Philadelphia DJ/producer Diplo discovered Bonde Do Role, a Brazilian trio who make music (according to Diplo's interviews) for heat-packin' 15-year-olds doing fat lines of coke at favela parties in Rio that make the club scene in which the kid gets shot in City of God look like a Mentos commercial. Which is to say Diplo knows a good party jam when he sees it, not hears it. As a DJ, he's championed Baltimore club music and crunked-up rap, both better at rockin' the party than the iPod. Bonde made their Diplo-produced rap/dancehall/crunk debut earlier this year–With Lasersfeaturedbrontosaurus-farting-in-the-tar-pit bass, gap-toothed beats, bullfight-chant vocals–but this remix EP shows how inspiring their too-mashed-up-to-mash-up sound is to other hipster-dance klatches. A new Diplo edit of “Marina Gasolina” makes the Mr. Oizo-conducting-marching-band-tubas-playing-“Intergalactic” bass line its star. It sets up two remixes that do similar things: Fake Blood tightens up the bass line, squares up the beat into a solid stomp, and sets the track on fire with hands-in-the-air accoutrements (airhorns, sub-octave buzz bass, trance-synth freak-outs), which Peaches tries, but with more-is-less results, thanks to a rave-y bass line; only Fake Blood's draws blood. The CSS remix of “Office Boy” is breezy and bouncy, a nod to Brazilian sub-prime disco, but it's the bastard stepchild next to the guitar-riffic free-for-all (think Peter, Bjorn N John drunk on a Calvin Harris binge) version from Architecture in Helsinki.
The EP doesn't need to be 10 tracks, and the B-side-ish Bonde cuts (untouched by Diplo) such as “Miami Beach,” a godawful rap ripe for a YouTube parody video, are goofy. In their roundabout way, the remixes make the case that Bonde Do Role's hard-partying sound needs Diplo's Dr. Dre-ing to translate them to those of us not packing heat and doing Chihuahua-turd-sized rails.
