Bumblebeez - Prince Umberto & the Sister of Ill (Modular)
2/5
By: Andrew Misuraca
The Aussie brother and sister 'duo' of Chris and Pia Colonna release their debut LP after two years in the making. Having been bigged up for the past five years by native tastemaker radio station Triple J one would expect big things, however, ambitious as they are, they just don't deliver. It's a slickly produced mess rooted in hip-hop and rock that relentlessly tries to fuse myriad styles but often come across incoherent.
The album starts with the clichéd cut and paste noises and scratches that run rife through all of those "look, I'm born of hip-hop!" records before giving way to 'Black Dirt' which firmly straddles the line between annoying and catchy. Next up is 'Clubb Clubb' which could be awesome if it wasn't marred by the awful lyrics of Pia, aka Miss ViLa. Choice cuts include "I know that you want some of this punani" and "my jeans are tight and show off my ass." Clearly she sleeps with a copy of The Female Eunuch by her bedside. Snatches of the Beastie Boys pop up in places such as the 'Radio Fabulous' interlude that builds up to stand out track 'Dr. Love'. It's here that Chris Colonna's collagist approach pays off with its bleeps and telephone tones doubling up nicely with the steady stomping bass and keyboards.
Unfortunately it is here that the album starts to derail with the first of two Lady Sovereign appearances on 'Comin Fa Ya' and its hopscotch genre switching. 'Freak Ya Loneliness' comes out of nowhere like an inverted MC5 but stakes its place as one of the albums best tracks and 'My Girl" starts off like Air acid tripping through a Nintendo rock circus before building into the now standard noises and keyboard washes. The last two songs on the album couldn't have been worse placed as they are once again let down by the rhymes for rhyme's sake from Miss ViLa on 'Rio' (the lyrical refrain of "I'm flying down to Rio to meet my friend Cleo") and Lady Sovereign on the sub-grime 'Pump Up The Bass' ("what do you know about pumping up the bass/drunk off your face/tripping on your shoe lace...").
The beats are generally solid throughout but never matched by the lyrics whilst the production is top as you would expect from names such as James Ford and Philippe Zdar. But the end result is a mish mash of styles with an underlying potential which is ultimately let down by its nepotism.
Bumblebeez are a mixed bag, like that of Scrabble. Whilst the game itself is always enjoyable, every other time you dip your hand in the bag and come out with a cluster of letters that leave a bad taste in your mouth. Letters that mean nothing no matter how arranged. I suspect that's how Miss ViLa writes her lyrics.
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