Meat Beat Manifesto, Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin.
This was perhaps the most criminally under populated gig I’ve ever been
to. There were approximately 30 people in total and that’s including
the boys on stage and
those at the merchandise stall. The poor turnout did not mean poor
quality from Meat Beat Manifesto. Jack Dangers and Ben Stokes were in
fine form. To make up for the fact that the live
show consists of two men twiddling knobs they shoved two big screens at
the front of the stage. The visuals were incredibly well synched to the
music. Footage was culled from old Sci-Fi and cult eighties movies was
spliced with news items and random pieces of film. The dialogue from
the movies was sampled and processed.
What impressed me was that
Stokes appeared to be chopping and changing footage live. He would mix
in video of Jack Dangers singing as it happened and then add effects to
the image. I found it impossible to look away. The most memorable part
of the visuals was close ups of George Bush followed quickly by the
Appalachian banjo kid from Deliverance, both mixed into the nuclear bomb rodeo sequence of Dr. Strangelove.
I only recognised three songs out of the whole night. “Radio Babylon”
was an obvious crowd pleaser along with “God O.D.” and “Prime Audio
Soup”. The sound was clear and powerful, the tables resonated with the
low end from the beats. A couple of tracks from the Tino Corp project
were played, what I later learned to be a track from Halloween Dub
was particularly thrilling. The very dark reggae of the track was very
intense, it was like a Gollum made from the afterbirth of “Radio
Babylon”. I have nothing but total respect to the duo for playing over half an hour after
the venue’s curfew for what was really only a handful of people.
It’s nice to see performers with some respect for their audience.