The Mix-Up is a sweaty, '60s soul package so smooth it's subliminal -- like swallowing your own spit. Woven tight with fuzzyliscious grooves and beats that'll have you reaching for an afro pick, the album has all the enthusiasm of a neighborhood basement jam session with musicians that have actually been around the block a few decades."
-- Erin Glass, San Diego Union-Tribune
Grade: 4 stars (of 5)
Recommended songs: B for My Name, Off the Grid
The Mix-Up is the first time the threesome have sat down to make a purely instrumental record, and it's a shame they don't do so more often...[The Mix-Up] reveals a much more refined band who have mastered their art.
-- David Watkins, South China Morning Post
Grade: N/A
Recommended songs: Electric Worm, Off the Grid
[The Mix-Up] is laid-back, good-natured, and sounds as if it was a lot of fun to make...Quite possibly a record whose subtleties will be revealed with time.-- David Peschek, The Guardian
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: The Rat Cage
There's much to snap a finger to in the snazzy grooves and sharp pick-up funk of "The Melee" and "Off the Grid"...The Mix-Up has the look and feel of a contractual obligation ahead of a world tour.
-- Jim Carroll, Irish Times
Grade: 3 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: The Melee
12 rap-less tracks do groove, holmes, but they also blur together, and offer few surprises. It's the sound of the Boys kickin' back, picking up their instruments and jamming it out - no muss, no fuss.
-- T'cha Dunlevy, Montreal Gazette
Grade: 3 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: Freaky Hijiki
The Mix-Up is all about groove and texture, sometimes at the expense of hooks...It's a different sound for the Beasties, to be sure, and one that places all the emphasis on their impressive instrumental chops.
-- Eric R. Danton, Hartford Courant
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
This fresh batch of tunes certainly has its goofy charms...it's hard not to be amused by the Beasties' groove-smitten, stiff-wristed take on funk, jazz and psychedelic sonics...[Beastie Boys] are having fun. And so are we -- up to a point. Alas, it isn't long before the trippy evocations ("B for My Name") and subverted funk jams ("Electric Worm") are followed by grooves and drones that aren't nearly as appealing.
-- Mike Joyce, Washington Post
Grade: N/A
Recommended songs: B for My Name, Electric Worm
[The Mix-Up is] a cool and groovy funk-lounge-dub affair that Austin Powers would surely dig...This is a music-only set featuring the surprisingly tasty playing of Mike Diamond on drums, Adam Horovitz on guitar and Adam Yauch on bass, and sizable contributions from keyboardist Money Mark and percussionist Alfredo Ortiz...The tracks draw you in with oodles of engaging atmosphere without going anywhere in particular.
-- Larry Katz, Boston Herald
Grade: B
Recommended song: B for My Name
[The Mix-Up is] low-fi, hazy and lightweight...For rappers, these guys can sort of play...They're riffing on the same retro grooves that might, on another album, serve as samples; you could call them the Uncredible Bongo Band.
-- Nate Chinen, New York Times
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: Suco de Tangerina
The rather homogenous sound washes over you but in a good way: each carefully constructed track has a robust groove at its core.
-- Killian Fox, The Observer (London)
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: Suco de Tangerina
Beastie Boys are not content to be the finest white rappers in the world. Every so often, they want to remind us they're musicians too. So they set up their gear, start jamming and slap together funky Latin-jazz instrumentals like these. If you have a blaxploitation flick in need of a soundtrack, this is your lucky day. Otherwise, not so much.
-- Darryl Sterdan, Toronto Sun
Grade: 2-1/2 stars (of 5)
Recommended songs: Suco de Tangerina, The Rat Cage
What's the use of a Beastie Boy who doesn't rap? The Mix-Up answers the question with a set of instrumental songs on which the trio, better musicians nowadays than they are rappers, indulge their enthusiasm for wah-wah guitars, funky organ licks and dubby basslines. With long-time collaborator Money Mark lending a hand on keyboards, the results are inconsequential but oddly enjoyable. The one-time rap delinquents have found a role for themselves as purveyors of high-quality background music.
-- Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, Financial Times (London)
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
Mike D, Adam Horovitz and Adam Yauch have dropped the mic and picked up guitar, bass and drums, returning to the jazz-tinged instrumentals explored on Check Your Head and The In Sound From Way Out! Even then, such jams worked best as interludes between vocal attacks, rather than stand-alone pieces...For fans only.-- Luke Bainbridge, Observer Music Magazine (London)
Grade: 2 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: N/A
Overall, [The Mix-Up] is pretty good, though it's easy to imagine you're listening to one of those '60s albums knocked out in spare studio time by session men waiting for Ritchie Blackmore to finish his incantations...This is an entertaining, if inessential purchase for funk rock fans and habitual marijuana users.
-- Eddy Lawrence, Time Out
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
It is an ambitious set that, thanks to the trio's enthusiasm and way with a groove, they just about pull off.
-- Music Week
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
The grizzled wiseacres' second wordless disc reaches back to hip-hop's prehistory for a dozen lightweight psychedelic funk instrumentals -- the sort of thing the Boys might have dug up on a mildewed 45 for a sample back in their Paul's Boutique days. But they don't quite have the rhythmic mojo of the circa-1970 obscurities they're imitating here, and many tracks are exercises in texture (dub bass! sitar noodling!) that fail to develop into actual tunes. Who'd have guessed that a Beastie Boys record could be too subtle?
-- Douglas Wolk, Entertainment Weekly
Grade: C+
Recommended song: The Melee
The Mix-Up finds the Beasties indulging their love of '70s funk, dub reggae, post-punk dance bands like ESG and blaxploitation film soundtracks...The playing is excellent, the production style is suitably vintage and the music is at the very least pleasantly distracting. Yet they sound like they're improvising a film soundtrack instead of writing jams that hold up to repeat listening. There's a serious paucity of riffs or hooks or any kind of melodic development -- it all sounds like they're waiting for someone else to take the lead. Which, for such a band of brash iconoclasts simply seems, well, mixed up.
-- Michael Barclay, Canadian Press
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
[The Mix-Up] has shades of the 1996 compilation of instrumental tracks from Check Your Head and Ill Communication, The In Sound from Way Out!, but lacks the edge of those older tracks and the sense of discovery that made the comp and source discs so exciting. The Mix-Up is very polished and, in some cases, the B-Boys dub up or sitar things up, but they never crank it up. Yet they seem comfortable away from the cultural foreground, producing very nice background music.
-- Matthew Pioro, National Post
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
[The Mix-Up] is pleasant enough...[but] the grooves never seem to go anywhere...The dominant player throughout is Money Mark, and it's probably no coincidence that, like his own albums, The Mix-Up has the characterless quality of those late-Sixties albums of incidental TV music that some find so ironically cool nowadays.
-- Andy Gill, Arts & Book Review
Grade: N/A
Recommended songs: Suco de Tangerina, Electric Worm
[The Mix-Up is] a mixture of fuzzed-out funk and mutant R&B...A minor addition to the Beastie Boys canon, then, but cool driving music for hot summer evenings.
-- Mark Edwards, Sunday Times (London)
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
For the most part, The Mix-Up is devoid of new ideas -- a collection of dull, derivative, self-indulgent noodlings largely untouched by quality control.
-- Chris Elwell-Sutton, London Evening Standard
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
You can just see them, the "guys", who happen to be a world-famous hip-hop outfit well into middle age, jammin' like a bunch of kids who've just discovered dope, Tropicalia and the wah-wah pedal. They describe the 12 instrumental tracks as "post-punk" but it's more Austin Powers than Gang of Four. One for completists. And backpackers.
-- Phoebe Greenwood, The Times (London)
Grade: 2 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: N/A
Freestyle funk workouts. [The songs] get a little samey.
-- Cameron Adams, Herald Sun (Australia)
Grade: 3 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: Off the Grid
The Mix-Up is a kind of admission of obsolescence. Not that it's bad. Tossed-off, underdone, monotonous, unfinished and redundant maybe, but not bad.
