MANTRONIX - THE ALBUM (10 Records)

NOISE never never never annoys you know. Mantronix go for the paintstripper approach, burning away electro’s lesser indulgences and leaving hard core hip hop of the highest order. Tunes are incidental rather than earnestly necessary, Mantronik preferring to assault with one note LOUD emulated snipes around McTee’s vocal propaganda. The recent live London performance showed, with fiery ease, just how intoxicating the Mantronix attack can be, grinding appropriated references of unashamedly irreverent diversity –Aerosmith, Chic, Third World, Peter Godwin(!)- into the purest of beats, thumping ribcages and crumpling reservations. Ten years on from You-Know-What, it’s Mantronix, L.L. Cool J and the rest of the hip hop reborn who are the real Punk Rockers. Rumours fly fast and largely thick, about the amount of money Virgin paid for New York’s Sleeping Bag Records for the Mantronix album, but whatever it was appears to have been money well spent. Peculiarly, the Mantronix Experience is better suited to live shows when you actually SEE the construction, but the record’s certainly enough to set the sturdiest of hearts off a wild beat of its own making. The current "Ladies" single jitters and bounces around what is admittedly not the most astute lyrical effort I’ve ever heard but at least free of grubby worthiness. Far better is the Man Parrishy "Needle To The Groove", a self conscious celebration of Mantronix’s purpose in the general scheme of things. Somewhere in the background, the big beat hammers at your feet and brings to mind the army who marched in step and made the bridge break. Mantronix can make Dexion Shelving self-destruct and that’s just for starters. "Get Stupid Fresh’ Part 1" and Fresh Is The Word" float like a butterfly and hit a ton of concrete being unloaded in your lap, the latter track familiar to some as Mantronix’s debut single and the one which first brought them to Sleeping Bag’s attention. "Bassline"is, ironically, almost all words and, without the focussed anti musical crunch, tends to meander rather but any signs off lagging are offset by the magnificent Mantronix "Mega Mix" which krushes together the best bits from the album into a wickedly relentless explosion of sound. Mantronix undoubtedly herald a hip hop renaissance, and if this is anything to go by, you may never want to hear the melody again.

PAUL MATHUR

Source: NME 1986