Beats Anitque is the Bay Area trio of David Sartori, Tommy Cappel, and Zoe Jakes. Since their first release in 2007, the group has been fairly prolific, with four albums to their name and several EPs. They work to create a fusion of sounds that draws from more traditional Eastern European and Middle Eastern music and mix them with hip hop and electronic production techniques. It’s a formula not too far from Thievery Corporation, and much like them, the music of Beats Antique can be hit and miss.

The danger in taking any sort of older style of music and updating it is that you’re always in danger of sounding hokey. When you’re incorporating styles of music that originate from cultures outside of your own, you also enter into a tricky gray area of cultural appropriation. However, there’s one big hurdle to get over before you open up that can of worms, which is the quality of the music. The biggest problem besides the cultural politics at play is that with rare exception, putting “world music” over beats comes across as something corny that you’d here at a chain coffee shop downtown played to convince middle-aged adults that they’re getting their lattes somewhere hip. Much like Thievery Corporation, Beats Antique frequently go back and forth between creating interesting music that happens to use elements from different genres of music and songs that sound like an updated take on some Disney-esque multiculturalism. With Beats Antique, the difference usually occurs when they let the beat lead the song, or when they let strings or horns lead a song. Sartori and Cappel attended the California Institute of the Arts and the Berklee School of Music, respectively, and this kind of training can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes this kind of formal musical education can just fine tune the skills of people who already had the passion to express themselves through music. Other times, it can lead to the Yngwie Malmsteen problem, making music that is extremely complex and playing that is technically proficient, but never actually connects with anybody beyond the surface recognition that it must be very difficult to play those songs. What makes Beats Antique especially frustrating is that they live on the line separating these two sides of musicianship. At certain points on Elektraphone, I’ll lose myself and nod my head to the beat and just enjoy what I’m hearing, but then there are songs where I find myself looking on from the outside, with no emotional connection to the music at all, just wondering when the noodling will stop.

Elektraphone leaves a lot to be desired. The biggest problem with a group like Beats Antique is that they are too self conscious about their hook of bringing different genres together, the musical expression doesn’t always unfold naturally. Too often this album just sounds forced and uninteresting.