Meat Beat Manifesto : _Acid Again_ cd5 (Nothing)
okay, admittedly, i love MBM and _subliminal sandwich_ completely blew me
away. however, on this, jack does a more classic styled MBM track. gone
are the jazz improvs and noise, back to the beats.
on here we have the original and four versions: the regular "acid again",
a remix by freddy fresh, two remixes by depth charge (j saul kane), and
"dub again" by jack. the regular version is, honestly, a tad bland. it
does sound like a classic MBM track, like something off of _99%_ or even
_storm the studio_ updated for the 90's. i dunno - i guess i miss the lush
textures that the noise and improv generated on SS. the freddy fresh mix
has that MBM "not quite jungle, yet not quite hip hop" feel to it. it's a
good remix, with some funky breaks and mellower sections. at 8.30+ a tad
long, though. the j saul kane mixes are on par with his previous output:
well done. indescribable, but good. :) and the jack dangers mix is better
than the original: much less static, more bouyant and groovy, like i
expect from jack. some funny vocal samples, too. :)
7/10; 3/10 on the wankometer (thrill kill kult beat jack to a few of the
samples)
NEWT : _Phaseshifting_ ep (Quantum Loop)
if you've heard the NEWT album (_-273C_), you know the sound. if not, then
i've gotta try and describe it, not an easy task. :P remember the first
time you saw _Alien_, or _Blade Runner_, or read jg ballard, or heard
"second bad vilbel"? kinda like an alien race was speaking to you, the
aliens being humanity? this ep focuses on the more drum'n'bass aspect of
the NEWT sound: spacey, clanky, robotic, otherworldly.
7 tracks, one new, the rest off of _-273C_. 4 remixes by NEWT (in case you
didn't know, NEWT is one half of haujobb. (daniel myer) and andreas mayer
(all of forma tadre)); two outside remixers. the remix of "-273C" by myer
is incredible. drum'n'bass from deep space. same goes for the remix of
"hull break" and the new track, "patina". the remixes of "abyss" and
"phaseshifting" have a kind of broken spaceship underwater feel (like
crichton's _sphere_; book, not movie). deep, wide, churning.
the outside remixers do a good job, too. a remix of "ostad" is presented
by eskil simonsson of swedish sequencer distortion industrial band
Covenant. a real builder, this one. very good. a near trumpet solo at the
4minute mark fills the minute-long break before we're thrown back into the
fray. awesome. and another remix of "phaseshifting" by, get this, UFO! of
the Phunkateck drum'n'bass crew. okay. never heard of him, but with a name
like that i was expecting some really bland techstep or something else
shitty. truth is, is a rather distorted hard-edged darkcore-ish track that
surprised me by how good it was. it wasn't great, but i went into that one
with low expectations. :)
final word: at ep price and 52 minutes, how could you lose?
9/10; wankometer 2/10 (still can't get over that "Phunkateck" business).
*
####
a disturbance in a system. ####
laerm. @voicenet.com ####
we decide what's wrong or right, we'd rather lose than fight/we're going
down/without us you don't get no kicks, without us you do not exist/we
are going down