99% is the record that significantly expanded Meat Beat Manifesto’s audience by narrowing the band’s sound. It was somehow smaller, cleaner, and less ambitious than the records before it, but it managed to give the band a voice that a wider audience could understand.
Play It Again Sam (EU) / Mute (US)
Coming hot on the heels of Armed Audio Warfare, 99% sounded so much more refined, restrained, and focused that I initially mistook it as the band coming into their own. It was unquestionably more approachable than anything that they had put out before. The blasts of noise and free-wheeling experimentation were replaced with sampled hooks, harmonizing vocals, and pop song structures that still sounded like MBM, but a more toned-down version. The shift from Armed Audio Warfare to 99% was dramatic, making the former seem more like a sketchbook or rough draft to the latter.
“Now” is a bona fide pop song with a terrific intro, a solid groove, and a great hook for a chorus. A few years after 99%‘s release, college radio and eventually commercial radio devoted airtime to bands like The Prodigy who were making songs like this, but like most of Meat Beat’s discography, 99% was simply too far ahead of the curve to profit from that exposure. Another of the album‘s singles, “Psyche-Out,” helped to pave the way for electronica to meet the mainstream. It is constructed of verses and choruses and a bridge with layers of samples and synthesizers pulsating, and it’s a track that anticipated the kind of tunes that the Crystal Method and the Chemical Brothers popularized not much later. At the time, Meat Beat had a wonderful and engaging live show, lots of underground DJ support, and even a few music videos that made their way to the masses by way of traded MTV's 120 Minutes, VHS tapes, and public access music video shows before the era of YouTube would make such things seem quaint. But the music world was beginning to get caught up in a new brand of rock music, so there wasn’t yet a platform for forward-thinking electronic pop music.
The album has its share of instrumental tracks too, though it’s easy to forget that the songs don’t have words when the samples work so well to provide the narrative. “Hello Teenage America” takes a jazzy piano riff and marries it with thick electro percussion, creating a unique hybrid of styles that might be considered a precursor to acid jazz. “Hallucination Generation” hearkens back a bit to the kind of collage-based songs from Meat Beat’s earlier work, but when it kicks into full gear, it sounds crisp and funky, as if the rough edges had been finely polished. The record is still fun and exploratory and a little bit unpredictable, but it never quite steers off the track the way that Armed Audio Warfare did. Or perhaps more precisely, the track for 99% is just a bit more narrow, so it feels less dangerous but no less entertaining.
99% is an album full of songs that I danced to and sang along with in my youth—something that can’t be said for its predecessors. It spawned singles and remixes galore and it helped the band gain a foothold in burgeoning techno culture, leading to an eventual mashup knockoff in the form of “Tainted Cash” (Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” mixed with MBM‘s “Radio Babylon.”) It’s hard for me not to think of 99% as Meat Beat taking it deliberate step away from the world of art music and into the world of club music. But songs like “Dogstar Man” and “Deviate” are still punchy, aggressive, a little subversive, and full of the kind of bite showcased in “Strap Down” and “I Got the Fear.” Though it’s a more successful club record than Armed Audio Warfare, it’s still got a handful of surprisingly risky tracks that skate along the edge of post modern disco and noise.
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