The origins of various sounds within the world of electronic music are sometimes difficult to pin down. Calling any one artist or group the first to do something is to invite a barrage of skepticism and incredulity. But this afternoon I’ll risk it and pin a title on our tech school subject: Jack Dangers, AKA Meat Beat Manifesto is the originator of breakbeat jungle. There. I said it. Meat Beat Manifesto represents one of the earliest, most innovative peaks in the experimentation with chopping up beats and samples.

So let’s start at the beginning:

The band started in Jack Dangers’ home town Swindon, England, and consisted of Jack and friend Jonny Stephens. The two had previously been in a short-lived band called Perennial Divide. The new band, Meat Beat Manifesto, got off to a rather rocky start, with the entirety of the material for their first album being destroyed in a studio fire in early 1988. The pair pushed through and released the first official MBM full length in 1989 entitled Storm the Studio. The album was distinctly industrial in its sound, and MBM is often labeled an Industrial act, despite subsequent albums veering quite far from that sound. It was apparently informed a great deal by the band’s surroundings – their home of Swindon was an industrial town west of London, and is the former home of England’s rail works. Dangers and his family were rail employees until massive layoffs in the mid-80s put them out of work. The decision to work in electronic music as also influenced by Dangers’ crippling arthritis, which prevented him from being able to play many conventional instruments.

The 1990 release of the second MBM album, 99%, had the band displaying a more techno-informed set of music. I start almost every installment this radio show with a track from 99% entitled Hello Teenage America.

Meat Beat’s early tracks provided source material for many up-and-coming electronic acts of the early ‘90s. Meat Beat Manifesto samples and clips can be found in a track on The Prodigy’s first album, in an early track by Future Sound of London, and in the Chemical Brothers’ track “Song to the Siren”. Dangers has been very amicable about this borrowing, being a heavy sampler himself.

The third MBM, Satyricon, met with arguably the greatest critical success of any of their releases to date. Punctuated by the hit single Mindstream, the album was in many ways similar to 99%, but with a more mature sound, with immaculate production to match Dangers’ evolving lyrics. Sci-fi samples abound, and remixes of various tracks from the album are numerous. MBM toured extensively in promotion of the album with fellow electronic artists and collaborators Orbital.

1996 saw the release of Subliminal Sandwich, the first MBM recorded in the US, as Dangers moved to San Francisco in 1993. The double-disc album is home so some of the most experimental MBM tracks to date. The second disc is a testament to electronic virtuosity, with tracks like Madbomber/The Woods displaying a command of studio prowess that few others have been able to match since. It was poorly received by critics, and did not sell well, as it didn’t include any pop-friendly tracks like Satyricon’s Mindstream. It was also the first album by MBM released on Trent Reznor’s nothing label, which would be MBM’s home until 2002.

Subsequent albums would continue in this vein, though with greater degrees of success. 1998’s Actual Sounds + Voices spawned the hit single “Prime Audio Soup”, which was featured in the first Matrix film. MBM would also frequently collaborate with fellow electronic experimenters The Orb on a regular basis, with both groups releasing remixes of each others’ work.

The album RUOK was released in 2002, and was an album that displayed the evolution of Dangers’ studio and composition skill. Heavily represented on the album are sounds derived from an EMS Synthi 100, a massive synthesizer unit made by Electronic Music Studios of London. The machine was manufactured in 1974 and cost $25,000. Only 30 units were built during the 1970s and 1980s. One owned by the BBC was responsible for sounds used in science fiction mainstays Doctor Who and H2G2. Dangers has long been a proponent of analog and antiquated sound equipment, and all his albums feature a great number of sounds derived from his collection of old electronics.

The most recent MBM album, At the Center, was released in May 2005. The album is a collaboration between Jack Dangers and jazz musicians Peter Gordon, Dave King, and Craig Taborn, and thereby represents a large stylistic change for MBM from previous efforts.

Jack Dangers and MBM have influenced untold numbers of electronic musicians since the first MBM tracks hit the street. Musicians who cite Dangers or have worked with him include David Bowie, The Orb, Nine Inch Nails, Orbital, Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, David Byrne, 808 State, DJ Spooky, and many more.

MBM Live shows are a cataclysm of art and sound, featuring heavy use of spliced film footage, dancing performances on stage, and use of sound frequencies that have had sometimes devastating effects on the audience: at a performance in the early ‘90s, the bass frequency and volume used at a show at the Brixton Academy reportedly produced spontaneous intestinal discomfort for a huge number of attendees. A description of another show from an article on MBM: “All seven dancers were decked out in spiked latex body outfits, resembling a cross between H.R. Giger’s Alien monster and a cactus plant. Adams, swinging a rubber mace on a chain, wore an exceptionally outrageous costume with a spiked latex codpiece. The sweaty throng was completely leveled by the hallucinogenic experience. Meat Beat’s unstoppable onslaught of beats and surreal appeal was at its peak.”

Dangers is also an outspoken environmentalist, gun control advocate, and vegan, having participated in several compilations put out by groups advocating the vegan lifestyle. He and his wife still reside near San Francisco.