beastieboys-themixup music reviews Virgin Media
Sounding like Talking Loud, but saying nothing, the NYC trio disappoint on album of instrumentals
Try to think of a hip-hop group that has lasted 25 years and you’d struggle to name one beyond the Beastie Boys. Throughout a glorious career, Mike D, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch have consistently kept their output fresh by mixing disparate styles – from jazz to hardcore punk – into their irresistible party cuts.
Which makes The Mix-Up a strange, and ultimately, disappointing release. Following 2004’s To The Five Boroughs – a programmed, old-school return to form – this seventh album sees the trio pick up their instruments and put down both the mouse and the mic. The twelve instrumentals featured are a return to the organ-led jazz-tinged lounge funk workouts found on Ill Communication and Check Your Head. Where they worked there as interesting interludes, here they feel self-indulgent and pointless. Suco De Tangerina is a sexily dub-heavy highlight, as is the cheeky Seventies theme tune-like The Melee but in the main, this collection is like the pompous acid jazz pointlessness banished from our airwaves in the early Nineties. Even hardcore Beastie heads will struggle with this.
More to try:
Beastie Boys: Check Your Head / Ill Communication
Beck: Odelay
Ugly Ducking: Journey To Anywhere
