“Upbeat, bright and infectious slab of 90s inspired dance – it is heavy on the feel good 90s retro vibes as it floats amid the clouds whole grounded firmly on the dance floor by a bed of infectious beats and summering sax – it is catchy and danceable but there is just a wee bit too much of a retro vibe for myself.”
– Barry Gruff – Irish Music Blogger
The seed for this song came when I was playing around with fixed chord settings. In both Logic and Live, you can set up a track to play multiple MIDI notes (fixed chords) for any key that you press on the keyboard. Since the offsets are fixed you get mathematically predictable, but not necessarily musically predictable chord progressions. Anyway, we were near the beach at a place called Busena in Okinawa, Japan and something about this chord progression reminded me of sunsets at a bar on the ocean.
As I started to build the track it made me remember an old track from the 90s. I couldn’t think of the name, but I remembered there was a loon sound in the beginning. Turns out it’s a classic track from 808 State called Pacific State. It’s an instrumental, so as I was building out my track I was trying to figure out what the melody would be and I opened up Pacific State. The original version has more of a 303 acid baseline, but some of the remixes had a nice 808 kick Bassline – which is more my style. I realized that the melody was this saxophone. So, against my regular inclination I added the saxophone too and made this track an homage to 808 State.
When asking someone if they knew 808 State, the told me 808 is area code for Hawaii. 🤯I thought they just loved the Roland 808 drum machine like everybody else, but maybe this Brit band was also hip to the Hawaiian vibes!
UPDATE: 808 State’s most recent album Transmission Suite has a song called Tokyo and was released released just before I took that vacation to Japan! 🤯🤯The new album is full of delicious Roland 808 beats, abstract synth sounds, and acid baselines.