Chus & Ceballos – Back On Tracks (Nervous)

 

If there’s an album that demonstrates the homogenising effect of globalisation, it’s this soul-destroying collection of bland house tracks. In taking a ‘runaway journey’ through ‘global grooves’, Chus & Ceballos manage to have gathered every anodyne beat known to man and plonked them onto one CD, like a friend who visits a site of natural wonder on holiday and returns with only tacky, touristy tat.

As if part of some kind of dehumanising aural torture procedure, various indigenous musical sounds are appropriated and repeated ad nauseam, inspiring inertia rather than itchy feet. To make things worse, Chus & Ceballos have smashed the window of opportunity with hammers rather than jumping through it, because Europe can currently boast some real electronic gems; kuduro has produced some fantastic off-shoots in Lisbon, for example, but there’s not a sign of it anywhere on Back On Tracks. Music for people to shout “What? I can’t hear you!” over. [Joe Barton]