Not quite a solo album from the Meat Beat Manifesto mainman, Hello Friends! is actually a mix set, with Dangers spinning through tracks from the Tino’s Breaks series released by him with producer/video director Ben Stokes on their own Tino Corp. label. Hidden behind the alias of a reportedly reclusive Cuban percussionist named Tino, Dangers or Stokes (but usually not both) construct break records that range from excellent to solid. Give credit to both of them (and Mike Powell, who produced a few of these); the beats are strong and chunky as on the best Meat Beat Manifesto records, and though there’s not much for them to drive other than a few vocal samples or excerpts from films (after all, that’s basically what break records are), Dangers keeps the mix nice and friendly. The vocal samples each depend on the volume in the Tino’s Breaks series (Mambo, Dub, Christmas) they came from, and the Cuban mystique gets translated into a lot of retread mambo references. – John Bush