I Can't Believe You Don't Own This F%#kin' Record - Meat Beat Manifesto - Satyricon & Upcoming Show

MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO - SATYRICON (1992)

UK DJ Jack Dangers (AKA Meat Beat Manifesto) is the man. He will be appearing at the Knitting Factory on Hollywood Boulevard on Thursday, December 4 (my Dad's b-day!) in support of his new album, "Autoimmune." Here is a very efficient review of said album cribbed from Allmusic.com. Amoeba Records' blog has a nice article here chronicling the last 20 years for Mr. Dangers. I recommend that you try your very best to see this amazing electronic artist live. In the meantime, let's discuss his excellent record, "Satyricon."

Where to start? I was mad over Meat Beat Manifesto in the 90's. Through industrial music and more mainstream techno like Prodigy and Chemical Brothers, I was becoming more and more drawn to soundscapes and experimental noise. It's an ongoing journey, which has led me into the hands of composers like Steve Reich and John Cage, and dub/ambient geniuses like Bill Laswell and Lee 'Scratch' Perry. I found Meat Beat Manifesto because 'zines like Industrial Nation often filed it under a genre called "Industrial Hip-Hop." I found this intriguing and gave a listen to what I think was Jack Danger's "99%" album. From the track "Psyche Out," I was hooked:



Meat Beat Manifesto - "Psyche Out" - 99% (1990)

I made a co-worker buy "Satyricon" for me, as I can recall. Some kind of Secret Santa nonsense. Whatever. All I knew was I needed that sweet, sweet, head-pounding noise. Jack Dangers is awesome because he manipulates an impressive number of conflicting sound elements, but it never sounds totally incoherent. The bassline groove is never lost in the mix either, keeping the anthems fist-pumping enough that you wonder why he wasn't name-checked in the Streets song, "Weak Become Heroes." Check that out here. (Make sure you watch an unedited version of this song. I don't know what they're playing at deleting all the drug references in this tune. In non-90's news, Mike Skinner, AKA, The Streets, has a new record out on Vice Records called "Everything is Borrowed." If you're a fan of UK dance music, I'd say go for it. He was great live.)

I hate dancing about architecture, so here's a video for "Mindstream" off this record. Unfortunately, I cannot show it to you here at my blog, but you need to hear it, believe me. Oh my god, PLUR...I'm just reading the comments to this video, they're too funny and spot on. Here is "Original Control (Version 2):



For the converted, here is an interview (by Blogcritics.com) with Jack Dangers himself:



Interview with Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto) - Blogcritics.com 04/2008 - Part 1



Interview with Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto) - Blogcritics.com 04/2008 - Part 2