Artificial Intelligence ­- Timeline

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  • 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 Maybe those songs are the nostalgic side of Timeline, but they mostly come off as outdated.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.
  • Tracklist
      01. 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
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