One of the things I was missing back in ’98 was a drum machine. Delorean had a live drummer (as expected in 1998) and I really had no use for anything synthetic.
The JV-2080, being a jack-of-all-trades, had some “rhythm” patches on it — most are not really configurable, and in the original parade, were just used to sweeten some of the elements of the sampled rhythm loops. There’s an 808-ish kick drum pretty much at every quarter note throughout many of the sections.
Oddly enough, a whole lot of today’s popular music is firmly rooted in the sounds of Roland’s ubiquitous TR-808 Rhythm Composer, which was released all the way back in 1980. As far as I know, it’s the only drum machine with it’s own documentary. Along with the TB-303, that particular sound is so locked into the way we expect EDM to sound, that some musicians have trouble ever getting away from it.
One of the things that I think the original parade lacked was an old-school EDM section. A couple of sections that used the RB-338 come close, but nothing’s really got that slow-layered dance-tent feel.
In 2014, Roland released the TR-8, a digital version of the 808 (which includes sounds from the 909, 707 & 727). Analogue purists may scoff, but it sounds identical to me (and doesn’t cost $4000). Plus it’s got a lot of other tricks up its sleeve.
And if you ignore it for 5 minutes, it tries to trigger seizures with its “screen saver”.