Meat Beat Manifesto

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Meat Beat Manifesto
Meat Beat Manifesto logo.jpg
General information
origin Swindon , UK
Genre (s) Industrial , electronica , fusion
founding 1987
Website meatbeatmanifesto.com
Founding members
Jack Dangers
Jonny Stephens
Current occupation
Sampling, singing
 Jack Dangers
Sequencer
 Ben Stokes
Sequencer
 Mark Pistel
Lynn Farmer
former members
Sequencer
 John Wilson
Mike Powell
Live and session members
Marcus Adams
Craig Morrison
Greg Recch
dance
 Banksy

Meat Beat Manifesto (also Meat Beat or MBM ) is an electronic music - group , by Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens in Swindon , United Kingdom , was founded 1987th This was also the hometown of the band XTC , which gave Meat Beat Manifesto start-up help. The band is referred to by some artists as a stylistic role model and used as a source for samples (best known The Prodigy , Chemical Brothers and Future Sound of London ). Meat Beat Manifesto was instrumental in the development of new styles of music such as trip hop , big beat and drum and bass / jungle .

Band history

John Stephen Corrigan aka Jack Dangers grew up in Swindon, in the south west of England , where, like his father, he worked in a machine factory complex. He had a soft spot for surrealism and for music that nobody else knew and would have accepted. He first met Jonny Stephens in the mid-1980s in the pop band Perennial Divide. The two tried in 1987 outside of their band on further sound experiments, which in 1988 led them to leave Perennial Divide to record a record. But the master tapes were destroyed in a studio fire before they could be produced and published.

Live performance by Meat Beat Manifesto, 2008

For a number of singles to Dangers and Stephens served from daily television program by clips from television shows and commercials sampelten , combined this with hip-hop - beats and dub - Grooves highlighted to soundscapes to give rise. The musicians developed variations from their own templates, which they bundled into a double LP , whereby each of the four sides was intended for one piece in its variety of variations. Here, the " cut-up " process, which had been perfected in the literature by William S. Burroughs , was applied to the music sector, a reference which the title Storm the Studio underlines because it is based on Burroughs' character Uranian Willy The Soft Machine comes from. In addition, the title illustrates how the low-budget musicians "stormed into" the studio and started without wasting time.

The first appearances were like a revue . Up to 15 actors populated the stage. A four-person ensemble quickly emerged, consisting of multi-instrumentalist and singer Jack Dangers, programmer Jonny Stephens, dancer and choreographer Marcus Adams, and set and costume designer Craig Morrison. The latter attracted the public with his patented special designs (some found their way into the Museum of Modern Art ). He also made "body coverings" for Batman's movie adventure. 1989 Meat Beat Manifesto presented their show in the USA . The band met up with like-minded bands there and made friends with Consolidated and The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy .

In response to the reputation of being an industrial band, they released 99% , a more techno- heavy LP, in May 1990 . In August of the same year, Armed Audio Warfare was also released; Here the titles of the actual debut album, which had been destroyed by fire, were prepared from rough versions or reconstructed in new recordings. Meat Beat Manifesto opened their first major tour in the USA for Nine Inch Nails . In Germany, the band performed with the line-up Jack Dangers (vocals, sampling), Greg Recch ( DJing ), Marcus Adams (dance), and Craig Morrison (equipment). In 1991, on the tour with Consolidated, Adams and Morrison were no longer there, but a new dancer. The following year they went on tour with Orbital and Ultramarine , this time with a drummer on stage.

In 1992, the album Satyricon Meat Beat Manifesto , released by Mute (America) and Play It Again Sam (Europe, Japan), featured more than an electronica band. The popularity in the USA had by then overtaken that in England. In late 1993, Jack Dangers married, which was the real reason - rather than the surge in popularity - that he moved from Wiltshire to Marin County near San Francisco in the first half of 1994 . Constant tours, other projects, then emigration and finally the fact that Stephens, who remained in Swindon, was only able to take part in the action with great effort, led to a two-year production period (during which, however, it was only possible to work on it weekly or monthly) for the follow-up album and ultimately also to Stephens' departure. John Wilson took his place in 1995. The double album Subliminal Sandwich , released in 1996, also featured various guest musicians , including keyboardist Mike Powell, who used a theremin and helped with the background vocals . It was a loose cooperation with the prospect of longer cohesion.

