By Andrew

The Bloody Beetroots are interesting. Or should I say, Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo is interesting. The Italian born and classically trained musician/producer is an enigma. Aside from the rather obscure tattoo “1977” on his chest (his birth year and the birth year of punk) and his signature donned Venom mask, not much is really known about Rifo. He has been in and around the post punk scene throughout Europe and even his foray into electro was fairly low key. Originally being picked up by Steve Aoki and Dim Mak Records, he has now released only his second album under the Ultra Records label out of the US. And boy is it fucking good.

I was not a fan of Romborama (2009) with only a few songs grabbing my attention and of course, little more after that for four years. TBB do a lot of remixes of others hit tracks and I am more familiar with that body of work, but ‘Hide’ is one helluva kick in the face electro-house record. You can feel the refinement in the tracks with the entire album merging great house, fiery electro, exquisite vocal additions and even some meaty dubstep-esque and grindy bassdrops. Its actually quite a hard album to define in terms of style, with every track chopping and changing like a schizophrenic robot convulsion being controlled by a veteran puppet master. And Rifo is definitely that puppet master we all envy as producers.

Of course tracks pop out of you straight away with lead track ‘Spank’ introducing what you would think will be the whole album feel. House, 128, smidgen of electro but that’s where it ends. Later on in the album, ‘The Source: Chaos and Confusion’ bitchslaps you directly in the face with such a strong pimp hand, you would think you’d taken $5 for a $10 blowjob. Similarly, ‘Rocksteady’ backhands the other way. ‘Raw’ gives us such a wandering and seemingly aimless start for electro-house but levitates into grindy, swoon inducing disco funk you would think it came of the latest Daft Punk album. And in a way, Rifo is poking his tongue out at the french robots, emulating their style so effortlessly while Tommy Lee ( yes that Tommy Lee) abuses him for taking away the punchygrindhouse and replacing it with shitty robot funk with the line “Whoa
bob, What the fuck is this? Fucking Disco music? you cant be serious, this is
fucking bullshit!…”

Other notables include Sir Paul McCartney, Greta Svabo Bech, P-Thugg from Chromeo, Peter Frampton, Sam Sparro and Youth. How the hell he managed to combine Lee, McCartney and Frampton in one CD across three very different tracks is extraordinary. This album really pushes your understanding of electro house and general 128bpm music and I challenge anyone to not get at least a track or two of it on high rotation in your playlists. It was a huge surprise for me that I would love it so much and if it wasn’t for the fact I like writing reviews for SSMB, I probably would have just ignored it.

If you want something different but can’t stand the thought of kowtowing to more mainstream dance music, give it a whirl. You just might surprise yourself. I know I did.

***Electrogrind Love***

9/10 Italian Electro Stallions {Abrasive Andy}