I think we’re getting to the point where there is no real “future” to look forward to any more, musically speaking at least. We’ve caught up with it, dammit, and Culprit quite simply is that future in all its cybernetic glory. What the Kraftwerkian Gods of yore foretold and prophesied oh so many decades ago, here now, present in the robo-flesh. This is it, people, this is where we’ve come, and I’ll be the first to let you know that it’s a damned fine future in which we’re living, indeed. The musical product of former Denverite Cory Brown and current Dan’l Boone’r Charles Ballas is a dystopian dance party for Terminators, red lasers slicing through club room fogs, beaming forcefully from the eyes of these twin terrorizers. The duo create a haze, coating the sound space with buckets of rich and textured synthesizer, and chopping the metric timeline into staccato bits of percussion atop wonkified gobs of dub-inflected bass. Touchstones like Autechre and Mouse on Mars are definitely here, although Culprit blasts through pretensions like thin paper to reveal themselves as a true-to-self, confident and distinguished voice in experimental electronic dance music, rounding the release out with glittery ambient side-steps to offset the beat-heavy bulk of the record, like “Tinsel,” side A’s dreamy, Gamelan-in-heaven closing number. Easily one of the best sans-guitar tapes I’ve come across yet this year.
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