Let's face facts. Bond is stylish. Pure, taut, catlike masculinity edged with humor and taste. He's been with us for what seems like forever and even my mother recognizes the name. She gushes and flushes, telling me that Roger Moore is the best looking man she ever met, eyelids fluttering like she just found that perfect leather handbag for 75% off. Disgusting.

I assert to you, avid reader and trepan candidate, that there comes with this cache a certain stylistic responsibility. To rend a Bondian gem into pieces and reform it under your own interpretation, that is a both a supreme gesture of respect and a supreme risk. On this compilation a number of remix artists and techno genii certainly rend with abandon, but most forget their stylistic responsibility, letting the original style that most of these tracks possessed in original form slip forever through the cracks.

What you get for your buck is 11 Bond themes from various movies, remixed by the boys and girls that do these things. Sounds great. I was pumped. But, rather than recognizing the strength of a track and building upon it, you wind up listening to a lot of average, tired technoisms beating style into submission. Martinis give way to water bottles, the straight crease and sharp smirk submit to baggy pants and the toothy grin of oblivion. Moby proved that Bond and techno can work together, but with the exception of one or two contributions, Bond Bass and Beats is an infinitely flat techno comp, not even considering its weak Bond connection.

-James P. Wisdom