MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO AUTOIMMUNE ALBUM METROPOLIS RELEASE: APRIL 9, 2008 REVIEW: MAY 2, 2008

A bit of this, a bit of that, dub stepping to the forward bow we find Jack Dangers (AKA Meat Beat Manifesto) in the year 2008 releasing his newest work "Autoimmune". I'll state it openly, I loved "Actual Sounds and Voices". More than any other album by him, it showcased what he liked to do best: free form jazz fed through a massive bank of samplers, effects and processors. Storm the studio, that album truly did.

This one, however, does not. Perhaps it's because I've listened to Squarepusher do much more fluidly and authoritatively, what Dangers is attempting on this album. I'll give the man his due as several tracks on "Autoimmune" are impressive rhythmic work outs that shake my apartment to it's foundations.

Here's the problem, though: there is diversity in one's output and then there's just leaving the top off the blender, letting all manner of influences and approaches fly and finally just hoping something sticks. Not a lot is with this album. I play it through again and again but it leaves no lasting impression aside from "my, what an impressive sound library Meat Beat have". It's all there, it's just that the application is somewhere else... stymied by too much scattershot broadbanded obtuse studio wankery. There, I said it.

Meat Beat Manifesto, over the years, I have not been much of a fan of. His mixes for Coil's "The Snow" I absolutely despised. But I will say this, no one else aside from Curve man Dean Garcia's Headcase project is taking these kinds of chances messing with people's aural perceptions, this is not an album full of the classic 99% era sort of club killers he's famed for. Rather, "Autoimmune" is just a collection of tunes that sometimes make one's head bob: "I take the mic" or space out to. This does not make me want to go out and buy his back catalogue and it certainly does not make me a fan. It keeps Jack Dangers where he's always been to me: not terrible, not half-assed - just blasé. Jenkinson is just too adept in this "genre" to escape comparisons to and outperformance by.

PETER MARKS