Jack Dangers: Meat Beat Manifesto Returns | ||
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“The first album I did for Consolidated, ‘Friendly Fascism,’ was edited using the very first version of Sound Design,” says Dangers. “That was the first time I’d ever used a Macintosh. 
“Back then, Consolidated were using a lot of Emax. They had just
gotten into the Macintosh, but their first album had been done on an
Alesis sampler. So, it was pretty lo-fi.“But then after that, they stepped up to using the Mac,” he adds. After working Consolidated’s second album, Dangers and Meat Beat Manifesto toured the U.S. and Europe with the band in 1991. “That started a cycle of doing an album, touring, doing another album, touring and so on… which never really ended,” he says. In 1999, “Prime Audio Soup” brought the music of Meat Beat Manifesto to a wider audience as part of the soundtrack of “The Matrix.” You can hear a sampling of Dangers’ remixing versatility on “Pro.File vol. 1: Jack Dangers Remix Collection,” which includes cuts by Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Deepsky, Atomic Babies, the Shamen, David Byrne and Papa Brittle.
R.U.O.K.? In October 2002, Dangers released the long-awaited Meat Beat Manifesto album, “R.U.O.K.?” “I was dabbling with that one over a period of four years,” he says. “But that’s the way I wanted to do it because the other ones were sort of forced — they had to be done over a certain period of time. “‘Subliminal Sandwich’ was done while I was in the middle of trying to get out of my label deal — which is always a bad thing — so I just made the best of a terrible thing and did a double album. I was just waiting to get out of that miserable, boring, heard-it-all-before stuff. “I decided not to work with anyone after that,” he says. “Just to button down and do my own stuff.” Most of the work was done over the past two years. For years, Meat Beat Manifesto toured as a three-piece: Dangers on an arsenal of synths, samplers and other vintage gizmo mayhem, another keyboard player and a live drummer. Dangers prefers real drums on stage to accompany the tweaky sounds coming from his samplers and synths. “For live, I like to see something live, not just a laptop or a keyboard, alongside the music,” he says. Stokes On Video By teaming up with Ben Stokes as the video artist/director/producer in Tino Corp., Dangers fulfilled his need for something more. “Ben Stokes, my partner, did work for Ministry, and did all the Meat Beat videos,” says Dangers. “He uses Final Cut Pro and all Macintosh.”
Nothing Can Stop Him Now Dangers, long known for carving new paths in sound, ignoring the mainstream and generally just doing what he wants to do in music, is showing the same defiance as always in the face of a changing music world. He’s using technology to produce and cut his own tracks, putting out records on his own schedule, touring to as few or many towns as he feels like, and going back into the studio to record more tracks when the desire hits him. “I love music so much that — no matter what happens now — no one can take that out of me, ” concludes Dangers. “No label, no agent, no manager can extract that final spark.” 
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