REVIEW: Bentley Rhythm Ace, Bentley Rhythm Ace (Astralwerks/Skint)
- Tim Mohr
From one of the trendiest of current labels, Bentley Rhythm Ace continue the proud tradition of Skint standouts Fatboy Slim, with huge beats, creative samples, and a good sense of humor.
The album opens with weird spoken-word samples, asking, as the music kicks in, "Have you ever laughed until tears run down your cheeks?" Then flute loops wander around a bass playing scales and some chemical beats on "Let There Be Flutes." Eventually, some distorted noises enter the mix and run around until the Bentleys decide to bring things to a stop with more flute flourishes. This is Skint at its best, showing why the hype is deserved.
Bentley Rhythm Ace have, like Fatboy Slim, a background in indie: the two Aces were in Pop Will Eat Itself before chucking in live sounds for computers. It would seem that Skint and Astralwerks
- whose Fatboy Slim includes a former Housemartin - seek out electronic bands with a concrete sense of music. And this approach also seems to yield impressive results.The Aces produce a sound not quite as frenetic as the Chemical Brothers, but also more easily appreciated at home. The beats and samples are not as obvious as those used by Fatboy Slim (whose album includes recognizable snippets from Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and The Who), and the drum tones in particular are not as muscular as the almost inconcievably massive tones laid down by Fatboy Slim or the Chemicals. What the Aces lack in earth-quake inducing beats they replace with intricate patterns of sound, handcrafted tracks where each bar has been painstakingly constructed to please the discerning ear.
With song titles like "Rag Top Skoda Car Chase" and "Who Put the Bom in the Bom Bom Diddleye Bom," Bentley Rhythm Ace are sure enough of their serious beats to allow some zaniness into the project. This silliness sneaks in with train whistles on "Mind That Gap," odd sounds borrowed from 60s experimental synth projects in "Run on the Spot," and cartoon noises on "Bentleys Gonna Sort You Out."
While bands like the Prodigy and Chemical Brothers drift towards hip-hop stylings and bring electronic party music to the people, Bentley Rhythm Ace and other Skint groups maintain a more original sound that, while more palatable to people who cannot tolerate the gun-toting machismo of rap, is less universally appealing because it is still foreign to most listeners. The future of electronic music, however, lies with groups such as Bentley Rhythm Ace, who are using the "new" medium to come up with something new rather than aping - and this is most pronounced in the Prodigy - the wannabe hardness of metal and gangsta. The Aces will appeal to those who like the new noise but who also see (and are uncomfortable with) the similarity in the audience of the Prodigy to that of, say, Judas Priest (years ago) or Cypress Hill. It is all too easy to fuel the violent, ridiculous fantasies of teenage boys - so Bentley Rhythm Ace aim higher.