Dangers feasted on vinyl records from resellers in San Francisco . Within a very short time he had purchased 8,000 LPs, which he assumed he would never have come across in Europe. They became his great source of inspiration . In this way he familiarized himself with the work of the two bass clarinetists Eric Dolphy and Bennie Maupin and bought the instrument (which was not completely alien to him, because he had used it before).

A lot is improvised on Subliminal Sandwich , especially Electric People on the second disc . The recording, which was made over four days with everyone who happened to enter the studio, is actually six hours long, and the best part was selected from it. Overall, however, this disc is “more reduced”, “not so playful”, stated Dangers. The first disc, which is characterized by samples, raps , keyboard and beats, contains mostly two-year-old material. According to Dangers, the album is stylistically closest to the debut. Although it marks the major label debut with Trent Reznors Nothing Records , it did not match the commercial success of the previous releases. The song She's Unreal could not provide a boost to sales either, because it was not directly alluded to in the film Blair Witch Project , but only featured on the soundtrack Josh's Blair Witch Mix .

In the 1990s, Dangers became a sought-after remixer . Since then he has worked for Consolidated, The Shamen , David Byrne , MC 900ft Jesus, Björk , Nine Inch Nails, The Young Gods , Public Enemy , Merzbow , Coil , Orbital, David Bowie , Depeche Mode and Fun Lovin 'Criminals, among others . At the same time he built the record company Tino Corp. together with Ben Stokes from 1996 onwards. on.

In 1997 Dangers hired Lynn Farmer (drums) to record Actual Sounds + Voices , which prominently reinforced the flirtation with jazz elements that had already been carried out in earlier albums ; Bennie Maupin also appears, playing the saxophone . The title of the album, released at the beginning of October 1998, pays homage to the noise and sound effect records with this title or title affix, which enjoyed great popularity in the 1960s and 70s for private film setting purposes. The title Prime Audio Soup , which is also known from the film The Matrix (and its soundtrack), was released as a single . Before the release of the new album, there was a US tour in June 1998 that had been completed with The Prodigy. Even after the release it went on tour, but it was missing because of an operation John Wilson. Mark Pistel of Consolidated came - and stayed -.

In 2001 Dangers released the first of several solo albums , released on his own label, Tino Corp. About 15 years to Dangers had preoccupied with the re-processing of Tonschnipseln, with the beginning of the new millennium he was pleased with the sighting of historical film documents from their sequences he clips mounted, of which he, the one that fulfilled the purpose of promotional videos on YouTube hired . For Luminol , for example, he combined the earliest medical recordings with chronophotographs from the late 19th century or for Quietus he alienated flickering and yellow-tinged old scientific slow-motion studies , analogous to time-lapse studies in Waterphone (all three titles from 2010). Although he has not since abandoned dancers at live performances, the clips have largely taken over their visual part. He even considers the new form of song addition to be more effective, as the clips sometimes have more expressiveness than the lyrics. In addition, he used to have films running in the background that were supposed to correspond with the music in order to be able to convey his messages more subtly.

In 2002 Meat Beat published manifesto RUOK? , an album that demonstrates the evolution of their sounds and puts the newly acquired EMS Synthi 100 in the foreground. A remix album was released by Storm the Studio in 2003, followed in January 2004 by … In Dub , a remix album by RUOK? . At the Center was released on May 29, 2005. As part of the independent label Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, it was produced in collaboration between Jack Dangers and jazz musicians Peter Gordon, Dave King , and Craig Taborn .

