Beatbox culture – a beatbox artist being a musician who uses their body and vocal cords to imitate the sound of drum machines and loops – had its roots in Brooklyn-based hip-hop musicians like Doug E Fresh and Buffy from The Fat Boys. When Fresh intoned “Pass the Boo-Dah” with his defiant snarl back in the mid-1980s, the thought that one day his technique would be grafted onto a vocal arrangement of the opening movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony would have made him snort. Yet that’s exactly what beatbox artist Shlomo and the Swingle Singers do here; and the joke couldn’t be cornier as Beethoven finds himself worked in counterpoint with “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.

Shlomo appears on the sleeve looking like the geeky lovechild of Tim Henman and Louis Theroux, reinforcing stereotypes about what happens when white men rap. The Beethoven is followed by the slow movement from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez decked out with a shockingly trite lyric by Al Jarreau. Ravel’s Boléro has its snare drum rhythm vocalised, and again stumbles into dubious taste as tam-tam and crash cymbal parts are sung. Beatbox vocalising is supposed to be funky. This is just trivial decoration.

When the Swingles tackle 1930s swing band numbers like “It’s Sand, Man!” the results are more endearing. As they blend complex chromatic harmonies, keeping vibrato to a minimum and swinging with an authentic feel, their technical mastery feels unassailable. But technique without creative purpose is like an omelette without eggs.