-- Zach Baron, Village Voice
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
Their instrumental style is a hybrid of jazz, funk and rock, heavy on bongos, organ and wah-wah guitar...The album has a loping, groovy vibe, but like a just-for-fun jam session, it doesn't really go anywhere. It meanders around then blends into the background. There's no question Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D. have grown musically, but they're at their best when they use words too. Their crafty, smart-and-silly lyrics are a big part of their charm, and a few rhymes might have made "The Mix-Up" more than background noise.
-- Sandy Cohen, Associated Press
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: The Rat Cage
Funksome, noir-ish and tinged with hints of subtle experimentation, it is surely just the job to put on the car stereo if you mysteriously find yourself night-driving through a large American city in 1974 with the suspicion that you are being followed by the cops. -- John Harris, The Guardian
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: Off the Grid
The Mix-Up is all-instrumental, digging into the familiar organ-heavy lounge funk of Check Your Head and Ill Communication. Yet it's poignant, because the Beasties play their old grooves like they realize how bad people miss them and how high their stock remains despite so many years away...It's definitely fun to play loud on a sunny afternoon.
-- Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone
Grade: 3 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: N/A
[The Mix-Up] is a dozen instrumental tracks that border on noodling, but with just enough funky breakbeats to keep the album from turning into a complete snooze-fest...[It's] a bleary-eyed brew of tremolo guitars and organ swells...An album for Beastie Boys completists only.
-- Chris Macias, Sacramento Bee
Grade: 2-1/2 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: N/A
It's all new material and it's all good -- even without the boys' attitude-filled raps...There are solid slow beats and heavy repetitious echoes that make it futile to fight against the blissed-out leanings of the music. There are licks of '70s-sounding disco and jazzy guitar that would make Beastie Boys a dreamy contemporary fit at any jazz festival...The Mix-Up stands up easily to close listening, but would also make great background music for a dinner party among old friends who once relied on Check Your Head as reliable weekend rager music.
-- Amy O'Brian, Ottawa Citizen
Grade: 3-1/2 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: N/A
The boys drop the vocals and the samples, delivering a cool soul-funk instrumental album that's just begging to be remixed and sampled.
-- Rob Thomas, Wisconsin State Journal
Grade: Gottahaveit
Recommended song: N/A
[The Mix-Up is] an all-instrumental record that, in a way, goes back to their roots as actual musicians more than rappers. But if this is a Beastie Boys calibration, it's one worth getting into. Heady organs, thick bass, endless break beats and everything from funky horn samples to a ghostly sitar run throughout the record, taking you on an enjoyable - albeit far from revolutionary - ride...Anybody who ever put past Beasties' instrumentals like "Ricky's Theme" on a mix will definitely dig this disc.
-- Staten Island Advance
Grade: N/A
Recommended songs: Freaky Hijiki, The Cousin of Death
The Beastie Boys' monopoly on N.Y.C. rap-cat instrumental funk has been smashed to pieces by far tighter units like the El Michels Affair and the Budos Band. The Beasties sound rusty by comparison: Mike D's percussion comes across like he's randomly trying to find new beats between the one and the two, while MCA plays bass like he's following the rhythm through the wall of the next room over...The majority of the record seems intended as an extension of their Latin-, funk- and jazz-hued early-'90s instrumental jams-though aside from the atypically clean-sounding opener "B for My Name" and the monstrous Money Mark keyboard workout "The Cousin of Death"...As the product of a few guys screwing around with lo-fi dance-rock, it's diverting enough.
-- Nate Patrin, OC Weekly
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
There's nothing as exciting or feral as the distorted, propulsive beats of, say, "So What'cha Want" [on The Mix-Up], but it's at the very least interesting, if not at all exciting. Though every track is a variation of the same organ-laden, spacey, stoner-funk jam, and the instrumentation is competent at best, the Beasties maintain their knack for expertly crafted soundscapes, and every track could be the foundation for an excellent, if mellow, rap track. While the Beastie Boys have been neither boys nor particularly beastie for over a decade, at least The Mix-Up is exactly what its title suggests.
-- Greg Chow, Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
Grade: B
Recommended song: N/A
This smooth, all-instrumental move is more quaint than innovative. And Diamond, Horovitz and Yauch's drums, guitar and bass still sound rickety...But it's a charming, slinky racket they've Mix-ed with keyboardist Money Mark and percussionist Alfredo Ortiz - one with some new tricks...Sweet stuff this. Fightin' for your right to chill.
