Following hot on the heels of his breakthrough Future Rock CD album for Kranky, Community Library is proud to bring you a proper vinyl single containing two of its key tunes. Future Rock is simply Strategy's breakthrough album -- a pastiche of hundreds of musicological reference points tied together in massive swells of bass, spring reverb, vocoded haze, and echoes; the album seems to play on every field, being a functional ambient experimental pop record on low volume, and bass heavy dance-dub when cranked up to full volume. Following on the latter idea, we took two of the CD's most propulsive cuts and sent them over to Berlin's D&M to be rendered as a proper clubmusicplatter. The album's title track 'Future Rock' takes the A-side, welding techno, Afrobeat, and outer space jazz elements to a rocking core of breaks, live drumming, and a superlow bassline. Backed by a curtain of sound that is virtually a tribute to Vladislav Delay's or Basic Channel's most classic, blue moments, this song is the missing link between live drum syncopation and dub-techno spectra. 'Can't Roll Back,' is a little more openly referential, throwing a huge number of styles into a 4/4 stomper. Following a spectral vocal intro, percussion, loads of keyboards, and guitar build into a massive track that is part electric-era Miles Davis and part early A Certain Ratio. Reconfigured for dance DJs, this version features a proper bass drum and an extended, dubbed-out outro, including Strategy's first ever searing psych-rock guitar solo. For fans, this represents an exploded view of two of the album's highlights; for DJs who have been in tune with anything that's crossing the line between live and programmed (DFA, Gomma, Nonplace, Kitsune) this single is a totally new angle-casting away stiff standards of punk-funk-disco backbeats in favor of brave new recombinations with dub techno, live syncopation, and arcing riffage.
