Your FutureSounds staff writers are back with their latest summer picks and on-repeats plus this month we also welcome guest contributor, Occams Laser.
Occams’ Laser’s Pick
Gost – Prophecy [Metal Blade Records]
This…Album…Is…CHAOS
Gost has been conducting these hellish sermons of sound since 2013 and what a devilish ride its been! Many count Gost as a founding member of what would now be called Darksynth and although there is a taste of that flavour still lingering on the tongue; this new album has firmly unshackled itself from any genre constraints.
Mixing elements of Death Metal, Grindcore and occasional vocals reminiscent of Peter Steele and Marilyn Manson; there is so much going on that you cannot look away from the sacrificial altar Gost has set ablaze.
This album pulls ZERO punches and gives ZERO F***s
The stand out tracks for me are ‘Deceiver’, ‘Obituary’, ‘Temple of Tears’, and finally ‘Leviathan’ which is the strongest track of the album in my opinion.
Throughout the whole album you are given only moments to take a breathe before an intense crushing of your lungs from the pressure of noise! Masochists will be very much at home.
Enzo’s Pick
Mitch Murder – Current Events (In The News) [TimeSlave Recordings]
OK, first of all… I hold my hands up. I’m cheating a bit here picking a release from my own label. But bear with me for a second, please.
When we started TimeSlave, we did so with no expectations that it would become a full-time job. It was (and still is) a passion project run by two brothers with a little help from their friends. Falling in love with Synthwave at that time was a magical experience; just catching up with several years (by that point) of classics, it felt like discovering a new world. Or, perhaps, a new way of remembering the world we grew up in.
Mitch Murder was a life changing discovery for me and this album was one of the catalysts that inspired me to throw away a sensible, but slightly dull career and exchange it for something more meaningful.
‘Current Events’ remains a cornerstone in the growth of the scene – arguably the best classic Outrun album ever made. I had to pinch myself when Mitch agreed to release it with us. The entire ‘Masters of Outrun’ series is about recapturing the energy of those early releases and in an age where the cycle of nostalgia is ever-decreasing, an attempt to bring back that feeling that we had discovering this music for the first time.
If, like me, you remember the ‘good old days’ then jump in again and bathe in the splendour of the past. If somehow you missed it first time around, it’s just f***** brilliant.
Key Track: ‘In The News’ captures the dichotomy of the age, blending news clips that reference the paranoia of the Cold War era, juxtaposed with the hope and optimism that technology might usher in a better world – or, at the very least, a robot that could serve you drinks…
Fakeman’s Pick
The Lone Rager -THAT’S MATT! [Business Casual]
West Virginia’s THAT’S MATT! is back with a new collection of addictive Future Funk grooves via Business Casual.
The Lone Rager (released in May) continues THAT’S MATT’!’s intelligent journey though FutureFunk with a collection of 10 new tracks that includes a couple of his most recent single releases at the back end of ’23 / early ’24.
Beautifully produced throughout, the album is as plunderful as it is a dance party that hits like a ton of disco soul bricks. Stand out opening tracks STREET-SMART and BARSTRUCK immediately set the tone before the wonderfully plunderphonic and appropriately named JUXTAPOSE slows the pace for just a few minutes.
We’ve come to expect strong production and inventive use of samples from THAT’S MATT but The Lone Rager feels like a new level of expertise – crisp, intelligent and surprising. What a gem. Put on your dancing shoes.. ya sexy little swine.
Thom’s Pick
Pizza Hotline – Polygon Island [WRWTFWW Records]
Pizza Hotline’s new album Polygon Island came out a few months ago on WRWTFWW Records, 2 years after the sensational & influential Level Select LP.
In the last couple of years, there has been a wave of Level Select-inspired video game D&B from other producers, many of whom are crossing over from vaporwave and adjacent scenes. It’s a journey actually made by PH himself, with his early releases being slow & hissy affairs on labels like Cityman Productions (RIP!) and Seikomart, before he pivoted to rapid & pristine jungle productions with Level Select.
Polygon Island continues in the same spirit, perhaps even sleeker and shinier than before. The arrangements are minimal and every individual sound is sculpted, trimmed and placed in a pocket of space. These are small sounds that sound massive on a club PA, as we found out at PH’s recent headline set at the FutureSounds event at Folklore, London. The track ‘BIOS’ too may well be a nod to the Club BIOS events organised by associate Shirobon. The 8 tracks roll out and loop along over long running times (most tracks here are 5 mins+). Overall, it is less sampladelic than its predecessor (bar a few nature sounds) and more melodic/compositional, in the vein of PH’s idol Soichi Terada.
My track pick is ‘Memory Cycles’, which is direct and hard-hitting, with solid drums and a catchy riff that is playfully set against blippy counter-melodies.
Rob’s Pick
The Psychedelic Beat Tape – Long Distance Dan [Dusted Industries / self release]
The Psychedelic Beat Tape is Long Distance Dan’s first physical release, in a career of self released digital albums and EPs. Dan’s output is all in the broad church of proudly weird DIY instrumental beats, and some standout vocal tracks – including some of his own rapping, and cameos from the likes of Nosaj of 90s psychedelic New York hiphoppers New Kingdom.
This release further explores Long Distance’s obscure psych-rock crate digging, to create a leftield instrumental hiphop experiment that challenges and rewards the listener upon replay (and replay). The samples are niche, the beats and surreality heavy.
The artwork is by analog collage artist Matt Littler who lends a further counter cultural aesthetic to the project.