Product Description

Chimp Beams are releasing the US version of their ambitious second album, "Menina", having already released it to critical acclaim in Japan earlier this year. The title track, Menina, is a club hit, with the 12 EP quickly selling out and causing a ruckus in the record stores. Filled with melodic, harmonic songs, the new full length also has two hip-hop tracks. It's been 2 years since NY s Japanese group Chimp Beams released a milestone album Vibrato into the world dub scene in 2004. This electronic dub band will release its second album in the spring of 2007. As you can hear on the title track Menina , they push the melodious and emotional side to the limit rather than their first album s dark chill out sound. Soft and warm harmonies meet deep underground beats on this historic masterpiece. Though you can definitely call this the world of Chimp Beams dub, they ll prove you wrong if you think this is just a dub band. Recommended for fans of Electronica, Break Beats, Jazz, Hip Hop and House music as well.

Track Listing

1. Sleep Talking
2. Brooklyn DUB
3. Menina
4. 11217
5. One DUB
6. Winter Song
7. Synthesized
8. R2~Libyus Mix
9. Ice Storm
10. Lost Nomad
11. Jamming DUB
12. DUBzilian

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #304479 in Music
• Released on: 2007-02-27
• Number of discs: 1

Review
Chimp Beams Menina Dub is not my kind of music and yet I found myself strangely attracted to this Japanese membered trio oddly titled Chimp Beams. Their music is somewhere between breakbeats, funk, jazz, techno, and the aforementioned dub. Already acclaimed in Japan, Menina is now brought to the US. It is the album that could find its way into clubs and hipster movies all over the country before 07 is out. www.myspace.com/chimpbeams --CD Reviews

Review
CHIMP BEAMS Menina (Concent) New trio drops deluxe dub What's admirable about Menina is that it sees these Japanese-bred Brooklynites play traditional dub well without limiting themselves to just the music's basics. Tracks like Brooklyn DUB have the word traditional written all over them, being fueled by the echoed sounds of the melodica, bass and guitar. But then on the futuristic folk cut Menina, this trio's instrumentals resemble the work of Nobody and Boom Bip more than, say, dub master Lee Scratch Perry. Chimp Beams even provide a few hip-hop offerings, such as the thumping Synthesized, which only help to further extend its sound. Max Herman --Remix Magazine

Review
This Brooklyn based trio are already big in their native Japan, where "Menina", the title track to this their second album, was a huge club hit. Occasionally compared to Thievery Corporation in their eclectic mix of chill-out styling, and obviously indebted to Massive Attack and occasionally My Bloody Valentine, although the latter less so on this set, The Chimp Beams see themselves as an "electro jazz dub" group. "One Dub" certainly fits that description with its hefty bass line, jazz flecked keyboards, and echoing shards of reggae guitar, which slide into a surf solo that smoothly takes the track out. It's even more apt for "Synthesized", a bluesy, trad-jazz number built around hiphop breakbeats and a faux saxophone that overflows with a late night, smoke-filled club aura, over which Roger Khlon raps. "Sleep Talking" too features a rapper, Jerome Loston, who takes us on a mesmerizing journey deep into the night, across a track remixed from the trio's original Japanese release. "Menina" too has been remixed for the US, all spacey effects and lovely lilting guitar. The title translates from the Portuguese as "girl," but there's nothing Iberian about the number, although traces of the Med can be heard on the remixed "DUBzillian", which meshes together Latino edged beats, elegant keyboard work, and a pop-jazz melody somewhat reminiscent of "Girl from Ipanema". Far from Brazil comes "Brooklyn Dub", a tribute to '70s dub and Jamaican melodica hero Augustus Pablo, whose exotic, haunting Far East style is beautifully replicated within, albeit to breakbeats that bounce around the throbbing bass line. But it's the far move adventurous "Jamming DUB", with its intriguing mix of genres where the Chimps stop aping and start creating a unique sound all their own. Across songs like "Lost Nomad" and "Ice Storm", the trio conjure up a complex massing of styles that exquisitely fold in and around each other, from space rock to New Wave, Krautrock to dub, jazz to old school rap --allmusic

Customer Reviews

Mad Professor meets Galaxy 500
Sans herbal influence, how long can you endure dub music? Though it's a cool genre, it is fairly stylized, and the palette wears thin after an hour or so. Self-described as "having been influenced by Massive Attack and My Bloody Valentine," Chimp Beams is heavily rooted in dub, but their sound is as much Gary Numan and Madlib as it is King Tubby. Over their spaced-out spring reverby drums, this Japanese trio employs a host of dense synth and guitar textures, inventive samples and the occasional disco beat ("R2 ~ Libyus Mix"). On "Synthesized," a brief but powerful track, MC Roger Kahlon spits like the Black Star collective while a filtered lead and echoing trumpet provide nostalgic futurism; for "Sleep Talking" (feat. Jerome Loston), the group combines Dälek-style momentum and India-meets-Hotlanta rhythms, the results being surprisingly elegant. And on and on. Chimp Beams shunts your expectations through experimentation and expansion, dragging the genre to the present yet still allowing a foot to remain in the past.