In my continuing quest to listen to everything, once in a while I happen upon something that I really wish I'd known about when it came out.  The latest of these revelations is ManBREAK, a British group often compared to Rage Against the Machine.  It's true that there are elements of RATM in their sound: rockified funk beats, distorted guitar, left-wing rapping; but their sound is not as hard, the anger not as raw, and there's a strain of the more party-oriented dance-rock of EMF in there.  It all adds up to something I've listened to over and over this week, specifically their 1999 album Come and See.  The set opens strongly with "Ready Or Not" from the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, then gets even better with "Kop Karma"–

02 Kop Karma

ManBREAK

Did you catch the Big Audio Dynamite reference?  That's what I get out of "These are the things that drive me crazy / These are the things that drive me mad," at least.  (Now there's a band that could've used a jolt of something or other: for all their hip appearance and melting-pot musical style, they sure were bland.)  Working backwards, I learned that ManBREAK frontman Swindelli fronted a similar band, The Twenty Fifth of May, earlier in the 90s (as Stephen Swindelli).  Their lone album, Lenin and McCarthy (haha), is even better than Come and See, or maybe I just think that because it has more fast breakbeat tracks and I'm a sucker for fast breakbeat.  This is one of those albums where I have a hard time picking a single track; "Solid State Logic" won out for its "Mission: Impossible" lick, but it's just one of several excellent songs on Lenin and McCarthy–

12-Solid state logic

The 25th of May

ManBREAK's name, by the way, comes from "the after-effects of a covert action by the British government which involved the dispensing of untested drugs to unwitting soldiers during the cold war."  They were active as recently as last year, when they released the "Dark Age" single; however, poor reviews of that record make it doubtful that I'll seek it out.  Their 2001 album Asphalt Culture, on the other hand, seems worth tracking down.

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