Uitgebracht
November 2015
- Artificial Intelligence had some notable hits in their 13-odd years together, but nothing ever came close to knocking "Desperado" off its pedestal. Like many stone-cold classics, the track was beautifully simple, with a catchy vocal making it stick and enough serotonin-soaked chords to keep you grinning.
Then there's Timeline, the second Artificial Intelligence album. It isn't timeless in the "Desperado" sense, but its relationship with time is an interesting one. It doesn't feel connected to any one era or sound, nor does it follow a linear progression, as it's title suggests. Instead, we get odd tangents where old meets new. Whereas AI's debut album, Stand Alone, was produced with a complex array of hardware over four years, Timeline was put together in about 18 months with a significantly slimmer setup. There's a shiny new digital sheen to it, but AI's compositional quirks and vintage soundbites are still present. It's their old sound brought up to date, the best of which comes from the uplifting liquid feel of "Rizon" and "Is This Real."
That's the pair's forte: light, feel-good drum & bass, often with guest vocalists driving it home. And there's plenty of that here from singers like Steo ("Take Me There") and Terri Walker ("Justify"). Maybe those songs are the nostalgic side of Timeline, but they mostly come off as outdated. When MCs DRS and Sense jump on "Pass The Buck" and "Privilege," however, the sound gets darker, tougher and weaponised. It's jungle with a facelift for modern-day Metalheadz, and those moments are where Timeline really hits the mark.
Tracklist01. Time Out
02. Aroma
03. Fallen feat. Dawn Wall
04. Pass The Buck feat. DRS
05. Nothing But
06. The Source
07. Take Me There feat. Steo
08. Rizon
09. Is This Real
10. Privilege feat. Sense
11. Carcosa
12. Untitled Ghost
13. Heaven Sent
14. Justify feat. Terri Walker