Part of the live program, the performance of which was initially largely limited to the San Francisco Bay Area , were Dangers 'and Stokes' creative results in terms of video sampling. According to her, the shows were 80 percent visual. The music just underscores this, explained Dangers. The US shows denied Jack Dangers, Ben Stokes, Lynn Farmer and Mark Pistel, because of the high travel and accommodation costs only Dangers and Stokes went on a European tour. From April 2008 the band was under contract with Metropolis Records. Autoimmune appeared there that same year and Answers Come in Dreams two years later . A single and an EP were only released digitally.

Band name

The band name includes a term for masturbation ("to beat your meat"). The Rowohlt Rock Lexicon calls it a "hidden clue" that Dangers did not disclose. He once explained the name as follows: The “meat” of music is the beats and the manifesto is the future-oriented view. Another time he interpreted “meat beat” as the nature of the chosen rhythm : “It's very hard, meaty, as we say in slang . Heavy beat. The manifest in turn depends on the respective song content, for example I Got a Fear . B. about paranoia etc., and live all of this gives an entire manifestation. So you see that there is nothing cryptic about the name . ”Another time he insisted that it was just a string of words. Other existing band names cannot automatically be taken literally either. You just try to stick with your name in people's minds, which would not work with a name like Tortoise .

Music genre

The Anglo-American reference work Encyclopedia of Popular Music overwrites his impression of the band with the designation "Post-Industrial Dance Group". First, Storm the Studio created soundscapes from TV programs and commercials, underlaid with hip-hop beats and dub grooves in a “cut-up” manner. 99% then turned out to be less aloof and rather go in the burgeoning house direction. The texts, which are still at a high level, are not affected by the change. On Satyricon it related to issues such as consumerism and animal rights without therefore come with a raised index finger.

The Rowohlt Rock Lexicon writes that the band, which started “on the threshold from post-industrial to dance floor ”, preferred to take up “undecided positions” “instead of continuously building on their own, always highly creative achievements. Their abstract soundscapes often sounded too intellectual to achieve a real mass base. ”Nonetheless, the band influenced“ countless groups on the dance floor of the nineties, from the Chemical Brothers to The Prodigy ”. With 99% , "a drastic change in direction towards the house" had been initiated, which was continued on Satyricon . The texts were "politically more and more explosive". On Subliminal Sandwich the authors discovered echoes of world music . They refer to Actual Sounds + Voices as an “aggressive jazz ambient album”. The combination of house and free jazz on At the Center is a "fruitful connection", the article continues.

At Allmusic the music is categorized according to the respective development. Storm the Studio is "high-energy dub, hip-hop and noise rock ". 99% consist of sound collages with jazz rhythms. Satyricon is techno, while Subliminal Sandwich and Actual Sounds + Voices belong in the electronica department. RUOK? after all, it is a "Spartan matter".

Laut.de describes the band as “the most atypical industrial formation of the 90s” because instead of indulging in the noise, they prefer to find rhythms that encourage people to dance and locate them initially in the post- acid scene, “later in the political pop scene of San Francisco ”.

In 2005, the Tagesspiegel summarized the style as a danceable-poppy industrial band that turned away from noise.

In 1989 the Spex said, based on the Post-Industrial / EBM , Meat Beat Manifesto had tried a new fusion, namely the one with hip-hop. It described the first album in detail: “ Storm the Studio is endless music, divided into numbered tracks, a groove that is built up and destroyed, noises that peel out of the basic rhythm, a bass line that fights through the noise. The tracks are many times faster than anything you know from EBM, sometimes carried by a pumping, deep funk bass, sometimes by electronic staccato twitches, but always martial, what hip-hop friends call "soulless" is characterized and also differentiates MBM from white dance music . "

In a different way, with many artist comparisons, EB / Metronom attempted to describe it: “Early test departments who went through the nag , plus a hefty shot of Third Reich'n Roll residents , drunk public enemies and a base Cabaret Voltaire played too fast - Rough Mixes plus lots of collages of sounds and samples. ”This was once again compressed to the short form“ EBM + Hip Hop + Industrial ”.

In 1990 Gothic magazine Inquisita said: “They offer an infantile jumble of Boney M. samplings and shuddering horror cascades that lack any profundity.” Nevertheless, the volume was certified as “imaginative and imaginative”. Specifically based on 99% , it was said that there were fewer melodies than on the previous version, the raps had completely disappeared.

