Tracks

“Toe Jam”
The BPA feat. David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal

Fatboy Slim might be working under the alias Brighton Port Authority, but the Chuck E. Cheese of DJs sticks with familiar ingredients. Cartoon loops bleet like Tijiuana custom car horns over a gooey bassline. The hook here is David Byrne’s stream of nonsense: “A girl looks like a pony/ She gallops all day long / in between my toes.” Even peanut butter–mouthed MC Dizzee Rascal sounds pedestrian in comparison.

“Best, Best”
Missy Elliott

Only Missy can get away with this, building Space Mountain from every hip-hop and R&B cliché (Patrón, ballas, bedrooms, money, freakin’). Timbaland protégé Danja eclipses his mentor: The beat rumbles like custom Nikes in a dryer, while a planetary laser show shoots from speaker to speaker. Think Tangerine Dream crafting Hello Kitty ringtones.

“Milk Crisis”
The Go! Team

The punky cheerleaders move further away from boom-box quality audio. In cleaning up, they sound more like a mess. All that retro film grain helped obscure the nagging vocals of MC Ninja, whose Double-Dutch shtick is tripping up. Blinding sheets of My Bloody Valentine guitar keep this one out of the hands of Honda advertisers.

“Slow Revolution”
Sonic Youth

It’s hard to buy that the tom tapping and chiming high-fret picking isn’t tossed off in less time than it took to set whatever “bizarre” tuning is being used. Kim Gordon’s voice mimics Carol Anne’s eerie television-netherword cries in Poltergeist. This lone new track tacked to the band’s Starbucks-exclusive Best Of raises less ruckus than a milk foamer.