Midweek And It's A Bit Off-Centre


I am a longtime fan of Jack Dangers and his recorded output as Meat Beat Manifesto. Anyone who has read my ramblings for more than a year will know there's a MBM post coming every few months or so. There is something about his big, sonic boom breakbeat dubscapes that continue to appeal to me even tho' his style has remained essentially the same for the last decade. Last year saw Jack hook up with some jazz cats to record an album for indie label Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, a collaborative series of records with a revolving cast of young up and coming hep cats from the worlds of electronics and jazz. The resulting MBM album was called At The Center. Recorded with drummer Dave King (The Bad Plus, Happy Apple, Halloween Alaska), pianist Craig Taborn and flautist Peter Gordon, it was a happy mix of Jack's boombastics and jazzy noodling. I loved it, and I also dug the ensuing EP Off-Centre. Leadoff track Wild (Rmx) is indeed a remix of one of the LP tracks, and is a shuffle-y, Fender Rhodes laden groover chock full of the trademark MBM sounds, played live instead of sampled of course. I love the key runs on this track. The rest of the EP is made up of a couple of tracks that were previously available as amazon.com exclusives and two live tracks. Shotgun! (Blast To The Brain) (Live) is another track from the LP, and it is given a hardass makeover by Jack's crack live band - Lynn Farmer on drums and Mark Pistel on the sampler, and Jack and Ben Stokes on the video samplers. If you've never seen MBM live and you get a chance I would recommend going - it's a unique audio visual experience.