Fans of the music group Meat Beat Manifesto have sighed with inter-connected online relief with the recent release of the new album Autoimmune. ‘There was some pretty heavy rumours going around’, said MBM KLUB spokesperson Tim ‘Death’ Whinson. ‘Some blog had said that there was going to be changes, that the sound was going to be developed in some way. And that’s something we won’t tolerate’.
In fact, the fear has been ungrounded. The new album sounds pretty much the same as every album released by the band in over a decade. Tim explains over a burger at the local McDonald’s: ‘You get used to something. You rely on it to be the same. It means something to know exactly what comes next, to be able to know there will be a shortwave radio sample coming up at the end of the next bar – and it’s there. The world seems balanced. And fair.’
But surely listeners might want to hear refinements, developments, new ideas? Self confessed ‘lunatic fan’ Jesse Hartbutt disagrees, with low level wailing and a spastic head motion. ‘No. No. No. No change ever. If you want change, you find another band. You transfer your trust there. But MY band, no, it stays the same.’ She pauses for thought. ‘Or I hunt them down’.
We asked Tim to describe what it was that he expected. ‘Well at the start of the CD there always has to be an intro section, with some shortwave radio stations through reverb. Then there are high pitched filter sweeps through dub echoes. They can add a drum machine loop – but not too loud. A voice from an old movie has to mutter some heavy dialogue. That section has to stop with a big analogue delay and then join up with the next section which has to start with a big funky drummer sample. Then a bass loop. Only then can they bring in samples from a hilarious hard to find 70’s op shop record. Not before. Now we can have the shortwave radio samples back. There has to be a slight pause before we get the ragga vocals. This has to repeat. I mean it’s much more defined than that, but I’m keeping it simple for you.’
Surely this is prescriptive to the point of autism? ‘Yeah well I’m proud of that spectrum. As is everybody I know’.
To be fair it’s not just the MBM fanatics that have strong expectations. We talked to Bertrand & Gertrude Shuddle, a couple that are dedicated to downloading experimental music from the net. ‘I have 600 hours of experimental music stored on my hard drive as FLAC files’ says Bertrand. ‘I have catagorised it into Jazz Experimental, Classic Experimental, Japanese Noise and Minimal Synth’. So what of those recordings that don’t fit these catagories? ‘I delete them’, he sneers. ‘They are not experimental enough’.
Next week we’ll be looking at the new boxed LP set from Throbbing Gristle – ’52 weeks live at the Cheese Factory’. Until then, this has been Alternative Music News, brought to you by Pepsi.