Continuing their exploration of the more experimental side of electronic music the Swindon-born-San Fransciso-perfected industrial dance duo release umpteenth studio record ‘At The Center’ – spelled, yes you got it, the good old American way. Why? Lord knows. But then it’s not unreasonable to forget your roots if you’re from Swindon – home to such vicarious talent as Diana Dors and XTC – although it does have an excellent bus service and robust council recovery plan by all accounts.
What does all this have to do with the Meat Beat Manifesto? Well about as much as ‘At The Center’ has to do with industrial hardcore dance – a tag the duo have endured since their elaborate birth on the Wax Trax! Label in the late eighties.
Widely acknowledged as innovators in the electronic music scene, and with a healthy hotpot of past production credits including Public Enemy, David Bowie, Orbital, Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne, Bush, Depeche Mode, and Tower Of Power, MBM resume their mission to digest and reconstitute the leftfield titbits of techno, trip-hop, hip-hop, and jungle with a resoundingly jazzy and flute-icious collection of tracks with titles as obstinate and ethno-cosmic as ‘Murita Cycles’, ‘Musica Classica’ and Granulation1’.
Ably supported by Craig Taborn on keyboards, Bad Plus skinsman Dave King, and Peter Gordon on flute, the album certainly peaks rather early with the wriggly and flirtation flautfest that is ‘Wild’ before blooming entirely with the heavy cut n’paste grooves of ‘Flute Thang’, the infuriating Blue Note time-signatures of ‘Murita Cycles’ and the amusing spliced narrative of ‘Want Ads One’.
Personally I think we need more exchanges of flutes than fluids in music today – and this little curio satisfies that peculiar need just nicely.