Meat Beat Manifesto - Impossible Star (2018)

Meat Beat Manifesto were far more prolific throughout the 1990s and 2000s than they were during the 2010s -- 2018's Impossible Star is only their second full-length of the decade, following Answers Come in Dreams by eight years. Even though Jack Dangers and his cohorts have seemingly slowed down their productivity, they've never stopped exploring the outer limits of abstract, beat-heavy electronic music, nor have they run out of things to say. Their previous two albums, Answers Come in Dreams and 2008's stellar Autoimmune, plunged into the then-emerging dubstep sound, and a few tracks on Impossible Star retain those types of crawling tempos and killer bass drops (particularly "Unique Boutique"), but the overall sound of the album is a pretty well-rounded mix of ambient textures and crunchy beats. Vocals do appear on a fair number of tracks, either by way of samples (usually paranoid snippets immersed in static, as on "We Are Surrounded"), or delivered through vocoders, emphasizing the group's electro roots. "T.M.I" is the group's most direct statement about the late-2010s political climate, with Dangers coming to the conclusion that "Misinformation is all we're gonna get now." The album's title track features driving, bashy beats, a fusion-inspired bassline (flashing back to the group's jazzier albums like At the Center), and mellow, spacious synths, along with a puzzle of vocoders and samples, forming a message that "Peace is impossible." It's subtly bleak, but it never sounds as intense or apocalyptic as anything off Storm the Studio. "Nereus Rov" is another winning blast of blown-out shotgun beats and calmly detached spaciness. The centerpiece is the driving 15-minute space suite "Lurker," which is essentially three songs in one. Impossible Star is another strong showing from a veteran outfit that has continually resisted categorization or commercialization, and has remained innovative as well as relevant.