REVIEWS

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Meat Beat Manifesto
AutoImmune

Metropolis Records

Posted: Friday, March 21, 2008
By: David E. Flick

While Meat Beat Manifesto certainly doesn't need any introduction, it must be said that AutoImmune is the perfect pulse on everything going on in electronic music in 2008. Mastermind Jack Dangers has a resume most musicians dream of and there's a reason why he's such a prolific producer/remixer/musician. Anyone who is gun-shy about Meat Beat Manifesto's relevance in music - or perhaps you weren't impressed with In Dub or R.U.O.K.? - fear not, for AutoImmune is a return to form and is without a doubt perhaps one of the most solid MBM albums to date. Big beat and jungle are certainly familiar territories with classic releases like Radio Babylon and Actual Sounds + Voices, and AutoImmune certainly brings these sounds to light as well; however, the real focus on this album is on hip-hop and dubstep. The band has always paid attention to low-end bass frequencies and dubstep is a relatively new style of music hitting the U.S. shores that seems to be an injection of inspiration for Jack Dangers. Standout tracks like "Children of Earth" will give you one of the most massive bass line grooves that give other dubstep artists like Scorn and Vex'd a run for their money. This track will show you exactly how easy it is for Dangers to mold the genre into his own sound. The hip-hop influence is also a return to form as we hear three standout tracks with guest MCs Daddy Sandy on "I Hold the Mic!" and Azeem on "Young Cassius." One track that will have you jumping up and down is "Solid Waste" in which Jack Danger raps at a rapid-fire pace about the condition of the environment and the media manipulation of current events. AutoImmune is a gem for the dubstep tracks alone, but in true MBM fashion, there are more avant-garde tracks like "Colors of Sound," where it's just an experimental masterpiece of analog synthesizers and various other electronic gadgets that even has parts that sound like R2-D2 making love to a Speak-n-Spell. Anyone who thinks MBM has gone stale or hasn't enjoyed the last few records should really give this CD a chance; it's one of the freshest, most up-to-date recordings out there right now.