BS 2000
Simply Mortified
Grand Royal

When it comes to music, the Beastie Boys have never been famous for having a serious attitude. But there's certainly an edgy urgency to the group's stuff — when their trademark bullet-point lyrics start booming, it's hard not to get up and bounce around.

So it's no surprise that when B-Boy Ad-Rock (Adam Horowitz) heads up his own group, the musical results are aggressively goofy. With Simply Mortified, Horowitz and Amery Smith (the Beasties' tour drummer) have thrown together a jumpy and extraordinarily fun collection of tracks under the stage name BS 2000.

The disc is a triumphant Casio cakewalk through a garden of thumping beats and obscured lyrics. Fuzzed-out hardcore vocals and pumping analog synths line this 20-track collection of songs that pay a distinct and musically juicy tribute to the sounds of the '70s. The album's lovably dusty bleeps and bloops are a strange thing to hear coming out of a discman in the year 2001.

But the strangeness doesn't end there. The group chose the undistinguished, fuzzed-out "Buddy" to be the album's breakout single and video, an odd choice considering it lacks the overwhelming hook that typifies B-Boy breakthrough tracks like "Sabotage" or "Intergalactic." Songs like "It Feels Like" and the irresistable "Better Better" could have made far stronger solo impacts. With its raging, muffled vocals, crushing beat and hypnotic keyboards, "Better Better" is unstoppable.

As listenable as some of the more conventional keyboard and muffled hardcore tracks are, the album's greatest strength may be its instrumentals. "No Matter What Shape Your Stomach is In" sounds like theme music for a Bubble Bobble bonus world. It's the weakest of the pure instrumentals on the album, but it's still amusing as hell. "New Gouda" is a clever confection of drum beats and a silky, tricky synth line that's impossible to shake — it's one of the album's best tracks. And Simply Mortified's closer, "Dansk Party," crosses straight over into the sort of sly, melody-driven Casiotone techno made famous by artists like Aphex Twin and µ-ziq.

With its loopy melodies and goofball lyrics, Simply Mortified probably won't make any critics' top 10 lists, but it's a shame — the album takes itself lightly, but packs a satisfying musical wallop.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)