Meat Beat Manifesto "Actual Sounds + Voices" Nothing Records INTD-90279 1998 (73:06)
Everything's Under Control (:43)
Prime Audio Soup (6:17)
Book of Shadows (5:43)
Oblivion/Humans (5:52)
Let's Have Fun (3:30)
The Tweek (2:25)
Acid Again (5:47)
Let Go (4:44)
Where Are You?/Enuff (5:59)
Hail to the Bopp (4:40)
3 Floors Above You (5:00)
Funny Feeling (6:10)
The Thumb (10:47)
Wavy Line (1:17)
Wildlife (4:12)
Meat Beat Manifesto is Jack Dangers (voice, bass, stuff), Lynn Farmer (drums, percussion) and John Wilson (prepared guitars) with Brain (additional drums on 'Funny Feeling'), Dr. Pat Gleeson (Arp 2600, Echoplex on 'The Thumb'), Bennie Maupin (saxaphones, bass clarinet on 'Funny Feeling' and 'The Thumb'), Dan Nielsen (Fender Rhodes on 'The Thumb' and Wurlitzer on 'Funny Feeling'), Mark Pistel (Serge on 'The Thumb') and Mike Powell (theremin on 'The Thumb' and radio on 'The Tweek').
Overall impression: excellent! Jack is back baby. Two years after the superb Nothing Records debut, "Subliminal Sandwich", "Actual Sounds + Voices" picks up the torch and forges ahead. Has Jack completely re-invented himself once again? No, not exactly. AS+V is more of a small step forward for Meat Beat-kind rather than a giant leap forward. But, make no mistake about it ... this is a MBM album and I'll be damned if I've heard anything quite as funky and dense as Dangers' jams! AS+V features all of the usual MBM elements: super phat beats and bass, samples aplenty (including, as usual, some rather funny ones), bleeps, bloops, bonks, sweeps, surges, pulses and vox ... all neatly arranged in loop like fashion via Jack's incredible programming and engineering skills. Jack and friends take the best elements of drum 'n bass, electro, ambient, dub, funk, jazz, etc, etc and create their own unique, groove oriented style ... they seem to be on a a completely different page than all the other beat makers out there. Most of the album is instrumental, but Jack's "Satyricon"-era pop-like voice pops up on some tracks ('Oblivion', 'Let's Have Fun', 'Funny Feeling') and his "Subliminal.."-era whisper voice pops up on 'Humans' and something inbetween is on 'Let Go' and 'Wildlife'. A few oddballs: 'The Tweek' is one of the classic goofy sample collages, 'The Thumb' is a massive, all-star electro-funk jam featuring the legendary Pat Gleeson and Bernie Maupin (both of Herbie Hancock's 70's jazz/funk band) and 'Wildlife' is a mellow, beatless, ambient excursion with lovely sprawling vox. There are no bad tracks on this album, it's a solid and varied listen throughout the entire 73 minutes (now that's the way to fill up a cd!) and it's cheap, around $10 at most record stores. AS+V is one of my favorites of 1998. The artwork is once again by Rich Borge, not quite as groovy as his work on "Subliminal.." and the accompanying singles, but still neat. Do you remember the suggestion in the liner notes of "Subliminal Sandwich" to 'play twice before listening'? You should do the same for AS+V too. Mp3 snippets of all of the tracks are available at Brainwashed and lyric transcriptions courtesy Pietro Da Sacco are available at MBM Land ...
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