Three Machines Changed Everything

Playlist

Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force – Planet Rock
Beastie Boys – Brass Monkeys
Nine Inch Nails – Closer
Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)
Prince and the Revolution – When Doves Cry
A-Ha – Take On Me
Michael Jackson – Liberian Girl
Wu-Tang – C.R.E.A.M
DJ Shadow – Midnight in a Perfect World
J-Dilla – Workinonit

The Essay Sessions pair curated playlists with companion essays.
Each essay gives you the world behind the records – the cities, technologies, politics and lives that shaped them.
Then the music follows, in 360° spatial audio.

Knowing the context of a record changes what you feel when you hear it.

Between 1980 and 1988, three machines changed what popular music could sound like – and who was allowed to make it.
The Roland TR-808.
The Yamaha DX7.
The Akai MPC60.

Two of them failed at launch.
All three became foundational.

At Polygon Portal, a curated programme of the records they built – from Afrika Bambaataa and Prince to Nine Inch Nails, DJ Shadow and J Dilla – is reimagined on one of the world’s best spatial audio systems.

The hardware story of popular music, played the way it was meant to be felt.