I'm a huge sucker for electro. I mean real breakdancing-on-lino-in-the-middle-of-Wood-Green-shopping-centre-in-1983-to-the-sounds-of-Hashim’s-Al-Naafiysh-style electro. So I was highly excited when the new album from Bumblebeez began with more horn stabs, computerised blasts and turntable scratches than all 10 volumes of the Streetsounds Electro compilations.

Bumblebeez are a brother-sister duo from Australia, Pia Colonna performing vocal duties, with brother Chris Colonna handling both vocals and spearheading production.

Confounding my immediate expectations the first proper track Black Dirt is a combination of lolloping indie hiphop beats with brother Colonna shouting through a distortion pedal about the dirt in his mind. In all honesty it’s pretty annoying. Big phat 808 sub-bass pulses layered under heavy kick drums is what I was expecting, and Clubb Clubb dutifully obliges on that front, Miami Bass beats and rousing synths storming along accompanied by perfectly able raps from Pia, The Sister of Ill. It is somewhat contrived, but certain to fill a drunken dancefloor.

I will say the album does work by being brightly multicoloured and altering music style track by track, however Colonna proves himself to be a slightly uninspired musical thief. There’s no interesting, off the wall styles being plundered, it’s all a bit safe, and while there’s nothing wrong with switching styles wildly throughout the album (the Beasties’ Ill Communication being a perfect comparison point), there is when it serves to destroy any sense of cohesion.

If I were being overly cynical, I’d say that some of the mini-tracks were included specifically to gain PRS revenue from television. In fact the lack of cohesion between tracks as a whole lends to this idea even more. Rather than evoking a childlike eclecticism, the changes in style make the album seem more like a catalogue of background music designed for advertising agencies marketing to Generation-Y. A bit of faux New-Wave here, a bit of P-Funk there, but overall there’s no genius production style to keep it all defined, to give it the identity for which it sorely begs.

There’s no doubt that it’s fun, and the more dancefloor based tracks such as the aforementioned Clubb Clubb, and the mid-tempo electronic groove of Rio (which successfully echoes Homework-era Daft Punk) really do work very well. Hopefully they’ll be released as singles and get even more effective remix treatments, as there’s plenty of energy here to be exploited by furtive producers.

There seems very little to engage, tracks sometimes seeming to have been specifically designed to accompany a visual medium. There are a few standout tracks that work very well, but they are lost in a morass of filler and sound effects. It’s not that it’s boring, but surely the idea of an album is to grab you by the ears and force you to listen from beginning to end. It does work on occasion, just not enough. There’s no reason why an album like this should attempt to be timeless, or even to represent the latest fashions in music; what it should do is provide enough interesting musical ideas to hook you to keep you involved for forty minutes or more – unfortunately I fear this lacks the qualities to allow it any kind of longevity.