Meat Beat Manifesto :: Answers Come In Dreams (Metropolis / Hydrogen Dukebox)

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Over the years, Dangers has inspired hip-hop, dubstep and trip-hop, but A.C.I.D. is none of the above. Using the tools of his past endeavors, Dangers pulls us into a dream from which we may not be able to wake.

Do 808’s dream of electric heartbeats?

Meat Beat Manifesto’s Answers Come in Dreams, named after the Meat Beat remix of Coil’s “The Snow,” is more than likely a homage to Coil. The title alone makes one wonder, knowing that Trent Reznor named his latest project How to Destroy Angels (another Coil reference) and that Jack Dangers has worked with Reznor and with Coil, if this is a response to Reznor’s own homage. This album, however, is so much more than homage, response or rebuttal. Over the years, Dangers has inspired hip-hop, dubstep and trip-hop, but A.C.I.D. is none of the above. Using the tools of his past endeavors, Dangers pulls us into a dream from which we may not be able to wake.

From the moment you press Play on A.C.I.D., you cannot mistake the sound for anyone but Jack Dangers. This is, however, not a return, recollection or reminiscence. Meat Beat Manifesto’s signature heavy beats, distortions, bass and hypnotic rhythms are omnipresent. However, while it may seem like a return to form, a throwback to the early ’90s, Dangers obviously does not believe in looking back.

The album opens with “Luminol,” which plays like a drum machine’s dream of motion. Dangers uses this track to pull us down, out of human consciousness, enticing us to sleep with the robots, to become cyborg, but this is no lullaby. Ensconced in the trance-like (though this is by no means your father’s trance music) atmosphere of the album, we come to “Let Me Set,” and we feel the drum machine’s heart beating with our own. This heartbeat rhythm fades and surges back again throughout the album, breathing digital life into our flawed, human ears.

Vocal samples, though used throughout, remain buried under beats, bass lines and wobbles. One of them, recycled from Storm The Studio, is featured on the track “Token Words” where a gentleman’s voice implores us, “Let me have silence, always, in the center of the shouting. That is essential.” This request for dead air in the midst of noise, submerged in instrumentation, comes to us like a whisper in the next room. Like a sleeper’s subconscious incorporates a nearby conversation into dream, spinning it into the context of dream; making it, at once, more sinister and more soothing than the speaker could ever know. Finally, “Chimie Du Son” closes the album with something akin to down tempo dubstep, daring you to wake up from this dream, but wouldn’t you just rather hit Repeat and dream it all again?

Answers Come In Dreams will be released in the US October 12th, 2010 on Metropolis (CD/Digital) and November 1st, 2010 on Hydrogen Dukebox (CD/DVD/Vinyl). Jack Dangers also created video’s for each of the tracks featured on A.C.I.D. to accompany the album and will be available as a DVD with the purchase of either format at Hydrogen Dukebox.

MBM have also released a 4-track EP entitled Totally Together and is a must have teaser out now on Metropolis.