Various

Future Sound Masters

Tip New World (UK)

Featuring, according to the blurb, some of the artists who will be shaping the new sound of Tip New World next year.

Hujaboy’s Psy Babby has a great tecchy feel to it, a wobbly breakdown, a cracking sample (“it’s psychedelic baby, that’s what it’s all about!”), and an unbelievably solid drop. ManWithNoName comes up with two tracks, Dirty Trick definitely has echoes of his older stuff – that cut-up high-end lead makes me get all misty-eyed. It’s a little puzzling because the main riff in there sounds just like Out Here We Are Stoned; however his String Theory is a belter. At first it seems to be lacking a bit of energy, and limping a little – then it gathers riffs and sounds, all meshed together in an incredibly intricate pattern, and it.. just… goes off.

Then something evil happens: YET another unwanted, unwarranted remix of D-Nox & Becker’s Benassi-bothering bacardi breezer vomit-in-a-taxi forced anal entry summer “smash” Switch. It’s by Bullet Proof, it sounds like it was put together in about half an hour, and it’s either a late contender for worse tune of 2005 or early contender for worst tune of 2006. Fucking awful: Dino, hang your head in shame.

One quick bath and a visit to church later, Biotonic’s Mexicosed Brains is tecchy neofullon with a tasty little break, an annoying woman moaning, but then it gets meaty so that’s okay; Science Mythology meanwhile is nondescript stuff, predictable albeit with a fairly tasty two bars’ worth of final run. Sandman’s Holy Flip is the big surprise here – crunching, huge, funny and terrifying all at once – very good stuff, and genuinely new in its sound and approach: we like.

Finally Terraformers’ Dragon Dance has some nice tricks and sounds and turns in it, with a final run that sounds like being chased by pterodactyls (not that I would know). Overall it’s a bit of a weird collection, and aside from that f*ing Bullet Proof it shows that there might be a fair bit of substance in the sublabel’s manifesto after all.

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