The Musikexpress considered 99% to be an important impulse within the house and dance floor scene. "HipHop, House, Electro, and Acid in an industrial context" would be processed again: "Noise garbage, hard-hitting dance beats, commands and spherical noise loops are turned into a nerve-wracking hi-tech dance floor experience with their skillful dramaturgy [...]."

For Armed Audio Warfare , EB / Metronom found the summary: “Most brutal Industrial EBM Hip Hop”.

The extraction Edge of No Control Pt. 2 from the album Satyricon was reviewed in the Musikexpress with the following words: “Massive industrial guitar pop. Hard as ever. "The Los Angeles-based music magazine Option considered the Satyricon album to be the most musical to date, as the seemingly arbitrary excerpts and quotes from films and commercials were repeatedly sampled beyond recognition and combined until something completely new came out. that no longer have anything in common with the original, which makes them easier to consume. Following the same approach, just going a little further, the Musikexpress wrote of “meticulously crafted sound collages”, this time with “conventional song structures” that go in the direction of “pepped up Depeche Mode numbers”. At one point, dominant "hypnotic rhythms" were an exception. Metropolis Records, later home of the band, emphasizes in their band presentation the successful merging of seemingly random pieces of clay. In its way of acting like an umbrella spanning many musical genres , Satyricon had been unique until then.

Regarding the Subliminal Sandwich , the intro stated that instead of dominating beats, the musical priority was now set differently. The compound "Industrial-Dancefloor- Rock " served as a style description .

According to Zillo , the general formula for Meat Beat Manifesto is: "schizophrenic collages of hip-hop rhythms and psychedelic sounds". Looking specifically at Actual Sounds + Voices , the issue speaks of a “mercilessly experimental approach” that results in a “dissolution of the song structure”. "With razor-sharp beats, lowered bass and a merciless sample program" Actual Sounds + Voices create "pop-suspicious moments" that are sometimes Depeche Mode-like, wrote the Musikexpress . The exception this time is The Thumb because it is really jazzy. Metropolis Records sees this work as the most innovative in the band's history. Borrowings from rock, hip-hop, dub, jungle, industrial, dance and jazz fusion appeared.

For the ninth album ... In Dub says laut.de "deep bass lines and jazzy tunes set the krachige past shelved ." You now Socialize to leftfield to.

In the Eclipsed , Off-Center was identified as “electronically manipulated free jazz”. “Hardly any topic is formulated so extensively that one would even get a vague idea of ​​its form and structure.” The various “hints” are as difficult to follow as millions of butterfly wings.

Dangers dealt with the labeling of Autoimmune with " Dubstep " calmly. There is something about it, but the categorization is too easy.

Todd E. Jones, who runs a hip-hop website, rated Dangers' music himself, knowing the later productions, as "electronic hip-hop" because the foundation was hip-hop. In 99% there are particularly aggressive rape.

Self-declaration

Dangers has always liked jazz, reggae , musique concrète and electronic music. Best of all, wildly mixed up, which is why he put together a wide variety of styles in his creations. He said of his imprint that he was most influenced by Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and The Pop Group . Elsewhere he paid tribute to Cabaret Voltaire and John Cage for having overturned the existing. In a later interview, he named his first purchased record, Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express , and again Cabaret Voltaire as groundbreaking listening experiences. In this respect, he thinks it's okay to be assigned to industrial. Only those with Ministry , Frontline Assembly and Nine Inch Nails instead of Einstürzende Neubauten , Test Dept. and SPK mean, wrong.

Visual aspects

The covers of almost all publications were designed by the New York artist Richard Borge.

The live show is generally described as an intense audio-visual experience: "[They] [...] manage to present an acoustic and visual unit, and the latter is probably not found in any other band to this extent." Dancer Marcus Adams brought it in a nutshell: “Our music is a combination of several artistic elements. We make audiovisual art. ” Dance performances , video recordings, live DJing and a large number of electronic music production devices visually complemented the music in the early years. In the later years, the video sampling accompanying the song took the place of the eye-catching dance performance in often unusual costumes.

