FUTURE TIMES CATALOG + is a special digital Future Times compilation, and a must for the uninitiated. Past + Present + Future tracks from the likes of Hunee, Hashman Deejay, Beautiful Swimmers, Jordan GCZ, Protect-U, Huerco S, Tom Noble, Maxmillion Dunbar or Steve Summers.
Name your price for this compilation.
“Free USA” is the first full-length album by Protect-U, the Washington, DC-based duo of Aaron Leitko and Future Times Records co-founder Mike Petillo. On their two Future Times EPs – Double Rainbow and World Music – Leitko and Petillo poured layers of ambient drift onto nearly-steady house foundations, creating long and propulsive zone-outs. On Free USA, Protect-U doesn’t depart from this sound as much as they launch further and further out with it, specifically in the rhythm section, which pivots and lurches into unexpected places throughout the LP. Melodically, automation and humanity combine with dizzying, psychedelic grace, making the sound design sparkle with cool precision. From the bright, super-soaked opening track ”Needs” to the boxed-in drum clunk and iced-out coda of ”Down the Tubes,” Free USA showcases Protect-U’s constantly mutating strand of electronic music.
Protect-U move to Vibrations for this four-track EP of foggy analogue house oddities. “Wild Drift” opens proceedings with a flowing piece of arpeggiated machine funk, shifting through a myriad of hazy moods, whilst “Ultra (Basic mix)” utilizes a conga led rhythm and aquatic bassline in combination with dramatic lead melody. This track is revisited on the flip, as “Slow Ultra” gives a reversion characterized by its shimmering, intertwining pads punctuated by a rich bassline. The EP is closed by “Bright After Dark”, undoubtedly the moodiest track of the bunch; foregoing the relatively rich melodies of its counterparts, it focuses instead on swampy atmospherics and an industrial squelch.
Steve Summers
Protect-U
DJ Yoav B. releases three new tracks on the Belgian Meakusma label. Gently rubbing shoulders with Detroit Techno and HipHop, built on crazy loops and raw rhythms, the tracks are enhanced with psychedelic and playful sounds, that give them the feeling of being in continuous flux and movement. The mood here is absorbing yet ambivalent. On top of this, Protect-U, from the fantastic Future Times camp, delivers a remix, pulling the music away from reality, firmly aiming it for the universe. With a mid-tempo House feeling, a crispy bassline and abstract synthesizer pattern, they take the listener beyond the infinite.
‘World Music’, the second 12 from Washington, DC’s Protect-U is a total mutant house/techno. On the A-Side, synth lines bubble like 80s-style Francis Bebey, then burn up into a space-pulse overdrive. The flip, U-Uno, is an underwater electro-sitar dream straight outta 24th century India, followed by a slo-mo dub of World Music that slips back and forth between digital Jamaica and European nu-romance.
The Hipodrome Of Music 