Meat Beat Manifesto - Satyricon

One of the most forward-thinking and genuinely influential electronic albums of the early 1990s, back on wax for the first time in over thirty years. Originally released in 1992, Satyricon marked a decisive leap forward for Jack Dangers and Jonny Stephens, moving away from the abrasive garage-rock chaos of their earlier work and into something more refined, more cinematic, and considerably more strange.

The album takes the listener on a hallucinatory journey through high-fidelity breakbeats, deep dubby bass, and meticulously assembled samples drawn from an eclectic range of sources including John Carpenter's science fiction film Dark Star and David Cronenberg's body horror classic Videodrome, the latter lending the record a queasy, paranoid undertow that perfectly suits Dangers' vision of electronic music as something visceral and unsettling rather than merely functional. The breakbeats hit with a pulsating urgency that places the album firmly in the lineage of the most physical and physically demanding dance music of its era, while the ambient and cinematic textures that move between them open the whole thing up into something far more expansive and disorienting.

The influence was immediate and deep. The Chemical Brothers, Orbital, and a generation of big beat and electronica producers have all pointed to Satyricon as a formative listening experience, and it is easy to hear why. "Mindstream" and "Edge of No Control" remain two of the most compelling and distinctive tracks in the entire Meat Beat Manifesto catalog. This PIAS reissue, presenting the album in a single LP format on high-quality wax, is a long overdue opportunity to experience one of the defining electronic records of its decade in the format it deserves.