Future Cuts

I’m sure I’m not alone in my abject love of Timecode, a label who have never so much as contemplated swerving from the style they do best. Future Cuts maintains their modus operandi: nighttime stomping music with soul, funk, and organic movement.

Twisted System opens up with Psychopath, a huge midrange line being the chief reason to get excited and sell your cat. What’s ironic is that the words “Twisted,” “System” and “Psychopath” encourage all sorts of bad acid industrial drill nightmare images, but the track is remarkably fluid and restrained.

Scorb teams up with Concept for Dissident Factions, which doesn’t really grab me. Scorb’s recent album is infinitely more engaging. Phyx does well with Kansas City Shuffle, which makes me want to visit Kansas if this is what goes down over there. Danceable to the point of being impossible to ignore, with imaginative flecks and a solid, positive groove throughout, all cascading into a huge crescendo that’s up there with the best of them.

Multistate’s HQ pt 2 raises the temperature, one of those nighttime tracks where you’re not sure whether you’re chasing something, or being chased. Before you can work out which, Mantis’ staggeringly wonderful Blood Red comes in and does its stuff. This is amazing: you’ve got a psy backbone over which several completely different sounds rise up and start this madly fluid dragon dance in front of you. It’s utter genius: it reminds you that the sheer act of forging sounds from nothing, and engineering them using solid technology to create something flowing and organic is something that should be celebrated.

Xatrik vs Kid X’s Wildcard is a hard bastard running around trying to find the weak bastards, of which I am one. Lost & Found’s Scanner 2.0 is more in the fun-ride territory, the peak here is incredible – it just keeps building and building, and when it finally drops I can see dancefloors going a very ape-y brand of apeshit.

Multistate’s remix of Hydraglph’s Cigarettes & Silver Bullets neatly combines riff-driven techno with twilight doof, with a final run that ought to come with a government health warning. Finally Artifakt continues on his delightfully twisted musical evolution with The Pole, a tight and paranoid track topped off with acidlines galore and plenty of squeakage, although the high-end melody at the end may cause you to raise a quizzical eyebrow.

All in all this is another decent offering from Timecode, that already has me looking forward to the next one. With “so many labels” shutting their doors, and another pool of “so many labels” giving into market forces and busting out with identikit music, this is one label I hope will remain solidly faithful to their roots for a long time to come.