Washington DC’s Future Times label cultivates a particularly distinctive style, but it’s not easy to pin that sound down. Now under the sole guidance of Andrew Field-Pickering aka Max D, the label has spent eight years exploring variations on colourful maximalism, woozy new age and the cosmic reaches of dance music, all packaged with a retro yen and an irrepressible sense of fun. As a cocktail it sounds overpowering, yet each Future Times release impresses with its execution as much as its oddball flair, ably demonstrated in outings this year from Shanti Celeste, Will DiMaggio and Frequency Based Lovers.
Joseph Williams discusses his debut Motion Graphics album as well as Lifted, the Baltmore dirt bike scene and more in this interview with Aurora Mitchell.
The improv hardware trio will make their Future Times debut next month.
The Lifted contributor sinks “further into his plastic world” on the upcoming Couch 12″ for the DC label.
Mike Petillo and Aaron Leitko debut the new project on the Messix EP for 1432 R.
Hear the title cut from the Lifted member’s forthcoming Future Times debut.
It may have been three years since Andrew Field-Pickering’s last full-length excursion, the RVNG-released Woo, but the Washington D.C-based producer could hardly be accused of slacking. In that time, he’s released a series of 12” singles expanding on his now familiar skewed, new age-influenced, leftfield house template. These have included a dash of sweaty, rave and jungle-influenced madness for Hot Haus (“Highlife”), an EP of out-there ambient jazz for The Trilogy Tapes, another collection of fizzing drum machine jams under the Dolo Percussion alias, a deep and picturesque broken beat excursion on Berceuse Heroique, and a typically eccentric, Detroit techno influenced outing for Off Minor. As if that wasn’t enough, he also found time to explore experimental electronica, jazz and ambience for PAN as band leader of the acclaimed Lifted collective.
Future Times have scored some new material from one of Jason Letkiewicz’s lesser spotted aliases.
2015 saw the South West of England flourish as a home for dance music with all eyes on Bristol. From the more established labels – Livity Sound, Idle Hands and Pinch’s Tectonic – to the newcomers such as Shall Not Fade, Hotline and Happy Skull, we’ve watched the city become ever more important hub for house, techno and grime. One of the most central figures of the city is Bristol-via-Chile’s Shanti Celeste who has risen from Idle Hands employee to amongst her current talents being a co-runner of label Brstl, an excellent DJ and also producer.
Boost is the label boss’s third album and will arrive in February.
Here’s a question for you to mull over: how did Future Times become one of the coolest record labels currently operating? It’s not through being prolific with fewer than 30 releases over the eight years the DC label has been active – though the Future Times quality control has remained constant throughout. For me it’s the unfettered enthusiasm for their craft displayed by Future Time founders Andrew Field-Pickering and Mike Petillo that’s proved integral to this rise. That and their endeavours to ensure things will be better in future times.
The Bristol producer and DJ will make her full Future Times debut next month.
A third edition of the DC label’s Vibe compilation series features Beautiful Swimmers, Raica, Juju & Jordash, Protect-U, Cloudface, Steve Summers, Shanti Celeste and more.
The Future Times man offers up a superlative mix for the local DC crew called Def Listening.
Every summer, a handful of records are so ubiquitous that they quickly become part of our shared musical memories. It’s long been an established part of dance music, though the boom in sun-baked European festivals and clubbing focused holiday resorts has certainly exaggerated the trend. While some more commercially-minded record labels – Defected, as an example – actively seek out these kinds of tracks and promote them in the run-up to the Ibiza season, predicting which records will strike a chord with a wide range of DJs is notoriously hard to predict. Few would have marked out Storm Queen’s “Look Right Through” – however good it was – as an Ibiza anthem, but that’s what it became in the years following its’ initial 2010 release. That eventually topped the UK singles charts, of course, albeit in a radically remixed form.
Funk Do Sindicalismo is a record which boasts some notable firsts. Not only was this the first Future Times release of 2015, but it’s also the first time these two tracks – initially released as a CD-R by a small Brazilian label nearly two years ago – have been available on vinyl. Issued as a 12”, they’re accompanied by artwork from Lale Westvind so killer that it’s been made into a t-shirt. That’s not bad for a name which will be unfamiliar to so many. Blame it on the increasingly unwieldy internet or perhaps even blame it on geography, but unless you happened to have stumbled upon a particular Bandcamp page or are particularly clued in to the scene in Rio de Janiero, Gabriel Guerra and his various projects may well occupy an unexplored corner of contemporary music.
Future Times continues to be a label loaded with surprises, as the Washington DC label shapes out an identity that seems to be rooted in little more than outboard experimentation and unconventional grooves. There has always been a dance music thrust to at least some of the material on Andrew Field-Pickering and Mike Petillo’s esteemed imprint, but it’s rare that the music ever conforms to a DJ/crowd-focused functionality when it could be charging into more psychotropic lines of enquiry. Last year was their most active to date, thanks to choice offerings from Hashman Deejay, Jordan GCZ and Protect-U amongst others, and now they leap into 2015 with yet more intriguing and heartfelt electronic music.
The Pender Street Stepper will release a two-track 12″ through DC’s finest next month.
Japa Habilidoso and Mosey make their first official outings on the DC label’s next round of releases.
Andrew Field-Pickering has history when it comes to drums, famously drumming in a DC punk band early in his musical journey. This freestyle, in-your-face approach can regularly be heard in the off-kilter rhythms, hissing cymbals and fearlessly dense beats that characterize much of his output as Maxmillion Dunbar and Max D. With the first Dolo Percussion EP issued by LIES – simply titled Dolo Percussion, and boasting numbered tracks with no other information – he indulged this part of his musical persona, breathing new life into the humble DJ tool. In the process, he came on like Ginger Baker with an MPC, or Buddy Miles hammering away at a TR-909. This was drum machine jazz, pure and simple, with a raw and heavy undercurrent of classic Chicago house. It wasn’t to everyone’s taste, of course, it takes an adventurous DJ to drop six minutes of freestyle, body-popping drum machine abuse.