BS 2000

In stark contrast to their frantic and buoyant sound, BS2000 entered the music world rather quietly. The two-man project was originally conceived as an east-meets-west long distance beat-trading coalition between New York based Adam Horovitz and Los Angeles resident Amery Smith. Horovitz, who is a Beastie Boy by trade, and Smith, who tours with the B-Boys as their stage drummer and is known to fans as AWOL, started collaborating in 1995 and released their first album, the eponymous BS2000, the following year on the Grand Royal record label. Word of this Beastie-backed side project began as an underground murmur. The group's esoteric appeal was further secured when their debut record was released exclusively on vinyl and was only available through the Grand Royal web site. Nonetheless, the album's 23 tracks, all extremely short and drenched in drum-machine beats and a frenzy of cryptic samples, made a splash within the breakbeat DJ world. It garnered praise from such turntable luminaries as Dan the Automator and Alec Empire. Due in part to the Beastie Boys' active schedule of recording and touring, it would be nearly five years before BS2000 reemerged with a follow-up album. Their sophomore effort, dubbed Simply Mortified, was released in early 2001. While Simply Mortified still had a drum machine at its core, the album relied less on sampling and more on flea-market keyboards and distorted vocals, both of which were absent on the first record. Simply Mortified alternately sounds like a lo-fi Saturday night dance-club masterpiece and a compilation of Saturday morning cartoon theme songs that never existed. ~ Brian Newman, All Music Guide