Beats Antique - Collide

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.

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