808 State were major players in Manchester's electronic dance music at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, as they grafted minimalist and ambient techniques onto the genre, and in doing so acted as a bridge between the romantic disco-music of New Order and the sterile techno of the 1990s. 808 State were influential on an entire generation of house, techno, and industrial musicians, although, as is often the case with transitional phenomena, they perhaps did not reach great artistic heights.

At first they were just the trio of Martin Price, from Graham Massey and Gerald Simpson (basically a team of producers). Then Gerald Simpson launched a solo career under the pseudonym A Guy Called Gerald, while 808 State was joined by disc-jockeys Darren Partington and Andy Barker.

The Newbuild EP (Creed, 1988 - Rephlex, 1999) was their programmatic manifesto, influenced by Kraftwerk and influenced by the Roland bass-synthesizer and drum-machine from which they had taken their name, strong with a sound bordering on techno, pop, and psychedelia (Dr Lowfruit, Flow Coma, Narcossa) that transformed Detroit techno into an expressionist nightmare.

The group's arsenal continued to be enriched with electronic instruments until they composed a sort of "showcase" of 1980s electronica. Thanks to that deployment of means, the track Pacific State, on the six-song EP Quadrastate (1989 - Rephlex, 2008), applying Brian Eno's ideas to the disco "beat," helped launch "ambient house." Unlike their peers, though, 808 State quickly became an album band, in the tradition of 1970s progressive-rock instead of dance music.

808:90 (ZTT, 1989) contains other examples of that atmospheric, even vaguely jazzy music (Jon Hassell more than Weather Report), such as Sunrise, mixed with more conventional elaborations of the old funk-soul sound (Cobra Bora, 808080808).

808 State would continue to revolve around that idea in the next Ex:el (ZTT, 1991), a major commercial success, whose exuberant electronic ballets slather synthetic melodies over diabolical interweavings of drum'n'bass (San Francisco), Caribbean tribalism (Leo Leo,In Yer Face), disco music (the long Cubik), samba (Techno Bell), perhaps culminating in the hellish pandemonium of Lambrusco Cowboy. The ethno-funk cues (Qmart,Empire) don't introduce much that is new (the former has an electronic "whistle" reminiscent of 1960s soundtracks and a jazz/samba rhythm, the latter has an almost satirical edge, like when Frank Zappa plays lounge-music). Some tracks even try to bring jazz-rock and new age music to the track (Lift). You have to give the group credit for not skimping on effort and ideas.

The laugh-out-loud spirit of that album actually concealed a prodigious skill in arranging and producing sound. It is that art of artifice that dominates Gorgeous (ZTT, 1993), an album recorded by the trio of Massey, Partington, and Barker after Price's departure. The melancholy music box of Colony exploits one of their canonical tricks (a soundtrack melody over a frenetic pseudo-Caribbean rhythm), and Europa does the same but by foregrounding the abstract warbles of vocalist Caroline Seaman, but the group mostly hones its skill at exploiting the most mundane samples (the bells of Contrique, the gospel choir of 10x10, the Spanish-sounding guitar of Plan 9, the metallophone of Orbit) to construct compelling, hip dances. But this way of speculating with infinite cynicism on minuscule melodic ideas begins to show its mettle. Timebomb is the most exuberant track, the only one reminiscent of the techno pandemoniums of yesteryear.
Black Morpheus, however, is an evocative piece of Weather Report-esque jazz-rock (complete with saxophone and vibraphone), and Southern Cross(complete with Tibetan choir and Chinese handbells) could feature on a Kitaro album.

808:88:98 (ZTT, 1998) is an anthology.

Andy Barker died in 2021.