Hide might have everything you could want from a Bloody Beetroots record – noisy, unrestrained fun that just keeps giving – but there is an astute cleverness and method to the madness that slowly reveals itself after a few listens.

Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo, perhaps better known to the rest of us as the Italian electro punk juggernaut The Bloody Beetroots, has been synonymous with the loud, the brash and the downright bombastic since 2006.

Now we’ve arrived at sophomore offering Hide, it could be argued that not too much has changed with Sir Bob; the same jagged, forthright thumps and crunches of electro/house that are worked into a vast melting pot of influences are found in spades here. The argument could be proved right, in this sense, except that for Hide, Rifo has really gone for broke. Enlisting the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, Tommy Lee and Peter Frampton as collaborators is no mean feat, let’s be honest.

Featuring McCartney and Youth on lead single ‘Out Of Sight’ is a stroke of unabashed genius. On paper it seems too much to believe, but somehow Rifo pulls it off. By keeping it all so unimaginably large-scale – the stadium rock-worthy drums, the hyper drama of each and every element coming together in a riotous climax of sound – it makes for intense listening.

Intense, however, seems to be a factor that Rifo manages to impart upon the entire record, and it feels at times there’s little reprise from the cacophony of noise that comes from just about every angle. Still, tracks like ‘All The Girls (Around The World)’, featuring the impossibly smooth Theophilus London, provide some soulful refuge.

3.5/5 stars

BY MARISSA DEMETRIOU

Hide is out now through Hussle/Ministry of Sound.

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