Afro-Mystik - Future Tropic (1999)

There's absolutely no reason why this music should be boring. Here's how it's described on the back cover: "primitive, itchy, Afro-Brazilian, hypo-elec tronic [sic] beatscapes, consciousness-altering, cerebral-bending [sic], poetic lyricism, the soul of Afro-Latin rhythm meets futuristic techno-funk." Sounds great, right? And at the beginning of each of the album's 13 tracks, you think it's going to pan out -- the grooves are complex, funky, and engaging. But then you keep listening, and nothing happens. "Samba de Rua" bounces along on a warm bed of Brazilian percussion, the mix spiced up with vocal samples and the odd whistle or flute, but there's no harmonic movement and no significant change in texture for almost five minutes; when the beat finally breaks down into a spare drum-and-keyboards groove, it stays that way until a flute solo gets tacked onto it, and that's it until the track ends, having wasted eight minutes of your life on about two minutes' worth of ideas. "Shoplift the Future" features a fun hip-hop adaptation of the Garden of Eden story, and the harp lick that weaves through the laid-back funk of "Move It Out" is a very nice touch. But what makes "Move It Out" worth listening to for six-and-a-half minutes is the singing; when Afro-Mystik gets back to instrumentals, your mind starts wandering again and you find yourself getting annoyed and thinking, "are they still stuck on that lick?" This album's worth plundering for ideas, but few listeners will want to sit all the way through it.