Beats Antique

Electroacoustic / Roots Music / Down-tempo

BEATS ANTIQUE, an oakland based group featuring ZOE JAKES, DAVID SATORI, AND SIDECAR TOMMY, have stumbled down the rabbit hole and emerged anew on the other side. COLLIDE is a product of that absurd adventure, forging a curious alliance between middle eastern traditions and potent west coast circus, underground hip hop, breakbeat brass band, downtempo, glitch and dubstep. BEATS ANTIQUE'S second album has brought the paradox of electro-acoustic music into the future.

Collide - Review Oakland-based power trio Beats Antique has just released an album that picks up where their debut record, "Tribal Derivations" stopped. "Collide" accentuates the electro-acoustic feel to this band's sound, which blends exotic, Middle Eastern scents and moves with highly-charged electronics, reminiscent of recent dance dialects like dubstep and glitch-centered paraphernalia. Beats Antique's core consists of Zoe Jakes, a belly dancer who takes her skills a couple of steps further with the inclusion of classical Indian Kathak; David Satori, who has toured the US in a bus converted to run on recycled vegetable oil, and played with Femi Kuti, son of Nigerian afrobeat legend Fela Kuti; and Tommy Chappel, whose musical reach touches everything from vaudeville rock to abstract hip-hop. "Collide" is an aptly-titled album that connects the missing dots between two worlds that rarely go hand in glove. These 12 numbers, plus a remixed version of "Roustabout", feature all the instrumentation that's fit to play: the feather-light density comes courtesy of the accordion, the glockenspiel, the viola, the kalimba, and the clarinet, among others. All tracks derive from a common musical tree with so many branches that go as far as to touch the scholastic tradition of some jazzy oldies while keeping a curious ear to the North African Gnawa music, a mixture in its own right of afro-Arabic religious rhythms, combining music and acrobatic dancing. Obvious highlights include the untreated version of "Roustabout", a sickening, demented, and maniacally fun track that has so many Halloween-like features that film director Tim Burton would surely appreciate. But also "Slapdash Era", which starts off with what sounds like a bell and a tick-tack clock, and releases some menacing ambiance midway through the game. The remixed version of "Roustabout" is credited to San Francisco-based Bassnectar, a band who Beats Antique have certainly taken a few production cues. And while "Borino" resembles Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra's take on gypsy music, "Scratch Tail" evolves from a breakbeat signature only to succumb to the Middle Eastern traditions and develop a crush on contemporary electronics. Quite frankly, it would have been easier to name the sparse ground this record doesn't cover, but now it's too late. ~ Helder Gomes