B-12 Time Tourist CD

B12's Mike Golding and Steve Rutter may hail from England, but their hearts are in Detroit. Devotees of the warm, synth-propelled glide and future-rhythm drive particular to such Motor City pioneers as Juan Atkins and Derrick May, Golding and Rutter were actually once missionaries who carried the techno torch and its attendant gospel across the Atlantic. Together with such ardent English crusaders as The Black Dog, As One, and Stasis, B12 built the earliest bridges between suburban British bedrooms and the streets of Techno City, U.S.A.

Following in the propensity that techno artists have for fostering multiple aliases, B12 is actually a collective label for several projects--Cmetric, Redcell, and Musicology. TIME TOURIST, Golding and Rutter's second formal B12 album, transcends these confusing name-game permutations and delivers a solid set of loftily melodic mindscapes, fantastic sci-fi sounds, and fancifully funky rhythms. "Cymetry," a busy, ingeniously orchestrated dance of lunar take-offs and landings, is music for spaceports. Tracks like "Epilion" and "Radiophonic Workshop" suggest dancehall universes where multiple mirror-ball suns cast spangled starlight upon the intertwined rotations of lambent planetary bodies.