How Meat Beat Manifesto's ‘Radio Babylon' became breakbeat hardcore's accidental anthem

Lançado em 1990, quando a cultura rave estava explodindo e o acid house se transformava em hardcore no UK, ‘Radio Babylon’ parecia algo totalmente novo. Impulsionado por um grande break com um segundo bumbo que caía no off beat, sua linha de baixo dub monolítica atravessou campos, armazéns e clubes, enquanto suas amostras dispersas de bleeps de sistemas de som, programas de TV antigos, discos de rock e reggae, e até mesmo da banda pop kitsch Boney M lhe davam uma energia crua, cut ’n’ paste.

The track became an early benchmark in breakbeat hardcore, even if its creator hadn’t intended it as such, and was rinsed by everyone from Jumpin Jack Frost to DJ Krust.

Made almost entirely from snippets of other records, it went on to be sampled itself by Future Sound Of London, The Prodigy and Aphex Twin, and is sometimes cited as one of the original proto-jungle tracks.

Still, it took a little while to permeate the dance world, as Meat Beat Manifesto was considered, at that point, more of an industrial project than anything else.

Jack Dangers was born and raised in Swindon in the county of Wiltshire in Southwest England. His siblings were much older, so he got into music by listening to the radio.

At the beginning of the ’80s, Kraftwerk and an early Human League EP ,‘Holiday 80’, piqued his interest, before he started tuning into John Peel’s famously eclectic nighttime show on BBC Radio 1.

In the early-’80s, he managed to get a job at Tudor Studios, Swindon’s only recording facility at the time, where he made tea and operated the tape machine, before gradually learning the ropes as an engineer.

He landed a job at Drive Studio in the mid-’80s. “There were two engineers and I was one of them,” he says, “and I used to work there all the time, doing engineering sessions for people doing cover versions of Puff The Magic Dragon and listening to the most inane stuff.

He got into the funkier end of post-punk — bands like 23 Skidoo and 400 Blows — and the leftfield dub of Adrian Sherwood, while absorbing the hip-hop that John Peel was playing on the radio.

Sometimes Dangers would offer to buy the other engineer dinner if he let him use the studio at night, and he started trying to make his own stuff.

Soon though, Dangers struck out on his own as Meat Beat Manifesto, and released his first album ‘Storm The Studio’, a riotous compendium of breakbeats, drum machines, funky guitar riffs, industrial rhythm and dub techniques that displayed a love of the cut ’n’ paste sampling of producers like Steinski and Coldcut.

It was a sound he would refine on the following singles, with additional studio input from Colin James and Jonny Stephens.

Synapses sparking with ideas, he in turn reworked ‘Helter Skelter’ too, stripping it down and bringing in a new riff that he played live on his bass guitar. This titanic dub bassline became the foundation of ‘Radio Babylon’, but it wasn’t simply a matter of playing it in and processing it.

The drum loop came from a 12-inch Urban Records 1988 reissue of Bobby Byrd’s ‘Hot Pants’, a cover of the James Brown classic. One of the most popular breakbeats, it was used by The Stone Roses for ‘Fool’s Gold’ and rapper Big Daddy Kane for ‘Raw’ around the same time and, with the second snare hit naturally on the off beat, it would later be a key sample in the formation of hardcore and jungle.

Dangers added kicks, snares and hi-hats from a Roland R8 Rhythm Machine and ran the break through a Yamaha Rev 5 reverb to impart the track with its echoing, enveloping feel, employed a Vesta Fire RV-2 spring reverb on the mix, and added Roland SDE 1000 digital delay and Roland R-E 201 tape echo pedals to extend its otherworldliness.

He also put the D&R mixing desk through its paces, EQing the bass and overall mix in a style more akin to dub producers like Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry or King Tubby. To get further into that zone, he brought in a friend’s bespoke sound system and set it up in the studio.

The grab bag of other samples that Dangers deployed helped to give ‘Radio Babylon’ its distinctive character. Using the Akai S-1000, he drew not only from his extensive and varied record collection, but also from his love of film, TV and spoken word.

The “burning with ecstasy” sample that chimed so well with the rave scene of the time was drawn from 1950s TV detective drama Johnny Staccato, which was being shown on Channel 4 at the time.

The “Woo! Alright!” came from soul singer Cheryl Lynn, while further snippets were drawn from ’60s rockers The Troggs, dub reggae producer Mikey Dread and a bleep from a NASA astronaut communication.

The single word “Babylon” will be familiar to many from manufactured act Boney M’s cover of ‘Rivers Of Babylon’. Dangers revelled in using this sample of a somewhat cheesy pop record, deliberately puncturing the image some had of Meat Beat Manifesto as a serious industrial project.

Though Meat Beat Manifesto has performed live as a band, and Dangers worked with others on some of his records, including Colin James, Jonny Stephens, Mark Pistel and Ben Stokes, it’s usually a solo studio project.

The tune was still untitled by the time Dangers had to take it to London to be mastered. But fate intervened and gave him a name. “On the way to the mastering studio, there was a secondhand bookshop,” he says.

So when I got to the mastering house, I cut the record and the engineer’s scratching the thing in there. ‘So, what’s this called then?’, he said. ‘Radio Babylon’.

It was spur of the moment. I didn’t have any plans for any of that, but it is a good title.”.

But he would have the last laugh as the tune began to filter into rave sets, with DJ Hype, Jumpin Jack Frost, Fabio & Grooverider, DJ Ron and many more playing it.

The breaks and bass-heavy dub aesthetic worked as part of hardcore, but felt closer to the early jungle tracks that Lennie De Ice, A Guy Called Gerald, Congo Natty, Noise Factory and 4hero were starting to make.

By this time, Meat Beat Manifesto was regularly touring. Dangers began working as a producer for American group Consolidated, and collaborated with Michael Franti’s industrial hip-hop duo Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, both of whom were based in San Francisco.

While on tour in the Californian city, he met his future wife, which encouraged him to move there permanently in 1993.

His ‘Subliminal Sandwich’ album followed in 1996, with wicked tracks like ‘Nuclear Bomb’ further exploring the rich seam of shuffling breakbeats and dub reggae bass and atmospherics.

Since, he’s been incredibly prolific, releasing sonically varied albums that have veered from the dubstep-savvy ‘Autoimmune’ in 2008 on Planet Mu, to the industrial tones of 2024’s ‘Extinct’, a collaboration with Japanese noise icon Merzbow.

Having released a compilation of his early material, he recently worked with Trent Reznor on the Tron: Ares soundtrack, and has remixed a track from it, ‘Infiltrator’, in club-friendly form.

Dangers is also putting the finishing touches to a new Meat Beat Manifesto record that is 34 tracks deep, and will run the gamut of everything he’s into. “It’s going through every type of musical influence I think I’ve ever had.

I’m terrible at keeping it cohesive — you know, if you hear a Boards Of Canada record, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s Boards Of Canada’. That’s what they do. But for me, one track might sound like (X), a bit like them, but then this other track’s gonna be (Y), influenced by Merzbow or something unique.

Looking back at ‘Radio Babylon’, Dangers is happy it’s had an impact. “I’m pleased whenever anything of mine gets recognised for doing something.”.

Want more? Read about how Leviticus’ ‘Burial’ brought jungle’s melting pot of influences together here.