Inception - the birth of the Roland TR-808

FEB 14 2023

A mini-documentary on how the TR-808 came to be built, tracing the design decisions and the analogue circuitry that produced its booming kick. Roland launched it in 1980 at around $1,195, sold roughly twelve thousand and killed it by 1983, after which it became the cheap machine that Black American producers in Chicago, New York and Detroit rebuilt popular music with.