Listening to God’s World, Manslaughter 777’s second LP, you might think of:
A weathered, hand-painted sign, however long ago, advertising a dance, cold beer and a soundsystem. Popular acapellas dropped on new rhythms – one-of-a-kind, exclusive plates – fill the warm air. Temporarily carefree, the dancers move in time.
Straightaway, or maybe not quite straightaway. After a thump and a shout and bit of intense, insectoid buzz, it soon becomes clear that the drumming duo of Lee Buford and Zac Jones – aided and abetted by Seth Manchester’s studio wizardry – have cooked up something a little different for their latest outing. Known for their work in fringe experimental metal outfit The Body and semi-abstract soundsystem punishers MSC, respectively, Buford and Jones don’t typically make work you could describe as easy. And while this is not exactly that, God’s World is by some margin, the friendliest record in the vast, extended universe of The Body. God’s World is fun. It might even be… accessible. Vocoded voices lamenting lost love.
Which isn’t to say that The Body or MSC are entirely unfun or exclusionary. It’s just that when your main group is easily described as “extreme”, you’re gonna attract an audience whose idea of fun isn’t what I would call universal. Now, I might be deranged by decades of fringe listening (so you might want to weigh this whole thing against that), but I’ve always thought of The Body as a secret pop band. I can hear it in there under layers of grit and slime and shrieks. It’s what brings me back to, say, the noise-dub of ‘The West Has Failed’ years later. You can hear it, too, when the tambourine kicks in like a minute into ‘Last Things’ or ‘Less Meaning’ from 2024’s The Crying Out Of Things. Still, post-Little Rock emo, it’s taken Buford a good, long while to find an outlet and album where those instincts could take centre stage. A full-on bacchanalia of breaks and plundered vocal hooks, God’s World is that record. It’s dance music. I mean, proper dance music.
A basement dive with a smoke-yellowed drop ceiling, so low you can maybe touch the tiles, 1996 or so. Soho. The early set. Funky drum breaks loop insistently, incessantly. The bass throbs. You maybe want to pogo, but you’d wreck your dome on the ceiling.
It’s important that we all accept, at least for the duration of this paragraph, that one of the greatest three-track sequences of all time is ‘Song To The Siren’ into ‘Three Little Birdies Down Beats’ through to ‘Fuck Up Beats’ on side A of The Chemical Brothers’ perfect, untouchable big beat classic, Exit Planet Dust. It’s important to accept this, because it’s clear that Manslaughter 777 know this to be an unassailable fact. Deep down in their hearts. It’s written into the DNA of God’s World in the way the blown-out, heavy-heavy drums – both programmed and live – loop just so, in the way lifted vocal phrases interlock with truncated funk hooks, in the way beats shift and drop, in the giddy enthusiasm on display throughout. Which is a marked departure from their debut, an album that, while distinct from them, felt at least a little more emotionally and aesthetically akin to its drummers’ core projects. If it’s true that Manslaughter 777 have shed some of the darkness and rust that enshrouded and caked World Vision Perfect Harmony, and in doing so, shed some of that album’s improbably profound moments of beauty (that could only exist in contrast to the grot), then they have done so in favour of pure rave euphoria and abandon. Seems like a fair trade to me.
The backseat of a 1984 Plymouth Horizon, with friends, in ‘97 or ‘98, in Warren, Michigan, listening to a ghettotech mixtape your other friend says he bought straight from the source. It’s loud and you’re all laughing.
There’s a delightful, refreshing contradiction at the heart of God’s World. Here’s this incredibly produced album. It slaps like some idealised, hypothetical pop banger without sacrificing its gristle or edge, while at the same time managing to be genuinely likeable. Sonically alluring. Manchester’s impact here cannot be overstated. To me, he’s an Adrian Sherwood or Conny Plank kind of figure – his presence, his creativity, is felt on every record he works on. And it’s always welcome, never intrusive. And the sound that he’s crafted here with Buford and Jones is something else. The drums alone. The biggest drums of the year. But the contradiction is this: This album also sounds like it should be distributed from the trunk of a car. It sounds like a copyright lawyer’s nightmare. A capitalistic non-starter.
In your bedroom, not too long ago, all things considered. You’re fiddling with the radio dial. It’s late. You’re trying lock into some techno programme that runs nearly all night. The station broadcasts from over the border. It barely reaches your house. You’re trying so hard to stay awake.
Referenced artists
The Body
Columnus Metallicus: Heavy Metal for March Reviewed by Kez Whelan
The thing about this record – its great achievement, really – is its atemporality, its out-of-time-ness. It can call to mind all these things I’ve mentioned – these little vignettes – evoke them like spirits, without ever actually sounding too much like one genre or the other, without ever being too nostalgic, without leaning too hard on any of their hard-won signifiers for too long. Without ever being derivative. It’s not big beat or dancehall or jungle or dub or whatever. It’s its own thing and all those things. An evolution of them and an acceptance of them. It’s the best beat tape that isn’t a beat tape at all.
One thing God’s World isn’t, is much like The Body. Or MSC, for that matter. So, from a wretched, fan-service perspective, the question might become: Who’s this for? To which I’d reply: Well, it’s obviously for Buford, Jones, and Manchester, but it could be for almost anyone. Assuming they like dance music. Which is a welcome first for Buford and Jones.
