Beats Antique - "Collide"

I first heard of Beats Antique while listening to my Thievery Corporation station on Pandora. As with many of my new artist discoveries, after giving a few songs by the same artist an electronic "thumbs up", I decided to look further into Beats Antique and learn more about their music. You could likely guess by the cover artwork that this particular album, "Collide", should probably be categorized under world music or fusion.

A few tracks on this album definitely caught my ear upon first listen. Although my favorite tracks may sound somewhat similar, I still think that they're the best three on the album. "Dope Crunk" might be best defined as "Brass Monkey" meets traditional belly dance music with some glitch electronica. "Borino" is very clearly more of a latin-influenced track that for the most part features a muted trumpet (which I love) as far as my ears tell me. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a youtube video for "Borino" so you may have to try to find it elsewhere. Overall, I think it'd be safe to say that if you don't like the way brass instruments sound, you probably will not like this album.

To be quite honest, the track "Roustabout" sketches me out a little bit. A major part of the beat can really only be described as ... carnival music. If not creepy, it's just plain weird. I'm all for experimentation, but I think that this particular experiment may have been slightly over the top. The rest of the tracks on "Collide" are rather mediocre and don't really stand out much at all, at least not to me.

My suggestion would be to take a listen sometime when you're feeling in the mood for something different. While it works well in various environments, I prefer listening to this album as background music when I'm hanging out with buddies or doing something else. I think it's a bit lackluster to play as a main focus, but works well as a side distraction for other activity.

My vote: 3 stars
My favorite tracks: "Dope Crunk" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql4HcdLyYac & "Nestavo" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDgp3w1Dl54 & "Borino"