Jack Dangers says of himself that he has a synaesthetic feeling

Discography

Albums, EPs, box sets

  • 1989: Storm the Studio (double album, sweatbox)
  • 1990: Armed Audio Warfare (Wax Trax! Records)
  • 1990: 99% (mute)
  • 1992: Satyricon (Mute)
  • 1993: Australian Tour EP (EP, unofficial title, as it was only released in Australia and actually untitled, Shock Records)
  • 1996: Subliminal Sandwich (double album, Nothing Records)
  • 1998: Actual Sounds + Voices (Play It Again Sam)
  • 2002: RUOK? (Tino Corp.)
  • 2003: Storm the Studio RMXS (Tino Corp.)
  • 2004: ... In Dub (Run Recordings)
  • 2005: At the Center (Thirsty Ear)
  • 2005: Off-Center (EP, Thirsty Ear)
  • 2006: Live '05 (Live, limited to two 1,000 copies, Tino Corp., later "normal" edition at Flexidisc)
  • 2007: Archive Things (double CD compilation of Dangers' early works, Flexidisc)
  • 2008: Autoimmune (Metropolis Records)
  • 2010: Totally Together (EP, download only)
  • 2010: Answers Come in Dreams (Metropolis Records)
  • 2012: Test EP (box set, Flexidisc)

Singles

  • 1987: Suck Hard (limited to 1500 copies)
  • 1988: I Got the Fear
  • 1988: Strap Down
  • 1988: re-animator
  • 1988: Let's Go Disco ( aka Space Children )
  • 1988: GOD OD
  • 1989: Cuts From the New LP & CD
  • 1990: Dog Star Man
  • 1990: Helter Skelter / Radio Babylon
  • 1990: Psyche Out
  • 1991: Galore version
  • 1991: Now
  • 1992: Edge of No Control
  • 1992: Edge of No Control Pt. 2
  • 1992: Mindstream
  • 1992: Mindstream Pt. 2
  • 1993: Circles
  • 1993: Peel Session
  • 1995: Nuclear Bomb
  • 1996: Transmission
  • 1996: Asbestos Lead Asbestos
  • 1996: It's the Music
  • 1997: Original Fire
  • 1997: Helter Skelter '97
  • 1998: Acid Again
  • 1998: Prime Audio Soup
  • 2000: Eccentric Objects (limited to 1000 copies, Tino Corp.)
  • 2002: Free Piece Suite
  • 2002: What Does It All Mean?
  • 2004: Echo in Space Dub
  • 2008: Guns N Lovers (download only)

Videos

  • 1989: I Got the Fear
  • 1989: Strap Down
  • 1990: 99%
  • 1990: Psyche Out
  • 1992: Edge of No Control
  • 1992: Mindstream
  • 1996: Asbestos Lead Asbestos
  • 1997: Helter Skelter '97
  • 1998: Prime Audio Soup

From the multitude of later videos:

  • 2010: Luminol
  • 2010: Quietus
  • 2010: Waterphone
  • 2010: Totally Together

