From laerm Sent Thu, Jul 9th 1998, 18:47
Meat Beat Manifesto : _Acid Again_ cd5 (Nothing) okay, admittedly, i love MBM and _subliminal sandwich_ completely blew me away. however, on this, jack does a more classic styled MBM track. gone are the jazz improvs and noise, back to the beats. on here we have the original and four versions: the regular "acid again", a remix by freddy fresh, two remixes by depth charge (j saul kane), and "dub again" by jack. the regular version is, honestly, a tad bland. it does sound like a classic MBM track, like something off of _99%_ or even _storm the studio_ updated for the 90's. i dunno - i guess i miss the lush textures that the noise and improv generated on SS. the freddy fresh mix has that MBM "not quite jungle, yet not quite hip hop" feel to it. it's a good remix, with some funky breaks and mellower sections. at 8.30+ a tad long, though. the j saul kane mixes are on par with his previous output: well done. indescribable, but good. :) and the jack dangers mix is better than the original: much less static, more bouyant and groovy, like i expect from jack. some funny vocal samples, too. :) 7/10; 3/10 on the wankometer (thrill kill kult beat jack to a few of the samples) NEWT : _Phaseshifting_ ep (Quantum Loop) if you've heard the NEWT album (_-273C_), you know the sound. if not, then i've gotta try and describe it, not an easy task. :P remember the first time you saw _Alien_, or _Blade Runner_, or read jg ballard, or heard "second bad vilbel"? kinda like an alien race was speaking to you, the aliens being humanity? this ep focuses on the more drum'n'bass aspect of the NEWT sound: spacey, clanky, robotic, otherworldly. 7 tracks, one new, the rest off of _-273C_. 4 remixes by NEWT (in case you didn't know, NEWT is one half of haujobb. (daniel myer) and andreas mayer (all of forma tadre)); two outside remixers. the remix of "-273C" by myer is incredible. drum'n'bass from deep space. same goes for the remix of "hull break" and the new track, "patina". the remixes of "abyss" and "phaseshifting" have a kind of broken spaceship underwater feel (like crichton's _sphere_; book, not movie). deep, wide, churning. the outside remixers do a good job, too. a remix of "ostad" is presented by eskil simonsson of swedish sequencer distortion industrial band Covenant. a real builder, this one. very good. a near trumpet solo at the 4minute mark fills the minute-long break before we're thrown back into the fray. awesome. and another remix of "phaseshifting" by, get this, UFO! of the Phunkateck drum'n'bass crew. okay. never heard of him, but with a name like that i was expecting some really bland techstep or something else shitty. truth is, is a rather distorted hard-edged darkcore-ish track that surprised me by how good it was. it wasn't great, but i went into that one with low expectations. :) final word: at ep price and 52 minutes, how could you lose? 9/10; wankometer 2/10 (still can't get over that "Phunkateck" business). * #### a disturbance in a system. #### laerm. @voicenet.com #### we decide what's wrong or right, we'd rather lose than fight/we're going down/without us you don't get no kicks, without us you do not exist/we are going down