There are plenty of ways to get involved outside your academic studies. In Bristol, founding a record label is one of them. Omar McCutcheon, aka Batu, studied music production—and from day one, found himself immersed in a vibrant, forward-thinking scene. Surrounded by creatives keen to sustain a living culture, starting a label in your early 20s seemed almost natural.
»It never felt like a big revolutionary step,« he says of Timedance’s beginnings. But in 2015, the move made sense: »We were coming out of that phase of British club music—bass music, drum’n’bass, dubstep, grime, jungle, garage. We all grew up with those sounds and later discovered techno.«
British bass music—along with all things that music journalists once lovingly labelled “post-”—had become increasingly experimental and international by the early 2010s. Genre boundaries eroded, and the scene drifted ever closer to techno. Batu and his crew understood themselves as matchmakers between those two worlds: »We tried to connect both spheres». Surrounded by talented artists whose music had no home elsewhere, the label took shape.
TD10
Halfway Gone
Yiu EP
Sharpen, Moving
The fact that underground labels focused on experimental sounds can survive this long is anything but guaranteed. Batu still recalls celebrating Hyperdub’s fifth anniversary in 2009. “Now Timedance is twice that old. It’s kind of crazy.”
To mark the label’s tenth anniversary, he and label manager Paul Boumendil compiled a release that — true to Timedance tradition — focuses not on the past, but on the present and the future. “We don’t release anything that doesn’t feel like a step forward.” The goal is to put out music that aligns with the label’s DNA and vision. For Paul, that DNA means “we don’t compromise on what we want to do, or the diversity we allow ourselves.”
Broader than Bass, Beyond Bristol
The “core team”, as Paul calls it — including producers like Metrist, known for his Pollen trilogy spanning grimy breaks and bleepy IDM, and Lurka, who helped define Timedance’s techno-inflected bass sound early on — was essential to the T10 compilation. But Batu explains: “We wanted to present a sound palette that’s broader than what you’d strictly associate with the Bristol-bass continuum,” which is why artists like Chloe Lula alias Polygonia and Skee Mask were warmly welcomed.
As long as the sound and attitude are right, it doesn’t matter where a track comes from.
Paul mentions in passing that they’re swimming in unreleased material. Some producers send over 35 tracks at once. Timedance can barely keep up. Their catalogue shows a curatorial process with fine-tuned instincts — though sometimes it takes a bit longer. Occasionally only one of them is fully convinced at first, but in the end, they trust their judgment. Batu sums it up: “From the very beginning, we’ve never released anything from someone I didn’t know or hadn’t spoken to. It’s a Timedance trademark that we’re in conversation with the artists, that we get to know them and work together — there’s always a personal connection.”
They struggle to name milestones. For them, it’s a good sign that fans constantly cite different highlights. One Discogs user enthusiastically wrote that they couldn’t wait to share Timedance records with their children — a testament to the label’s timelessness. We may not know what the dancefloor of tomorrow will look like. But chances are, Timedance will still be on it.
