. Many sound like rehashes of Ex:El tracks. Many of the best tracks here (eg. Plan 9) signpost 808's eventual foray into the gritty, organic percussive battery of Don Solaris, but have to share space with, say, the synth-jazzy Black Morpheus. Neither one's a bad track, but they just don't belong on the same record. As with their other albums, 808 gets another assortment of quality vocalists into the studio for some truly inventive vocal tracks (see One In Ten, 10x10, Moses), but this batch isn't on par with Bernard Sumner and Bjork's contributions to Ex:El. The result is an erratic release, with lots of gold but lots of half-finished or frustratingly unsatisfying techno dross as well.

But the fact is, if you buy the special double-disc rerelease of this record, you're getting a very good album, hidden within 2 albums' worth of material. If, for example, 808 had chosen to axe the last third of Gorgeous and put b-sides or subsequently released tracks Bombadin, Mondonet and Reaper Repo on instead, it would have been a much better record. Remastered and rereleased with a full complement of bonus tracks and remixes, it's definitely worth picking up and, with a little editing on your iTunes playlist, can stand proudly alongside its fellows in the 808 discog.

I was browsing through my local Hock Shop and found this in the clearance section--... ... (I ended up striking a deal with the clerk and he lowered it to ...). I had only heard a few songs by 808 state from his newer releases, so I was intrigued. was it worth what I paid? definately. but if it were [more]--I would think again. at first I took it as a cheesy euro-techno album (because the several of the first tracks were) but then I really got into it on track 7 (orbit) all the way to track 13 (stormin norman). so since 7 tracks were good all the way through, I'll keep it in my CD collection. Gorgeous has a really nice retro-synth sound with some ravey synth mixed in. there were a few tracks that reminded me of a mix between industrial/jungle. maybe I'm just crazy. not bad.

highlights » moses, orbit, black morpheus, southern cross, nimbus, colony, timebomb.

808 State's third domestic release has received a lot of criticism, mainly due to a poor choice of singles. However, much of the album lives up to it's title, especially "Plan 9," "Southern Cross," and "Nimbus." At their best, 808 State burst with ideas and creativity.

Yes, I am an 808 State fan. Yes, I am a fan of electronic music. No, I'm not being unfair. This album is absolutely poor in every way. While I was listening to it I actually thought it might be the result of 808 State getting stuck in a bad record contract (which is quite common) - that kind of thing results in a very good album (Exel), in which the songs were created in an atmosphere of creative freedom, being followed up by an incredibly bad album because of the bitterness of realizing you've gotten screwed.

Surely you, like I, have noticed what I now call "The Amazon Effect." This is where things get overly high reviews because fans are the only ones who bother to rate it. This is particularly the case when it comes to ratings of movies & CDs. It's to the point that ratings for these kinds of things are almost completely unhelpful. There's no substitute for listening/viewing first.