Bonde do Role - With Lasers

When The Skinny recently chatted to CSS, they told us there wasn't an alternative music scene in Brazil comparable to ours in the UK - which explains their distinctively Latin concoction of pop, electro and whatever else they felt like getting 'hot hot' with. It also explains the unique genre-meltdown of fellow Brazilians Bonde do Role. But unlike CSS there's an added local ingredient here too: Baile Funk - the bastardised, tough-as-bullets party music of Rio's favelas. It's anything but subtle: retro, bare-fist keys and FX flit over crude, grinding bass and repetitive beats while MCs brag about gangsta life in street-slang Portuguese. New York hip-hop was doing something similar 20 years ago. But whereas the Beastie Boys' and Public Enemy's message went global, Bonde do Role are severely limited by their tongue. With Lasers is bouncier than a silicone-enhanced Copacabana sun-seeker, but without any lyrical insight this relentlessly dumb ear-strike loses its charm very quickly. [Nick Mitchell]