0724383771622. Pre-Owned: Good condition. CD. Hello Nasty the Beastie Boys fifth album is a head-spinning listen loaded with analog synthesizers old drum machines call-and-response vocals freestyle rhyming futuristic sound effects and virtuoso turntable scratching. The Beasties have long been notorious for their dense multi-layered explosions but Hello Nasty is their first record to build on the multi-ethnic junk culture breakthrough of Check Your Head instead of merely replicating it. Moving from electro-funk breakdowns to Latin-soul jams to spacy pop Hello Nasty covers as much ground as Check Your Head or Ill Communication but the flow is natural like Paul s Boutique even if the finish is retro-stylized. Hiring DJ Mixmaster Mike (one of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz) turned out to be a masterstroke; he and the Beasties created a sound that strongly recalls the spare electronic funk of the early 80s but spiked with the samples and post-modern absurdist wit that have become their trademarks. On the surface the sonic collages of Hello Nasty don t appear as dense as Paul s Boutique nor is there a single as grabbing as Sabotage but given time little details emerge and each song forms its own identity. A few stray from the course and the ending is a little anticlimactic but that doesn t erase the riches of Hello Nasty -- the old-school kick of Super Disco Breakin and The Move ; Adam Yauch s crooning on I Don t Know ; Lee Scratch Perry s cameo; and the recurring video game samples to name just a few. The sonic adventures alone make the album noteworthy but what makes it remarkable is how it looks to the future by looking to the past. There s no question that Hello Nasty is saturated in old-school sounds and styles but by reviving the future-shock rock of the early 80s the Beasties have shrewdly set themselves up for the new millennium. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine Rovi