Manchild - Untied States Pt. 1
In a funny way, the most important debut album of the year 2000 has been over ten years in the making. Untied States is Manchild s opening salvo on the boundaries of genre-obsessed dance music.
It s an album born out of the euphoric modernism of acid house, as experienced by Manchild s core duo, Max Odell and Brett Parker, but it draws on the culture of a over a dozen peers, friends and collaborators - an aural patchwork of musical history that encompasses old-skool breaking, rastafari call-and-response MCing, atmospheric electronic soundscaping, and the plain old thrills of dumb-ass rock n roll.
The title was lifted from a typo in a book that Max s brother was reading on the films of Jean-Luc Godard. We thought that was a cool title , explains Max because it describes Manchild s ethnic, social, religious background and the eclecticism of the album.
The seeds of Manchild were first sewn when Max met Brett at Longwick Nursery School in Buckinghamshire, at the age of five. By the ripe old age of thirteen, the pair were listening to jazz, rock, indie and hip-hop - Herbie Hancock, AC/DC, Talk Talk, and the Ultramagnetic MCs, and as acid house suddenly moved overground, Max and Brett bought a sampler, hung up the instruments, and began making electronic music in earnest, inspired by nascent dance-rock hybrid acts like Bomb The Bass.
In 1997, Max graduated from university, put together a demo tape of his and Brett s music, and sent out forty demo tapes containing rough demos of some of the tracks on Untied States . Over thirty A&R men turned out to Manchild s debut gig in their adopted hometown of Cardiff, and the duo were inundated with contracts. Manchild s music caught the ear of Mike Champion who soon afterwards agreed terms with Max and Brett to manage them.
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