Label of the Month: Timedance

“We had no idea what we were doing,” reflects Timedance boss Batu, looking back more than a decade at some of the label’s first few Bristol parties – one of which memorably featured a makeshift wedge of toilet rolls placed under some decks to stop them feeding back. According to Batu, aka producer and DJ Omar McCutcheon, those early days were “a complete shambles … So, it's slightly more professional now, in some aspects,” he adds.

Things may have come a long way from the cobbled-together set-ups of yesteryear – Timedance is about to celebrate their 10th birthday at “probably the greatest-sounding club in the EU,” after all – but that DIY resolve and inventiveness remain. Birthed in Bristol, a place in which alternative music and soundsystem culture have famously thrived beyond the mainstream, the label’s independent thinking and bass-boldened output feel inseparable from that history.

McCutcheon – who grew up in Oxfordshire, and went to university in Bath; a quick train ride from Bristol – agrees that the Bristol character has been an “inspirational” force in setting the label on a proactive track, describing the South West England home of Tricky and Roni Size as “... amazing for just how many people are making stuff happen, and, you know, in their little kind of microcosm.”

Among the other people making stuff happen back in the day were Peverelist, Kowton, and Asusu of like-minded Bristol label Livity Sound. The trio had launched their now-beloved leftfield techno imprint just four years prior to Timedance’s inception, and its impactful presence undoubtedly helped to “pave the way” for them, notes label manager Paul Boumendil. “It was like, ‘You can be a Bristol-based label, being outside of London, and push things forward to quite a significant extent and reach people worldwide, globally.’”

When Timedance arrived on the scene in 2015, it was a particularly buzzy time for contemporary club music around the world – an era brought into being by its ever-expanding network of DIY collectives, forward-thinking artists, and platforms like NTS Radio. 

The UK had seen the likes of Wisdom Teeth and UIQ join the ranks of Hessle Audio, Hemlock Recordings, and others in reinventing and revitalizing the image and sound of the underground. However, there was still a gap in the UK market for a label that could represent the kind of wiggy, wonky off-kilter rhythms and low-end techno hybrids McCutcheon and his friends were turning out. “All of us were making this music that was not easily placed on a label that existed,” he says, explaining that it felt like the right moment to start their own venture.

“There was definitely a kind of DIY sense of representing ourselves,” says McCutcheon of their origins. Building on his own musical heritage in dub music and dub culture, as well as the dubstep of his teenage years – looking to the way in which many of those artists had their own labels, notably Kode9 (“Hyperdub was just this massive extension of the universe of the ideas he was interested in”) – he inaugurated the Timedance label in 2015 with his “Cardinal” / “Domino Theory” release as Batu; a tension-raising scene-scetter with a kickless synth-jawed monster on the flip. 

Timedance kept up the momentum with follow-up records from Bristol’s “mad scientist” Lurka and mainstay Bruce, along with Cambridge-born producer and sound designer Metrist, who delivered a murky two-tracker so alive you can practically taste the sweat dripping off the grimy basement walls.

Then there was “Ramos” by Ploy. The 2018 underground club destroyer by the Bath-born, London-based producer (who had previously spent time flexing his creative muscle in Bristol) pushed Timedance to fever pitch in a sensational stomp of militaristic drums and choppy vocal exhalations that fed the shapeshifting dance floors of the 2010s. McCutcheon agrees the track was “big, for sure,” but then so was that whole period generally. 

A month earlier, the label knocked it out of the park with the course-changing Patina Echoes compilation, self-described as a “collection of tracks from a new exciting breed of young producers worldwide.” On it, you’ll find cuts from French-born DJ and producer rRoxymore (“bRINGTHEbRAVE”), Paris-based producer Simo Cell (“Consider The Internet”), and plenty more. By showcasing a geographically broader scope of artists such as these, the critically acclaimed compilation ushered Timedance into a new phase. 

Two years later, they toasted the five-year mark with another killer comp, Sharpen, Moving. Uniting core artists like Batu, Bruce, Ploy and Metrist with up-and-comers such as Kit Seymour and Akiko Haruna, the LP also found space to slot in a scorcher by Belgian techno lord Peter Van Hoesen. And they spent the next five years further developing the Timedance aesthetic (originally steered by “genius” designer Harry Butt), sound and ethos, working closely with the artists on their roster to foster sustainable relationships that prioritize creative growth, resulting in everything from the time-stretched breaks of Amsterdam’s Yaleesa Hall (Halfway Gone) to Daisy Moon’s luminous hyperpop rave-ups (Shadow of Silhouettes).

“I think what a label can do is help you move outside your comfort zone and do things that you wouldn't do,” says McCutcheon. “So, you know, it's like a creative back and forth between the label and the artist. It makes something unique, I guess.”

He continues: “I think for a label in the modern environment, just putting out some music isn't really enough. I feel like you have to be doing more to justify why people should work with you.”

Both McCutcheon and Boumendil believe the label’s first half-decade owed more to its Bristol roots, while its latter five have been marked by an ability to reach a wider audience. “It still feels like a Bristol label, definitely, but I think the scope is kind of increasingly growing,” offers McCutcheon. Boumendil cites Verraco’s Breathe... Godspeed EP (released last year) as an example of their ambition to “go a lot further beyond the borders of the city… It feels like, sonically, the label has been a lot less bound by kind of a specific geographic style that would mean we'd release very strictly, bass-weight heavy Bristol music. And I think the label's gained a lot of freedom from that, artistically, I would say.”

This commitment to horizon-broadening is evidenced by the label’s mammoth new 23-track 10th-anniversary compilation, TD10, which sees Verraco, Polygonia, BadSista, JASSS, and Bambounou brush shoulders with homegrown heroes Pearson Sound and Minor Science. All “bound together by a shared affinity for bassweight presence and vibrant, three-dimensional production,” according to the press blurb, it feels like an appropriate new mind-melding shopfront with which to embark on the next ten years of Timedance.

“I’d rather have absolutely no clue where the label would be next year, and keep things as open as possible, as it allows us to let things shape organically,” observes Boumendil, relishing in their limitless vision, which favors the fluidity of the unknown over clearly defined parameters.

“I do feel that so much of the first 10 years of running a label is kind of establishing what it is and what it could be and getting people to engage with that… Now you know it’s established and it's there… I think it becomes interesting to play with that and kind of push it further with this kind of confidence in what we've achieved,” says McCutcheon.

He adds: “Again, I'm not being specific about anything because I'm not going to promise the jazz funk album … we'll see.”
 

Timedance's 10 Year Anniversary Compilation TD10 is out now. Listen below and buy it on Beatport.