HARD CORE HIP HOP - MANTRONIX The Album (10 Records)

RAP CUT up , messed up and dressed up in stuttering salvoes of dismembered noise, stolen riffs and vocoded voices, throwing up a spectrum of infinite possibilities based on the collision of the organic –a human voice- with the robotic. All that hardware drilling and pumping out the beat for a thousand variations on the new urban nursery rhyme, the brag and the boast: it’s so ridiculous it hurts. "We’re dynamic, programmic and fly and romantic". Mantronix are ridiculous. And they hurt. Up full, at warp factor 10, they‘ll shake your floor and double you up. Like hard rock (remember that?), hard funk, and the hardest dancehall reggae, hip hop needs –depends on- volume in order to fully define itself. Listen to ‘Needle To The Groove’ or ‘Hard Core Hip Hop’ at respectable decibel level and you’ll never know the full, fearsome overload of the sonic rap attack. Ridiculous.

"We’re cool and debonair and so fantastic". Mantronik and McTee take it to the max the hard way. There’s none of the sharp, self-deprecating humour of The Fat Boys nor any of the overloaded grimmicry of Doug Fresh, but there is a lot of serious trickery, slippery, fractured chunks of noise, regurgitated riffs and rock hard robotic thunder that holds it all together. Half the time you forget about McTee’s way with words and catch yourself listening out for the next surprise, that little split-second cut in the mix, that sudden shift in the beat.

On "Fresh Is The Word’ the vocoded vocals slips in and out around the fast-style rap, repeating, ad-libbing and eventually competing with the "real" rap. ‘Get Stupid "Fresh" Part 1’-like the current single ‘Ladies’- is less declamatory than the usual Mantronix noise, yet it creates a slower, otherworldly space groove that insinuates itself on your consciousness with every play. Alongside ‘Hardcore Hip Hop –a steely but sensuous monster mash of multi-layered techno thunder –Get Stupid….’ suggest and embryonic new hip hop language: further out and even more mischievous than anything up to now.

"We’re comin’ straight at you from planet Fresh", claims McTee and, thought Mantronix may beg, steal and borrow from all corners of the galaxy, they cover their tracks by creating and intergalactic beat that effortlessly transcends the earthbound sources from with they plunder. "Fresh Is The Word", Mantronix is the groove", goes the chant –so ridiculous it hurts!

Sean O’Hagan

Source: Melody Maker 1986