Music Arcades: Mantronix: Music Madness

I got this soon after it came out, 1986 or '87. I remember it (from my base in the well-to-do S7 and S10 postcodes) as a time when hip-hop had emerged but we will were still trying to get a fix on it. The clay wasn't yet dry, the patterns hadn't settled.

I can't be sure where I might have picked up on Mantronix, but it must have been either John Peel or the NME. Somehow I'd got the feeling that this might be the intellectual (read: white, geeky) end of the spectrum, rather than the urban gang stuff.

The allmusic review seems broadly to back this up,

Many Mantronix fans will tell you that the group provided its best and most essential work when it was signed to the small Sleeping Bag label and MC Tee was still on board. Listening to Music Madness, it's hard to argue with that. This 1986 LP… is proof of how fresh-sounding and creative Mantronix was in the beginning. The futuristic outlook that defines "Scream," the single "Who Is It," and other tracks sets Music Madness apart from other hip-hop albums that came from New York in 1986; Tee's rapping is very much in the 1980s b-boy tradition, but the club-minded producing and mixing of Curtis "Mantronik" Khaleel is unlike anything you would have heard on a Run-D.M.C. or L.L. Cool J album back then. And that fact wasn't lost on hip-hop's hardcore, which felt that Music Madness wasn't street enough.

I can hear a little of what piqued my interest 24-25 years ago, but, overall, I find it impossible to listen to this other than through filter of what came later, once the die had been cast. That's to say, I can hear it was fresh once, but it doesn't sound that way any more.