Jack Dangers of the impossibly influential electronic act Meat Beat Manifesto strips away the drum machines and samplers, leaving only his impressive vintage synthesizer to produce this live ambient work, played to accompany a screening of the classic sci-fi film Forbidden Planet. It's not the most novel idea. Electronic artists have long reached towards the cinema to give their music a more complete existence. Techno icon Jeff Mills went so far as to produce a soundtrack for the Fritz Lange silent masterpiece Metropolis, and proceeded to screen it around the world. What's interesting about Dangers' attempt is that he performed all of the music live, as well as generated sound effects which are included on the second disc. Also interesting is the fact that Forbidden Planet is not a silent film and therefore had a soundtrack of its own long before Dangers took the controls. But no matter. As a study in oscillator-produced texture and sound, few have the capabilities of Dangers to make his robust electronic machines feel utterly weightless. Like a 100 ton supercomputer, floating away in the zero gravity of space. - Joshua Glazer, All Music Guide

Why would Meat Beat Manifesto's mastermind mess with Louis and Bebe Barron's untouchable 1956 soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, an ur-document of malevolent, spacey woobs, gurgles and twitters? Because Jack has the world's only functioning EMS Synthi 100, and, damn it, he's gonna use it. This recording, live from France's I.D.E.A.L. Festival, proves that Dangers is well-suited to subtly modify and capture the questing spirit of the Barrons' original (see "Battle With Invisible Monster" for proof). Disc two contains 50 snippets of sci-fi sound effects-dozens of vintage analog-synth emissions ripe for producers seeking instant threatening atmospheres and otherworldly textures. - Dave Segal, XLR8R

"In Vital Weekly 433 I noticed that in the early pioneering days of electronic music, the late fifties, the relationship between electronic music and space became clear. Kid Baltan's 'Song Of The Second Moon' didn't deal with Yuri Gagarin (an error on this historian's side), but it delt with the launch of the sputnik. Kid Baltan was later also asked to compose the soundtrack for '2001 - A Space Oddysee', which he refused. At the same time Louis & Bebe Barron composed their purely electronic soundtrack to the film 'Forbidden Planet', which now gets a re-interpretation by Jack Dangers, aka Meat Beat Manifesto. Entirely composed on a Synthi 100 synthesizer (I believe that's an EMS one), he performed this at the 'I.D.E.A.L.' festival in Nantes during a screening of the film. Dangers stays close the original ideas of electronic music for sci-fi films, with a chilly sound, alien (pun intended) bleeps and glissando waves. I must admit, entirely my mistake, that I never saw the film, only heard the original soundtrack, and I think Dangers does a very fine job, staying that close to the original, yet keeping his own voice in this. And to make the fun complete, a second CD contains 'sci-fi sound effects', fifthy in total, so all you home astronauts can compose your own soundtracks to real or imaginairy films. I know I would..." - (FdW), Vital Weekly

"In what was actually performed live as part of the Ideal Festival in France, Jack Dangers (aka Meat Beat Manifesto) played live during a screening of the classic 1956 MGM cult film Forbidden Planet starring Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis. These ethereal sound effects are captured in twenty-three thematic tracks that illustrate the quirky film, and at the same time give it a fully timeless quality. Dangers channels the era by creating sounds that are otherwise from a bygone time and space, but by retrofitting them to a time capsule that is nearly 50 years old, has refashioned our conscious thinking about how sound is perceived before, during and after. Watery crescents delight with the soul of an analogue-based futuristic technology, leaving the audience with a wide span of trans-space that competes with the vortex of the unknown on tracks like “Love at the Swimming Hole.” The track meanders as the mortals tie their love knots. Complete with some of the most classic sound effects that you may find in films that present radars at great depths and other cool signaling devices, Dangers unveils a secret passion for the sci-fi side of his psyche on tracks like “The Mind Booster – Creation of Matter.” Here there are hints of what has appeared in latter day MBM material. The way the material is delivered is in the classical tradition of live jams being played during a silent film, a practice that is limited today, but in this case completely penetrating. However, I am not exactly sure how it works with a talkie. This provides a brain-shorting exercise, launching you into an altered state for its duration. As if that were not enough, we are treated to an additional bonus disc of Sci Fi Sound Effects that Dangers concocted on his, and the world’s only known operational, EMS Synthi 100. This room-sized equipment delivers a full-force sci-fi montage of chilling to overtly eerie sounds. It’s a great collection of short, strange, chaotic and neutralizing tones. With all of the tracks running at under a minute and a half Dangers develops audio geometries in sound bytes here. Space transducers, laser guns, audio warfare, oh my! " - TJ Norris, Igloo