Meat Beat Manifesto :: Opaque Couché (Flexidisc)

There’s an air of doom around us. A certain darkness, an indiscernible color, a feeling of revulsion and repelling forces. The mind begs to understand what exactly it is beholding without being able to grasp at anything with certainty. This numinous and vague entity has a name that only deepens the mystery for those who encounter it. This is the horror of Opaque Couché, dubbed the ugliest color in the world. Fortunately a master of the arcane and weird has taken it upon himself to work this color into a sonic palette. On Opaque Couché, Meat Beat Manifesto (currently comprised of founding member Jack Dangers and Ben Stokes) guide us through a land of sampled rhythms, juddering bass, and strange synthetic sounds.

An air of doom around us

There’s an air of doom around us. A certain darkness, an indiscernible color, a feeling of revulsion and repelling forces. The mind begs to understand what exactly it is beholding without being able to grasp at anything with certainty. This numinous and vague entity has a name that only deepens the mystery for those who encounter it. This is the horror of Opaque Couché, dubbed the ugliest color in the world. Fortunately a master of the arcane and weird has taken it upon himself to work this color into a sonic palette. On Opaque Couché, Meat Beat Manifesto (currently comprised of founding member Jack Dangers and Ben Stokes) guide us through a land of sampled rhythms, juddering bass, and strange synthetic sounds.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jack Dangers, presumably about this album. Instead, over the course of eight hours (yes, eight hours!) we talked about everything but the new record! Suffice it to say a 70,000 word article about MBM isn’t feasible here, but eventually we buckled down and discussed the matter at hand. The interview/profile is forthcoming.

The choice of Opaque Couché as both the title and color of the album was a bit of a rebuke of poseurs and detractors, of which a veteran like Jack Dangers has encountered over the almost 40 years of his musical career. “It was taking the piss a bit, innit?” says Dangers. For a piss-take, Opaque Couché is a dark excursion into the cruel joke of the modern world.

There’s something about MBM’s music I have never been able to put my finger on and have tried relentlessly as a musician, reviewer and listener to achieve. I thought at first it was an avoidance of drum machines in favor of samples. “No, we used an 808 on “God O.D.”,” says Dangers. Crap. Subsequent efforts to isolate this missing, invisible element fail miserably. Throughout all eight hours of our conversation I fail to locate it despite numerous attempts. Is it the rough edge of the sound, a constant over the years? I still don’t know. What is known, however, is that Opaque Couché delves into some very new, very dark territory while still bearing the recognizable elements of Jack Dangers’ work.

The old becomes new again

“Untroduction” opens the album with dark drones as a hollow-voiced man appears to be readying participants for a science experiment. “Pin Drop” is a bass heavy exercise featuring the classic amen break. “I was trying to do something different with it, yeah?” says Dangers. “I know it’s been used and abused and overused but I took it so it evolves over the course of the song.” Strange to think of such a weird primordial sound as evolving, but in the hands and mind of a master like Dangers—the old becomes new again.

“[Ear-Lips]” (originally featured on the self-released 2016 Tour EP) turns the dark up higher with low, rumbling horns of doom over a scratchy beat and earth-moving bass as a nonsense rap weaves in and out of the stereo spectrum. “That’s actually me rapping,” says Dangers. “We ran it through a filter to get that sound.” The track “Agelast” (re-purposed from the incredible KASM02 EP on Skam, 2015) is a slight lift from the dark mood, with burbling arpeggios and the MBM choir sound first heard on Subliminal Sandwich making its first appearance here. “Hailing Frequencies Open” is a short trip into ambient territory where looped rhythms and drones meet and bump against one another like clouds before a storm. “Bolinas” is a startling and wonderful departure for MBM with acoustic guitar, light airy vocal choir and a 6/8 beat. “The town of Bolinas is a weird little place,” says Dangers. “I like going there. The locals do things like tear down road signs or turn them in the other direction to keep tourists out. My kind of place!” In the track “Call Sign,” more breakbeats are wielded to ramble and spread as airy samples roll in like anvil headed clouds while more sharp synthetic arpeggios perform an alien arabesque.

“Moving Pulse” rolls in on aggressive, distorted drums and atonal synth pulses as a robotic vocoded voice raps “We got a moving, a moving pulse, my moving pulse,” crooning to its cybernetic Shakira in a lively workout for brain and body. “No Design” resurrects a classic MBM sample for a dubby, skittering breakbeat excursion into freak-jazz dancehall territory where sirens, ghostly voices and at least three chopped and screwed drum loops intermingle. “C/2015 V2” comes in on a looping, repeating synth line as drones are layered one upon the other for a bewildering and all too short interlude. “CarrierFreq” (which also happens to be Jack Dangers’ YouTube alias) is the deep dope machine funk Kraftwerk wishes it had been making all these years—where deep vocoded raps meander above thunderous drums and synth arpeggios as the slow beat pounds its way across the rough sonic landscape.

“Forced to Lie” (also from the 2016 Tour EP) uses the sampled words of Wolfman Jack juxtaposed and a sold funky beat layered over a bed of numinous sound at once light and vague while a chorus of cloned voices from Dangers himself sing the title line. “Break Test” pits several breakbeats against one another as a deep sine-wave bass trundles along in time, each beat deftly sliced and diced in variations while a man details his excursions into Bob Dylan’s trash. “Present for Sally” returns from the KASM02 EP, its solid 4×4 beat and noise chugging along in fine style. “Critical Soul Vibrations” brings Dangers (as a junglist) into the mix, where the drum and bass clash with dancehall sound effects. The album closes with the sublime “Wandering Soul #11,” an all too short ambient piece depicting a dark place where souls and sounds wander, leaving one with the hope Dangers will do more like this in future works.

Opaque Couché gives old and new MBM fans a great deal to unpack. It’s on repeat play for me, where every day as I listen, new elements are heard and experienced. So set your receivers and dig in because although it may be ugly to some “Opaque Couche” is beautiful to those who know where to find it.

Opaque Couché is available on Flexidisc via Virtual Label.