I think calling Meat Beat Manifesto's sound 'horrible' is a little much.
Sure they broke out with a live drum kit, sax, and guitar, but you've got
to admit that the drummer was the shit (in a good shit way 8) ), though.
His drum breaks fit in perfectly with the electronic drum tracks and his
timing was right on IMO. Did you catch the one section of the set
where there was an extended drum track with only low Moog-like bass
over the top? That was some serious Meat Beat funk! (If anyone knows
what the hell I'm talking about here, was that a new cut because I didn't
recognize it from the new double album?). Plus it was kind of cool to
here a more improvisational feel to a lot the Meat Beat classics like
Helter Skelter and Radio Babylon.
I recently saw MBM at their club gig in Brussels (and will be seeing them
again later on in the summer at a Belgian festival). They played only
three or four tracks off the new album, some old favourites and about five
or six "improvisations", were I could actually see Jack starting a drum
loop, the drummer looking real surprised and joining in, followed by the
noisy bits I love so much. At a lot of people at the gig found that they
made their old stuff sound to jazzy and loose, more "swingy" than "dancy".
As for the comparison between MBM and the Chemicals (here we go again !),
the live version of Original Control (part 2) and some others I saw and
heard made the Chemicals sound like "Loops Of Shit", it made them want to
"Go Home (and crawl away)". I saw the Chemicals "live" last year (a 20 min
set, ha) on a festival and could not help but run away and go to the
Shellac set (Mr. Albini rocks !). Maybe they changed their live set by
now, but I really could not care less last year. As for the Chemical
clones appearing, Holland has his in Eboman which I quite amusing, at
least if you are drunk or stoned.
My two bits,
Danny.
P.S. : Listen to Starfish Pool for a change !
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