Dum Pendebat Filius

Last Sunday’s MBM offerings don’t seem to have been especially popular, but a few of you downloaded all of them. I’m offering you a special treat this Sunday: the 1993 “Peel Session” EP (Strange Fruit Records CD DEI8356-2), in its entirety. These tracks were performed on BBC Radio One on 13 December 1992.

1. Fire Number 9 (5.17 MB, 05:38)
2. Soul Driver (3.88 MB, 04:14)
3. Drop (3.43 MB, 03:44)
4. Radio Babylon (5.11 MB, 05:35)

A thing that seems odd to me: Back in the early 1990s, when I was at the height of my industrial-music phase, I didn’t like Meat Beat Manifesto. I suspect it’s because I expected, and wanted, all industrial music to sound more or less like Front 242 or Thrill Kill Kult. I remember buying “Storm the Studio” on cassette tape in 1992 or 1993, listening to it once or twice, and being bored and displeased with it.

Now I consider “Storm the Studio” to be an absolute all-time classic, probably one of the top three LPs ever issued on the Wax Trax! label (what are the other two? 242’s “Front by Front” and maybe the Revolting Cocks’ “Big Sexyland”). It’s only been over the past five years or so that I’ve been able to grasp the central fact that MBM was not a second-tier industrial act, but a ground-breaking pioneer in the larger world of electronic music. The older I get, the more I appreciate Meat Beat Manifesto.