MANTRONIX - London Heaven

WE WENT to Heaven, and it looked like the Bronx. Wall-to-wall black b-boys, hoods, whistles, and two unprettified lads doing their thing against a tinsel-rain backdrop of. Inscrutably bad taste. It could have been any uptown youth centre. British soul fans generally have to wait years before US acts make it across the Atlantic, but Mantronix- a clubland name to drop the last six months- were in town before their first album had been released here, and well before most of the music press had registered their existence.

Liggers were scarce, as the grassroots fans jammed the house. A skull-buzzing sound system exaggerated the undulating rhythmic contours and the violence of Mantronik’s cutting. The homeboys freaked. Nothing is quite what it seems. The self-referential egopumping of hip-hop conceals the music’s real democracy. Mantronix at Heaven was a party, not a gig, and the music belonged to the people. With Mantronik naturally locked to the wheels of steel, and McTee rapping in front of him, Mantronix were visually a yawn. But if they didn’t act like stars, the crowd did, creating their own event around the music Mantronik constructs from stolen Europop rejects -groove pirates to the last (wo)man.

Nothing is quite what it seems. McTee’s cheekly verbals are rhythmically closer to Smiley Culture and Papa Levi than the ‘Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn’brigade. When Mantronix throw in those ever-popular jingles- ‘Fresh is the word’contains one not unlike ‘Force MDs meet the Fatboys- McTee’s flattening, nasal delivery renders their incessant jollity tauntingly arrogant.

Mantronix started well hard with the five great cuts from their debut album. After that they tended towards sameness. As music and as an event, tonight was often stunning and, for that first half hour, fresh was undeniably the word, Mantronix the name.

Simon Witter

Source: NME 1986.