Available on: Innovative Leisure LP

Future this, future that… these days qualitative tags are thrown about faster than most of us can keep up with – post-dubstep, future garage, intelligent UK funky and the rest of it. Ultimately they just end up pissing artists off and none of them add any value to the experience that matters most: listening to the music and engaging with it in a live environment.

Enter Lazer Sword – a production duo originally from San Francisco and now split between L.A and Berlin. Interesting aside: one of the two also used to work for XLR8R back when the mag was one of the only publications shining a light on the more interesting mutations happening around hip-hop, beats and electronic music. So for him to be part of one of the most pioneering electronic hip-hop outfits to come out of the U.S West Coast makes all the more sense. I remember LZ quoting their sound as Future Blap a couple years ago – as a joke. Like most good jokes started by artists around the music they make (hi there Aquacrunk) it was actually funny and nowhere near as painful to deal with as those started by journos (hi there trip-hop and glitch-hop). And to be honest their self-titled debut album fully deserves the future adjective – whether it’s blap, hip-hop, beats or electronic. Take one look at the rather amazing cover, combine that with the album played on loud speakers and you are instantly transported to the future – one that bangs hard, throws established conventions out of the window and includes a lot of lazers. Which is also a fitting description for Lazer Sword’s live shows, if YouTube’s anything to by.

I’ve had this album for a few months now and upon giving it its first spin I was blown away by just how loud, and clean, it sounded. Compared to other recent favourites in the same vein, Lazer Sword just sounded huge and every track resulted in the kind of ‘facemelt’ facial expression that the best beats and productions generally induce – also known as the “wait… wot?” moment. Repeated listens are rewarding and the impact it makes at first doesn’t easily die down. Nearly three months on for me it still bangs. However the thing about visions of the future – regardless of medium – is that they always somewhat end up feeling cold and distant. And therein lies the only the major downside of this debut album for me. It’s a great, solid record but it feels a little emotionally lacking. As a friend of mine put it a few days ago, it sounds like a generation of producers attuned to Ableton’s Live mode.

There are moments of absolute genius on here – especially when vocalists are involved. Whether it’s hyphy legend Turf Talk lending his trademark vocal stamp to ‘I’m Gone’, in the process trading future blap for future hyphy, space-age crooner Zackey Force Funk lending an irresistibly sleazy and catchy edge to ‘Machine’, Anti Pop’s M. Sayyid going in hard on ‘Topflites’ or yet another legendary West Coast MC Myka Nine doing the futuristic hip hop thing on ‘Cosmic Ride’, each vocalist gives a warmer, more human dimension to LZ’s productions that makes them worth the price of admission alone.

On the instrumental joints that make up the rest of the album, the duo mix laid back moments such as the excellent ‘Surf News’ (and its brilliant YouTube sample) and ‘4Loko’ with club grinders like ‘Web Swag’ and ‘Fubu’. It’s on those instrumental tracks that the pair really excel, showing incredible production chops that leave no loop untouched without sounding like an inaudible mess. And while the vocal joints may be few, they’re well positioned throughout to inject some diversity into the album’s flow and break away from the colder, less emotional moments.

Lazer Sword is by far one of the most impressive albums to come out of the un-nameable electronic / hip-hop field this year, a tour de force orchestrated by two producers who can hold their own against the best and have a proven track record of doing it live like few others can. And as a sort of take home taster of what their live shows can be like, this debut is as good as it gets. The thing is that I can’t help but feel that Lazer Sword really needs the live environment to reach its full potential, sort of like listening to dubstep at home or on headphones – it’s a great way to relive previous live experiences away from the bassbins but you need to hear the music in context at least once. And in this case the context is a dark club where the future can be fully visualised and felt through the speakers and the music’s chopped intensity.

Laurent Fintoni