:: GussetBLOG ::

:: Thursday, October 06, 2005 ::

Gig Review: Meat Beat Manifesto @ Cargo, London, 30.09.05

It been nice years since I last saw Meat Beat Manifesto, and I think that may have been the last time they were in the UK. Back in '96, at the Bristol Bierkeller, there was a disappointing turnout, of only about 80 people, for an absolutely jaw dropping show. As I remember it was fairly large live band, live drums, the lot, fronted by the founding father and multi-instrumentalist, Jack Dangers.

I remember totally falling for MBM, having only heard an old cassettes before that gig. I've been hunting down every thing they have released, including numerous side projects, ever since. In particular, Helter Skelter was a track that I instantly new I had to own, although I didn't work out what it actually was until I got my hands on the 99% album. Subliminal Sandwich became my album of the summer that year, and has stayed among my favourite albums ever since. (I remember putting it in my top 10 favourite albums that I wrote for a student paper back in my uni days)

So, it's with some considerable expectation Meat Beat return to the UK, for one date only. The audience is larger, and very mixed, with people who look like they have been following the band since the early industrial scene days standing along side clubbers who probably have no idea who they are watching. As I perch on the front of the stage to take photos, a guy with a face full of piercing nudges me and asks, "How long have you waited for this?" with a huge grin on his face. I think most of us feel like that.

Two hours of MBM, and just catching the end of Orb legend Alex Patterson's DJ set, make this well worthy of the travel and effort getting to it. It seems a shame that most of the audience don't dance much, but then I don't dance much either so I can't really complain. (Although the dancing really seems to start as soon as Meat Beat finish, like there was anyway any DJ was going to follow that!)

All the classics are thrown into the set early, including I Am Electro, Hello Teenage America, Helter Skelter, Radio Babylon, Genocide, Nuclear Bomb, Edge Of No Control... Towards the end we get some DHS material (House of God) and some Tino breaks (from Halloween Dub).

The setup this time around is now laptop based. With Jack joined by his Tino collaborator Ben "DHS" Stokes, they use two laptops each to control live audio and video, with all of the video clips synched to music and being triggered live. The detail is fantastic, down to the level of live video effects synched with the reverb on the audio. Then for vocal tracks, Jack sings/raps/rants into a small camera that allows his processed image to stare out at the audience, all the while the video being as heavily processed as the audio. Compared with most of the other pressing-play laptop performances I've seen, this really seemed like something special. The bar just got higher.



I have another film with a couple of odd shots left in the camera. Check back later for more. Hi-res versions available, please ask if you want them. Published under the Creative Commons licence; some rights reserved. Please link back if you use any of them. Cheers.

:: Dan 6.10.05 [Arc] [2 comments] [links to this post]    ::
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