If you imagine Daft Punk and Misfits having some sort of strange lovechild and what that would sound like, you would have a pretty good idea of what The Bloody Beetroots are. I realize this description is not entirely original (as I lifted it from their myspace page), but it really is the best way to describe this Italian duo of electro-punks.
Although they've been remixing and creating original tracks for a couple years now, it is only now that they are getting around to releasing a full-length album. Known as Romborama, the Beetroots' first stab at a full-length album is a bloody good one. Although fans that have been following these DJs will hear more than a few songs they've already heard before, Romborama makes sure to throw in plenty of new tunes as well as re-workings of old favorites to keep the whole thing from sounding like a random collection of their back catalog.
The first thing to understand about The Bloody Beetroots' music is that it is heavy. Almost every track on Romborama straddles a fine line between dance and mosh music, only to usually end up on the dance side of things. This makes sense, of course, because they are DJs, and thus love to make people dance. However, songs like the album's opener, "Romborama," do seem to be a little off-putting at first. With a siren-like synth riff and a screaming Justin Pearson (The Locust) in the background, the song makes the impression that the rest of the album is going to be full of over-the-top intensity that can only be appreciated by a select few, but after a little time with Romborama, it becomes more and more obvious that this is not quite the case.
The second track, "Have Mercy On Us," for example, shows that the Beetroots aren't completely obsessed with balls-to-the-wall intensity. This little track--while having a really dark, goth vibe to it--is very melodic and catchy in many of the same ways that Justice's † appealed to so many. Despite the immediate appeal of hearing more Justice-like tunes, the Italian duo is careful not to spend too much time in this territory, which, thankfully, prevents them from being labeled bargin-bin Justice knock-offs. Instead, they tend to go heavier with a mix of punk and classical vibes. This is most likely due to the fact that the brain behind most of the production work, Bob Rifo, joined a punk band after studying classical music in school.
There are occasional flashes of hip-hop on the album as well, like the rhymes laid down by The Cool Kids on "Awesome," as well as the re-purposing of that same beat for Marracash's "Come La." The sound of having the same beat on two tracks in the same album may sound a bit silly, and that may be; but, the album's got 21 tracks, with the 're-purposed' one at the very end, so it seems a little more like a nice little bonus than an attempt to create two legit songs using the exact same instrumentation.
The album does start to lose a little steam around the half-way point of Romborama with tracks like the fidget-mess that is "It's Better a DJ On 2 Turntables." The song is just so far removed from everything else on the album, and it shows it with its simplistic opening riff and ridiculous, off-the-wall bass storm that it leads into. Then, there's "Talkin' In My Sleep" that is only a slightly altered version of their previously released "Detroit (Ghetto Edit)," not that this is necessarily a bad thing; it is just a little disappointing for anyone expecting a new track at that point.
Another departure from the more standard, Bloody Beetroots fare is "Second Streets Have No Name." The intro seems a bit slow with its light, string-filled intro and auto-tuned lyrics that speak of seeing "the sunset strip in your eyes / I will drive it down," but the progression into the more beat-backed chorus is simply one of the best moments offered up in Romborama. It's just a shame that the song transfers back and forth between it and the auto-tuned and light-hearted sections that bookend the song.
For many familiar with The Bloody Beetroots' older works, there are plenty of new twists on old favorites that will be sure to hold a new level of intrest. The aforementioned "Talkin' In My Sleep" uses a new set of vocal samples, while songs like "Yeyo" and "I Love The Bloody Beetroots" simply benefit from higher production quality this time around. "F*cked From Above 1985" probably benefits the most from its new treatment, as it gets some production love in addition to a fresh coat of vocal work, but pretty much all of the older Beetroot tunes sound better on Romborama.
There is one previously released track that doesn't benefit from any sort of new treatment, however. "Butter," for some reason, seems to make it on to Romborama without being touched in the slightest. I don't really know why this is either, as its unaltered state seems to make it stick out as easily the most dated sounding track in the whole bunch.
Towards the end of the album, a couple excellent, yet significantly different sounding versions of "Warp" can be found in addition to the puzzling-yet-novel "Little Stars" among a smattering of equally as interesting and entertaining tracks. Simply put, the back-half of this album really picks up again and doesn't stop until you reach the repeated beat track that is "Come La."
So, by album's end, The Bloody Beetroots seemed to have laid an astounding number of cards on the table. While some of them don't seem that great, the sheer number of quality tunes to be found on this compilation of 21 tracks far outweigh the cons. It's not a perfect album by any means, but Romborama stands now as possibly the best gateway into The Bloody Beetroots' world, which is all you really need to ask for from a debut.
