Storm the Studio (Remastered)

Meat Beat Manifesto

     

Both 1989 and 1990 were great years for dance music experimentation all across genres. Meat Beat Manifesto's "Storm The Studio", from early 1989, was the greatest release ever on industrial dance label Wax Trax! "Storm The Studio" was and, to a degree, still is a gateway for people into more swarthy dance music to get into trip-hop and hip-hop, due to "Storm The Studio"'s conspicious marriage of noise and breakbeats. The only relative weak point would be Jack Dangers' vocals. However, they complement the music well as far as "Storm The Studio"'s awkward frenzy and ferocity go.

Years later, dance music stars Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers would be very open to their homage to Meat Beat Manifesto. One can hear each's "Storm The Studio"'s imprint in their earliest work.

Meat Beat Manifesto would go on to produce a variety of albums, none of which were bad and all of which had a variety of goodness. "Storm The Studio" is still the first and most powerful of all of them. It is also the loudest and strangest of all of them.

SPECIAL NOTES ABOUT THIS REMASTER:

* Thankfully, this is *not* a Loudness War style remaster (meaning, loudness in an grating, clipping way.) It's a clean remaster that has clearly added more power to the bass frequencies, for maximum dance potential. While there's a charm to the original trebley release of "Storm The Studio", the remaster is a very respectful one.

* "Strap Down, Pt. 3" has been reintroduced! Having only been available on the U.S. vinyl version of this album in 1989 before this remaster on iTunes, its return is very welcome, as it's one of the stronger tracks on the album. That said, there is a minor edit in this track from the original: the introductory spoken bit about "the beat" does not appear in the remaster. Whether this is an oversight or a sample clearance issue doesn't take anything special away from this track.