Electronic band Meat Beat Manifesto(MBM) have decided to name their new album Opaque Couché, in honor of what was deemed “the world’s ugliest color,” which is branded across cigarette packs in the UK to deter smoking tobacco. This new album will be released on May 10, 2019 on Flexidisc via Virtual Label in LP, CD and digital formats, which will include a special “ugly,” vinyl release featuring the aforementioned color.

“I wanted to do a title based around a particular color, so I wanted to give opaque couché a chance since it’s not black or white,” explained MBM mastermind Jack Dangers in statement.

MBM will have this new album follow their release from last year, Impossible Star, which saw the group utilize many of their eclectic sensibilities from industrial music to jazz fusion across its tracklist. This was the group’s first official studio album release in eight years, following 2010’s Answers Come in Dreams.

Dangers credits this long hiatus due to his move, and subsequent tear-down and restructuring of his music studio to Sausalito in the affluent Marin County in Northern California. He explained that his entire space had to be built “from scratch,” which is an arduous task for any audiophile that desires the best sound out of their studio equipment.

“I was working in Sausalito on the new album, and by the time I got back here, I was not really happy with how it sounded. I had been working in the same studio for over 20 years, so moving out of that space into somewhere else didn’t work as well as I thought it would,” Dangers explained in an interview with Chaos Control. “So, once I got back in here, to the new place, I had to redo everything from scratch. That was the main reason for the delay. We did four shows last year and have more coming up.”

During this time much of the hardware that he had accumulated for his studio for over three decades, had to be moved to storage units, which caused him to operate in a more limited capacity. He explained that while he was able to create music during this period, that if he had his full arsenal of sounds and instruments, he’d be able to create something different.

“Out of all the stuff I did, the only thing that I actually used, which came out, was a single I did with Wolfgang Flür, the old Kraftwerk drummer,” Dangers explained further in the interview. “That was working with limitations, and that seemed to go in a good way. But it would have been something completely different if I’d had all my equipment available.”

Although the project took an album hiatus they did release an EP in 2016, which featured a remix of “Synthesizer Test.” Dangers explained that while the album was made in the same vein as the EP, it is still very distinct,

Opaque Couché Track listing

1. Untroduction
2. Pin Drop
3. (Ear-Lips)
4. Agelast
5. Hailing Frequencies Open
6. Bolinas
7. Call Sign
8. Moving Pulse
9. No Design
10. C/2015 V2
11. CarrierFreq
12. Forced to Lie
13. Break Test
14. Present for Sally
15. Critical Soul Vibrations
16. Wandering Soul #11