-- A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer
Grade: 2-1/2 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: N/A
A great album by the Beastie Boys that doesn't involve one word, rapped or otherwise? Yup. This totally entertaining, all-instrumental CD celebrates the soulful, funky pre-punk influences that first inspired the definitive New York hip-hop party group...The accent is on the sort of organ-fueled lounge funk familiar to fans of such Beasties classics as Check Your Head and Ill Communication. And it's a great bash.-- Fred Shuster, Daily News of Los Angeles
Grade: 3 stars (of 4)
Recommended song: The Melee
[The Mix-Up is] a scrappy collection of head-nodding, organ-heavy grooves made for headphones. Unlike The In Sound from Way Out!, this feels like a real album. It starts off fairly mellow, with percolating keyboards and Latin-tinged beats. By the middle, we're in the deep end of the pool of funk, with "The Electric Worm" and the rocking "Off the Grid." It's shmoove sailing from there. Admittedly, my brain isn't wired to hate a new Beasties album, but The Mix-Up is easy to love.
-- Robert Benziker, Santa Fe New Mexican
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
Influences from dub, jazz and punk can be heard on The Mix-Up, making it tough not to like, especially if you're a fan of the Beasties' 1996 release The In Sound From Way Out! The mashing of styles creates some funk-flavored, soul-filled Muzak suited for a dentist's office where Bootsy Collins is the receptionist and James Brown is the man working on your molars.
-- Travis Hay, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: Off the Grid
The Beastie Boys -- once innovators in rap and hip-hop -- have done the unthinkable on their latest release: They've wandered squarely into mediocrity. Easily their most uninspired album to date, The Mix-Up reveals Beasties who have lost the plot and disguised their malfeasance as an instrumental album.
-- V. Marc Fort, Austin American-Statesman
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: None -- "Save your 99 cents."
Composed of low-end-heavy jams that reference the Meters, tropicalia, '70s funk and porn music (sometimes all at once) and zero words, The Mix-Up is thematically sound and feels like a comprehensive piece instead of a self-indulgent scheme. There are moments of thick, bona fide groove (the down-and-dirty "Off the Grid" chief among them). But stylistic aspirations aside, with the Beastie name on the cover, it's hard to listen without (sub)consciously seeking out the places where rhymes could go.
-- Jeff Vrabel, Billboard
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: N/A
[The Mix-Up is] proof that the Beasties' obsession with retro cop shows goes far beyond that glorious video for "Sabotage". Inspired by the likes of Mongo Santa-maria and David Axelrod, it's dominated by Latin-infused soundtrack jazz - perfect for walking around pretending you're a Seventies hoodlum played by Isaac Hayes.
-- Simon Price, The Independent on Sunday
Grade: N/A
Recommended song: Suco de Tangerina
Though the album's modesty is appealing, [The Mix-Up] is the sound of a group treading water. The mid-tempo, interchangeable grooves might occasionally get you nodding your head, but do you think even Mike D knows the difference between "The Rat Cage" and "The Kangaroo Rat"? Background music for alphabetizing your vinyl collection.
-- Alan Light, Blender
Grade: 2-1/2 stars (of 5)
Recommended song: Electric Worm
12 greasy funk instrumentals saturated with '70s blaxploitation atmospherics, fuzzy Eastern undertones, and garage-band Farfisa courtesy of the invaluable "Money" Mark Nishita...The result is destined to serve as chic background music for countless dorm parties thrown by people who'd never think of picking up a Meters or Booker T. & The MGs album...[The Mix-Up is a] satisfyingly uneven, agreeably overreaching hodgepodge of sounds and styles à la Hello Nasty or Ill Communication.
-- Nathan Rabin, The Onion
Grade: B
Recommended song: Off the Grid
[The Mix-Up] is repetitive, two-dimensional and couldn't involve more noodle if The Mars Volta played their local Wagamamas...The Mix-Up finds the Beastie Boys with nothing much to say, in more ways than one.
-- Julian Marshall, NME
Grade: 4 stars (of 10)
Recommended song: N/A
