On The Floor! - Live at Hoxton Bar and Grill, London

Bumblebeez

Modular, Australia

The Bumblebeez. But which Bumblebeez? The cavalier beat-mongers from the Australian bush? The confrontational punks who supported Radiohead and royally pissed off their fans? The neon-flecked electro-rap outfit infiltrating clubland worldwide? Or the primal screamers behind breakbeat blues tracks like 'Black Dirt'? An intuitively eclectic outfit, and one whose personnel changes by the day - according to the whims and needs of chief Bumblebee, Chris Colonna - to try and pin down Bumblebeez, to sum them up in one bite-size sound-bite is to miss the point. Modern, contradictory, The Bumblebeez are more a constantly mutating creative project than a band. Colonna has been making music forever. Growing up in Braidwood (population 1.100) near Canberra, it was just one of the things that he and his mates would do, like playing soccer, riding motorbikes and generally wrecking havoc in the countryside. However, it wasn't until he left Braidwood to do an art degree at the Pratt Institute in New York that his musical ambitions began to crystalise. In between matches with the college tennis team, he was listening to loads of hip hop but, at the same time, felt liberated by the "dirty and raw, DIY revolution" going on in guitar music, led by The Strokes. He returned home in 2002: "I sat down and the whole time I'd been in New York just came out of me in two weeks. I wrote ten songs. That's when I had to give The Bumblebeez a name, although, to this day, I don't know where it fucking came from." Those early sessions laid down The Bumblebeez' modus operandi. "I come up with ideas, do all the writing and production," says Colonna, "but then it goes into a gang of people who're around the studio, mates and stuff. And if Pia [his sister, aka MC Vila] is around, she'll rap on some tracks." Colonna's music sounds like repeatedly randomly spinning a radio dial, fragments of Happy Mondays, Beasties, John Spencer, Salt'n'Pepa, Go! Team, Daft Punk, Primal Scream, exploding and disappearing in the FM ether. The perfect Bumblebeez album according to the boss: "Ideally, a really fucked up record that goes everywhere, but which still has a pop sensibility, like 'I Am Walrus' by The Beatles. It's crazy, but it's still got huge hooks." This is an exclusive show, recorded live at Hoxton Bar and Grill in London.