About is the moniker of a gent by the name of Rutger Hoedemaekers who uses it, as well as the childishly drawn animal heads that adorn the human figures of Bongo's artwork, to remove himself one step from his wild musical vision. Considering the cyclone-like time signatures of certain tracks on this album as well as the warped, broken computer production values, it is understandable that he might want to put a curtain between the rest of the world and his knobs and levers. You wouldn't want just anyone trying to take hold of the controls of this crazy machine.

What Hoedemaekers and his occasional guests attempt on Bongo seems to be a distillation of the last 40 years of pop and rock music into quick three minute chunks which are further sent through a glitchy piece of software. This bed of random guitar and drum sound is then pared down into perfect pieces of pop songwriting with Hoedemaekers leading the way with his winsome vocal melodies leading the way. On one track, "Band Dynamics," he ups the melodic ante by handing the mike to a lovely singer by the name of Marg Van Eenbergen who adds the right edge of new wave flair to a song that veers between a four to the floor beat and a disco rave up.

In those sections that the record slows down, everything tends to drag with it. On "Persona," the shuffling glam rock rhythm and fuzzy guitar don't do justice to the drum machine chaos that comes up at the end. As well, the tuba, sousaphone and sax track, "Friends Applaud, The Comedy Is Over," comes off like a spare bit of novelty that loses its steam well within the first minute of the song. Hoedemaekers does well to let his freak flag fly and allow the sputtering beats and over the top antics take his songs to the great heights he's capable of reaching.