(Man Recordings/Creative Vibes)

By all rights, I shouldn’t have enjoyed this album. It is ghetto tech meets electro funk meets samba punk, all mashed together with Brazilian vocals I have no hope of understanding. The problem is, it’s just too damn funky to ignore.

Edu K has done what many artists strive, but fail, to achieve, creating an album that sounds how he wants it to, with little inclination of conforming to genre boundaries. Mashing up the sounds he loves, chucking the Samba vibe of his homeland Brazil and then rhyming over the top with his brother Chilli Willi, the album is a brave move and one that looks destined to pay off.

Frenetiko is, intentionally or otherwise, a dance floor filler. The minute the breakbeat kicked on opener Funkeiro C.B, my head started to bob, and by the time the hard rock riffs had hit a mash up of cultures was dragging me in. Tracks like Sex-o-matic and Hot Mama scream booty or Miami bass, whilst Sexxxy seamlessly slides from a reggae sound to electro, all in around three minutes. They sit comfortably on a track list besides the guitar dominant Popozuda and funk track Da Punk Funk. Basically this is a fun album, you can’t understand the lyrics so you can switch your mind off and take in the sounds.

With all the above stated, there are a couple of little niggles I have. Firstly, the fourteen tracks could quite easily be played back to back as a set. That is, despite their subtle differences they all sound remarkably similar. My other problem is that fifteen tracks of a man chanting and ranting in Brazilian eventually begins to grate. Not on the “oh my goodness, that’s awful” level, more as the thing that makes you see similarities between every track as you’re paying attention only to the music.

In the end, I think it’s more a matter of personal taste. My love of hip-hop means that tracks from Frenetiko are best enjoyed in broken up doses or on a dance floor. An album I didn’t know what to expect from has turned out to be a pleasant surprise, sure to appeal to fans of a wide array of genres and definitely featuring tracks for next summers dance floors.