Amazon.com's Best of 1998: Meat Beat Manifesto represent everything that is right about electronic music. Perhaps it's their signature acoustic drum patterns that maintain their songs' timelessness. Perhaps it is leader Jack Dangers's ability to infuse each album with a variety of influences. With Actual Sounds and Voices, Dangers builds his songs around two jazz greats improvising in a recorded session. But the jazz influence never overpowers Meat Beat's bombastic vibe--it only enhances it. Considering their track record, it seems nearly impossible that Meat Beat Manifesto could top themselves. But records are made to be broken. CDs, however, and particularly this one, are meant to be played--over and over and over again. --Beth Bessmer
Amazon.com: Meat Beat Manifesto mastermind Jack Dangers once proclaimed, "I always aim for the future. I never want an album to sound like the last one." Although a seemingly uncomplicated statement, remaining true to his aspirations has presented an interesting conundrum for Dangers. MBM do have an easily identifiable sound. The template is built from acoustic (or at least acoustic-sounding) percussion colored with hip-hop rhythms, sternum-rattling bass beats, and entrancing raps and vocal samples--with a creative precedent of sounds over melody. With such a signature style, the challenge lies not so much in aiming for the future but in creating albums that are distinctive from one another. Actual Sounds and Voices meets the challenge by employing a little convention. Unlike previous sample-heavy albums, this recording depends more on live performance. Dangers invited saxophonist and bass clarinetist Bennie Maupin (who played on Miles Davis's legendary Bitches Brew and was also a member of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters) and synthesizer whiz Pat Gleeson (also in the Headhunters) into the studio to record a freestyle jam session. Dangers picked the highlights and molded them into Meat Beat songs. The result is a ferociously danceable all-out-funk-acid-jazz-techno-fusion affront in the face of any misguided soul who thinks electronic music has no heart. Aiming for the future? Meat Beat Manifesto is the future. --Beth Bessmer
Album Description: 1998 album for Play It Again Sam by the veteran techno act, featuring the single 'Acid Again'. A lesson in sonic innovation, the styles on the record vary from the breakbeatassaults of the track 'Prime Audio Soup' to the space groovecut 'The Thumb'. 15 tracks.
This is MBM This is and Subliminal Sandwich are the best works of MBM. I know its hard to find stuff by Dangers that isn't near perfect but those are the 2 I suggest over all others. Sandwich is more spooky than this one. This one is a speaker throbber, make sure you have a system that can keep up with it. I forgot what the name of another one I recommend is... it has some tracks by the Shamen and Atomic Babies - very cool stuff.
where's the voices that are prmoised?? I have been listeing to MBM since i was about 15, back in 91. I am a huge fam of 99% and satyricon, I am not however into their electronic music without vocals. I pretty much gave up on them b/c they abandoned the vocals, which is what made them industrial, which is what they were considered back then. I am not sure what you would call their music now, but when i herd of this album i got really excited that jack dangers would go back to adding vocals to the music. what a dissapointment, out of 15 songs, only 3 have vocals and it is not his usual rap style vocals. so if you see the title and think 99% or satyricon, dont be fooled, you will not like this CD. I do like some of their stuff that is loaded with really cool samples, but i didnt find much of that on here either, just a lot of really repetitive music that doesnt really go anywhere and doesnt have much power or emotion.
Wow, some people are clueless.... This not electronic music to dance to, it's electronic music to LISTEN to.
This is quite possibly MBM's best CD next to Satyricon.
An imperfect masterpiece Jack Dangers is definitely a genius. But whether its a genuis of his own design or just by accident is hard to tell but still a genuis none the less. As far as I can tell, no one has made an entire career out of soundcollage and design and make it seem substantial. Yet somehow his fusion of dub, jungle, industrial, hip-hop, dance and rock all seems to come together in his signature mess he calls Meat Beat Manifesto. And I think no album he's made is as sucessful in his self-created sound as Actual Sounds + Voices.
What definitely makes a difference this time around is having a stong list of versital collaberators who not only understand Danger's sound, but can work well within its expansive, limitless sound. Dangers still has a strong influence over his list of players, but they only help strengthen this album. Unlike previous attempts, the album plays out more like an album made by a band rather than an eccentric artist working in his own world(Subliminal Sandwich, while good, was far too expansive and loose for its own good). The work here is tight, detailed, undeniably groovy. Sort of like the jazz band of the future, as depicted by some surreal painter.
The album itself is well paced, moving through Jack's various influences without lagging in one place for too long. You'll hear live jungle workouts(Prime Audio Soup, Let Go, Where Are You), industrial rock(Oblivion, Funny Feeling), big beat(Acid Again) and everything else inbetween. The real highlight comes near the end of the album in the form of this jazz/fusion electronic jam called The Thumb. Its expansive, quirky and above all surreal. It truly shows Jack's ability to imagine a sound and get it to come out through his players(though I'm sure he played bass on it).
But where the true wonder of this album comes in is its complete disregard for melody and hooks, yet somehow manages to remain memorable throughout. Jack's ingenious sound design and masterful ability to evoke tones and atmosphere while remaining balanced in both dancablity and listenablity I would say is his real charm as an artist. His only fault on this album is he sometimes makes his songs just too busy for mental consumption. Otherwise, this is the pinnacle of an artist who's mind knows no bounds for sound and continues to remain relevent for more then a decade. I actually get excited to see what he will put out next.
Aggressive? Chaotic? Pretentious?!? I do not see how the above adjectives apply to this incredible CD. Yet these descriptors have been featured in an alarming number of reviews. I think the authors of said reviews just weren't listening to the music right. Granted, this is not really music for dancing (with a few exceptions. "Prime Audio Soup" for example), and that may have really turned some people off to it, and I will admit that "Where Are You?" is aggressive (it being dark jungle and all). What this music requires however is a slightly "chill" environment for one to really appreciate it. Highlights for me include "Hail to the Bopp", "Funny Feeling", the ultra chill "The Thumb", "Let Go" and "Lets Have Fun". Alright.....untill......
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
