(To be transcribed)

808 STATE "TIME BOMB" (ZTT)

THE next-best, as you'd expect, by several lengths from this week's 500-kilo pile of alleged techno, but a disappointment. "Quality" hardcore, anyone? Souped-up breakbeats and whoops abound, smothering all but the odd moment of rippling Krautwerkgeist. Although 808 State have never truly set my pancreas pumping, I wouldn't have expected anything this callously functional from them. Go for the flip, and the slow and spooky "Reaper Repo". Under no pressure to be overtly modern, it undergoes a complete present-day bypass, linking the past and future in a cat's-cradle of echoing keyboards, echoing percussion and echoing vocal samples - off-kilter, off-key, off it's head; Sonic the Hedgehog on warm milk and quaaludes in the Amazon basin.

DAVID BENNUN