Animatronicparrotcore!…

[Video][Website]
[7.10]

Andrew Casillas: “Baby Tropical” is, in a sense, a blatant attempt to incorporate the tribal sound spreading from Mexico to the rest of Latin America. But there’s a lot more going on here than that hyper-beat lets on — this shit is rich. The Rita Indiana-influenced bachata, the sounds of (I assume) parrots dancing with monkeys, the Casio keyboards pitched as high as Babel: it’s a mess of cacophony, yet pleasurable and seamless.
[10]

Anthony Easton: This is how I imagine an animatronic parrot who has spent his life at a low market tiki joint but has finally achieved sentience would announce his plans for destroying the world. It is that awesome. 
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: Digital cumbia gone feral; or perhaps feral cumbia gone digital; or is it feral digitalia gone cumbia? It’s hard to tell — the way the whining oscillator hook spits and stutters over a beat that refuses to bang and prances instead is a rebuke to those who need their electronic dance easy or their Latin music stripped of place and history.
[8]

Brad Shoup: It’s tribal in orbit ’round M|A|R|R|S. They take an ascending three-chord figure and run it through, I dunno, dubstep and trance on top of the specifically Latin modes. The figure activated my lizard brain (maybe cos it sounds like the chorus of Sly’s “Stand!”), so the rapping and jungle cats become gravy.
[7]

Iain Mew: I keep mistaking the beginning for Hot Chip. After that they take their squelchy bassy synth line and go on a ramble too freeform to be mistaken any more, taking in all manners of lasers, other sound effects and eventually vocals on the way. That journey and its unpredictability is enjoyable, but they don’t hang around for long enough at any good points or give enough of a destination to give the track more lasting appeal.
[6]

Zach Lyon: I made a mistake and called “Inspector Norse” “restless” before listening to “Baby Tropical”; consider it rescinded. File under: The Music Senior Citizens Were Worried About.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I didn’t blurb “Inspector Norse” basically because I couldn’t find anything to say about it; it’s good, but it doesn’t give me the tingles the way it did so many other writers here, and honestly it seemed very similar to dozens of other tracks I’ve heard. (Obviously, your mileage on that sort of thing for any song will vary wildly depending on what you’ve heard.) But even though they’re very different tracks, “Baby Tropical” made me think of some of the comments on the Terje; here is the joy and warmth that I just wasn’t hearing myself on that (again, perfectly good!) song. It makes me want to leap up and start dancing and yelling along.
[9]

Will Adams: There’s a real effort to be as slipshod and garish as possible, from the synth lines that aren’t quite aligned with the beat to the bitcrushed interjections. The vocals add a center to the madness, but it’s tough to wait two minutes to get to that point.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The layers of percussion and sampled vocals with which the track begins are tough and dense. But the high Farfisa/synth line is a menace: indelible in the way that twee often is.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: The bottom end of this is awesome, as if it’s found the secret frequency that makes hips not just move but flick, and the breakdown renders all dubstep obsolete. The vocals would make more sense if the song was as improvised and loose as the guys grooving in the video are, but in a song with a wailing Farfisa (?), that the vocals are the annoying bit is a bit of a surprise and disappointment. Fortunately they’re over quickly and “Baby Tropical”‘s fusion of strangely well-matched sounds leaves me hungry for a 12” mix.
[7]