808

The Roland TR-808 drum machine came out in 1980, did not sell well and was discontinued three years later. Its sounds did not resemble real drums; which is exactly why it turned up cheap second hand and ended up in the hands of musicians with no money. After Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock, the machine became the basic sound of hip hop, of electronic dance and of pop. Alex Dunn's documentary talks to the Roland engineers who designed the machine and to the musicians who used it. Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Baker, Phil Collins, Damon Albarn and dozens of others appear. The telling ties forty years of music history to a single device and does it without overstating: the 808 became something new precisely because it was not a good imitation of a drum.