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In a word, terrible. In a sentence, one of the worst dance/club CDs to ever be
released. Whoever decided that Audio Bullys had some worthwhile material on
their new disc to actually warrant release must have been asleep at the wheel.
This is pedestrian club mixing bullshit at its most uninspired and does not
warrant anyone’s ears, attention spans, or cash. It’s the kind of album you
download to see if you want it, and then realizing you don’t after only the
first song.
For every really good producer of this type of album in the dance genre, there
are tons and tons that are absolutely worthless. Audio Bullys is one of those.
The samples are shoddy, the beats worn out, and the goofy Cockney-inflected raps
are beyond embarrassing. But you have to supply the DJs with some product, and
that is the only group of people I could think of who would even begin to listen
to his disc and try to make something of it. For everyone else, Generation is
one destined for the used bins.
Take the first song here, “Shot You Down,” for instance. This is elementary
electronic production at its worst. I’ve heard kids in their bedrooms make more
exciting songs with mixing software than this. Over a lame Nancy Sinatra sample,
the Bullys toss on a robotic and overused bass line that was old after 1992, and
a set of sputtering backbeats that dribble out of the speakers and only
accentuate how terrible the Sinatra part is, which gets even worse when a “down,
down, down” refrain gets clipped at the end and sounds like a mistake someone
forgot to correct.
Then there’s “Keep on Moving” which samples Steely Dan’s “Midnite Cruiser” to a
decent effect, but is ruined by Simon Franks’ dull rapping and his stories about
getting high. You’d think the guy was Shaun Ryder or something. But he isn’t,
and the mellowness of the song is wiped away by the inane lyrics and zonked
vocals. Someone should tell Franks to open his mouth a little wider to let the
words come out fully, or else just stop being high during the recording
sessions.
The title track is another pit stop into sub-mediocrity. Cheeseball keyboard
chords are mashed spastically while the rest of the track sounds like some
dreadful Italian techno, discarded during the last decade. Again, the vocals are
uninspired, being spoken through a distorted filter. After the first minute, you
know you wanna hit that skip button. So you do, and the next thing you know is…
“I Won’t Let You Down,” with simplistic solo bass lines and more of that goofy
vocal filtering. No, the Bullys won’t let you down. You can just come to the
event already expecting crap. Mingle around and pray the DJ plays something
else. Too late. “EQing” is now on, and it’s more of the same. Dreadfully slow
beats, some annoying electronic burps, and more of the distorted vocals to try
and mask the limitations. Too bad, because not even that works. It just makes it
more noticeable.
Really, how did this album get such a major release? These guys aren’t anywhere
near being in the ranks of other groups such as Daft Punk or the Chemical
Brothers. Generation is undoubtedly one of the most uninspired and sloppy dance
albums I’ve ever heard, bar none. You hear it and literally wonder how many
drugs were ingested during its creation, and get the feeling the damn thing was
made on the nod. Don’t waste your time, folks. These guys don’t even deserve
your eyes gracing the CD’s cover in the store. Yes, it’s that bad.
~Jason Thompson
jthompson@bullz-eye.com
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