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Timo Hoffmann: Meat Beat Manifesto. Prophets of pop? In: Zillo . November 1998, p. 22 .
  2. ↑ a b c Martin Hossbach: Meat Beat Manifesto. Instrumental politics . In: Intro . No. 36 (July / August), 1996, pp. 35 .
  3. ↑ a b c Yellow Peril: Meat Beat Manifesto. Subliminal Cultural Recycling. In: snarl.org. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Meat Beat Manifesto. Meat Beat Manifesto Biography. In: artistdirect.com. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i John Bush: Meat Beat Manifesto. Biography by John Bush. In: allmusic.com. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Todd E. Jones: The Off-Center Meat Beat Manifesto of Jack Dangers. An Interview with Meat Beat Manifesto (Jack Dangers). In: Hardcore Hip-Hop Interviews. November 2005, archived from the original on October 2009 ; accessed on February 22, 2015 (English, work name taken from the page layout).
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Neil Strauss: Body Politics. Meat Beat Manifesto's Dance Lessons . In: Option - music alternatives . No. 49 (March / April), 1993, pp. 74 ff .
  8. ↑ a b c d e Meat Beat Manifesto. Portrait. Laut.de biography. In: laut.de. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Colin Larkin (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Popular Music . 3. Edition. Volume 5 Louvin, Charlie - Paul, Clarence. Macmillan, London 1998, ISBN 0-333-74134-X , Meat Beat Manifesto, pp. 3605 .
  10. ↑ a b c Sebastian Zabel: Meat Beat Manifesto. Can't it be that our music is simply new music? In: Spex . August 1989, p. 11 f .
  11. ↑ Craig Morrison. About. In: cmd.co.uk. Retrieved on February 22, 2015 (English, MBM image on the “Art Direction” subpage).
  12. ↑ a b c d e f Meat Beat Manifesto. In: metropolis-records.com. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  13. ↑ a b c d Kai Hawaii, Axel Mai: Meat Beat Manifesto. Hip Hop as Independent . In: Inquisita . No. 8 , July 1990, Interview, pp. 6 .
  14. ↑ a b c d e f g h Sandy Masuo: Dangers Own. A Talk with Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers . In: Option - music alternatives . No. 71 (November / December), 1996, pp. 76 ff .
  15. ↑ John Wilson. In: discogs.com. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  16. ↑ PIAS Recordings GmbH (Ed.): Actual Sounds & Voices / Meat Beat Manifesto . Hamburg 1998, Meat Beat Manifesto (unpaginated laundry slip printed on both sides).
  17. ↑ a b Mark Roland: Meat Beat Manifesto. Breakbeat Originator . In: Melody Maker . No. 39/1998 , p. 18 .
  18. ^ Meat Beat Manifesto. News - 1998. In: brainwashed.com. November 13, 1998, accessed February 22, 2015 .
  19. ↑ a b c d Jen Zipf: Meat Beat Manifesto: Interview. In: prefixmag.com. February 6, 2009, accessed January 16, 2016 .
  20. ↑ Meat Beat Manifesto -… In Dub. In: discogs.com. Retrieved February 22, 2015 .
  21. ↑ a b c d Paul Olson: Jack Dangers: The Mind of Meat Beat Manifesto. In: allaboutjazz.com. October 24, 2005, accessed February 22, 2015 .
  22. ↑ a b Meat Beat Manifesto. Rowohlt biography. (No longer available online.) In: musicline.de. Phononet GmbH, archived from the original on February 24, 2015 ; accessed on February 22, 2015 (abridged biography from the "Rowohlt Rock Lexicon"). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musicline.de
  23. ↑ a b Peter Huber: Meat Beat Manifesto . In: EB / metronome . No. 23 (September / October), 1989, pp. 30 .
  24. ↑ Bodo Mrozek: Singing machines. Bodo Mrozek listens to the consequences of industrialization . In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 23, 2005, MischPult, p. ? .
  25. ↑ Michael Reinboth: Meat Beat Manifesto. 99% (SPV) . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 413 , June 1990, Dancefloor, p. 93 .
  26. ^ Meat Beat Manifesto . In: EB / metronome . No. 29 (November – January, 1990/1991), 1991, Techno, p. 66 .
  27. ↑ Michael Reinboth: Meat Beat Manifesto. Edge of No Control Part 2 . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 441 , October 1992, Maxi-Tips, p. 108 .
  28. ^ Holger True: Meat Beat Manifesto. Satyricon . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 442 , November 1992, Dance, pp. 104 .
  29. ↑ (fsa): Meat Beat Manifesto. Actual Sounds & Voices . In: Musikexpress / Sounds . No. 512 , September 1998, plates by az, p. 60 .
  30. ↑ Wolf Kampmann: Meat Beat Manifesto. "Off-Center" . In: Eclipsed . Rock magazine. No. 79 , February 2006, Jazz Ecke, p. 64 .

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