Review: The Bloody Beetroots - Romborama
Artist Watch: Ronald Jenkees
I know that for some of you seasoned YouTube viewers, Ronald Jenkees is probably a bit of a familiar name in the sense that he seems to be rather old news. But, that doesn't mean he is any less worthy of being on artist watch. In fact, he's probably the perfect candidate because he is still awesome, but doesn't seem to be gaining much more visibility in the cloud of crazy that we all like to call the Internet.
If you like what you hear, you can download some of his songs or simply visit his YouTube channel to access a great deal of this peculiar, but talented individual's works.
Song of the Week: Minus the Bear - "Pachuca Sunrise"
Since it seems practically everyone is at the beach this week, here's a song that rests comfortably among the ranks of awesome, contemporary beach tunes. If you aren't at the beach, perhaps you should just close your eyes, listen to this and pretend you are. It'll make you feel better, I promise.
Amazon's 50/$5 August Recommendations
I've recently become aware of amazon.com's monthly promotion where the top album picks from the site editors go up for sale for $5 each. The only troublesome part of the whole deal is that the editors end up posting 50 albums, which may seem a little overwhelming for those looking to get the absolute most bang for their music-loving buck. To try and solve this problem, I've decided to prune each of these lists each month starting now. So, without further ado, here's the cream of the crop of this month's 50/$5 deals.
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
The Field - Yesterday and Today
A-Trak - Infinity +1
The Cool Kids - The Bake Sale
Dirty Projectors - Rise Above
Luckily, this month's selections provided for pretty eclectic mix ranging everywhere from hip-hop to indie rock, and even minimalistic progressive techno. Hopefully, you find these recommendations helpful, and be sure to check out next month's top 5 50/$5.
Review: Discovery - LP
With a band composed of Ra Ra Riot's Wes Miles and Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, you'd think that Discovery would show at least some interesting potential if not rock everyone's socks off. Instead, the band unleashed LP, a debut album full of shallow songwriting, irregular beat structures, and desperate sounding attempts to be relevant and cool that makes for some mildly amusing hipster party fodder at best.
LP starts out about as strong as it can with fairly interesting tracks like "Orange Shirt" and "Osaka Loop Line" that use some catchy, minimalist beats to sound fresh, but suffer from mediocre lyrics like "Still you won't call me back / And every text I get from you sounds so so serious / But I'm sitting at home sipping this miso / Ticking to raindrops upon my window pane / Texting too fast for me to reply / Never looking when you type T-9." I'm usually not one to nitpick songwriting, but lyrics like that are just plain cheesy. Combine those with the stupidly-popular-yet-overplayed auto-tune vocals, and you've got a pretty good idea of what the rest of the album is like. Well, I honestly have to take that back; it actually gets worse.
By LP's fourth track, "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," I was certain that this album was not something I would want to recommend to anyone. With a rather lackluster performance by guest vocalist Angel Deradoorian crying "I wanna be your boyfriend" (before being so "cleverly" chopped up to sound more like "I want a boyfriend"), the whole song sounds like a desperate grab for love and attention from the song's creator. It's sad.
Many of the other songs proceed in either this direction of poorly written and bad/auto-tuned singing ("Can You Discover," "Carby"), or simply opt to have some of the ugliest synth or beat work I have heard on a professionally produced album ("So Insane," It's Not My Fault (It's My Fault)"). Of course there a couple exceptions, but these also have problems of their own.
The strongest track on Discovery's album is probably "Swing Tree," but that's probably because the song is mainly comprised of a synth riff that isn't theirs. In their defense though, "Swing Tree" has a different feel to it than the Tom Tom Club classic, not to mention that the song is a lyrical high-point for this poor, poor LP.
There is one other song that tries to succeed somewhat like “Swing Tree” by combining borrowed melodies and strong songwriting, but the only difference here is that it’s a cover, and a horrible one at that. After hearing what disrespect Discovery paid to “I Want You Back,” the super-hit by none other than the late-great Michael Jackson, it’s hard to believe that this is a band that wants to take itself seriously. Did they really think that screechy, lo-fi synths, cascading beeps, and auto-tune could possibly add something one of the greatest pop songs of all time? Unless Discovery was shooting to add an unlistenable quality to the track, the answer in almost every respect is no.
To try and summarize, listening to LP can be best compared to watching a bad comedy. Instead of witty substance and subtlety, Discovery paints in broad strokes and tries to generate appeal by referencing some of the most salient aspects of contemporary music culture without actually commenting on them. So in the end, you are left with an album full of uninspired songs written by two dudes that seem to think shoving MGMT and Kanye West into Tom Tom Club and Michael Jackson would sound good. And, while I’m not necessarily saying these sounds are completely incompatible, I am saying that Discovery’s attempt to make them work is all but a miserable failure.