Major Malfunction album cover
Major Malfunction

Keith LeBlanc

1986
World Records

Drummer Keith Leblanc started out in the Sugar Hill Records house band, playing on classic early hip-hop tracks like “Rapper’s Delight” and “The Message.” When he and his cohorts — guitarist Skip McDonald and bassist Doug Wimbish — hooked up with renegade UK producer Adrian Sherwood in the mid ’80s, they became Tackhead, traveling into a realm of harsh, sample-studded cyberfunk that blended hip-hop, dub, and industrial. This album, though credited to Leblanc, features the whole Tackhead crew. The title track is a beats-and-dialogue collage addressing the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, featuring quotes from Ronald Reagan, William S. Burroughs, and NASA crew members, while others (“Heaven On Earth,” “You Drummers Listen Good”) bring in manic preachers, horror-movie screams, grinding hard rock guitars and the percussion of Bonjo Iyabingi Noah of African Head Charge. It’s an eerie, unsettling album, one of the most experimental records to ever slide under the heading of “industrial” (or funk, for that matter).

Phil Freeman

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