When Angus Finlayson began making dance music under the name Minor Science in the early 2010s, dirt was in vogue. Distortion was omnipresent; drum machines often sounded like they’d been dredged out of a canal, their circuits caked with rust. Finlayson’s debut EP, for London label the Trilogy Tapes, followed suit, slathering slow, sullen house beats in grit. But one song, “Hapless,” felt different. The bulk of the track, with its skulking drums and ominous spoken loop, was in keeping with the era’s lo-fi aesthetics. But at the center was a strange, slippery synthesizer pattern with a distinctly hi-def signature, its liquid textures and unsteady rhythms flickering like a coded message beamed across space and time.
Finlayson, a former Pitchfork contributor, has spent the years since trying to catch up with that signal, with each successive release pushing a little further into unknown territory. By 2017’s “Volumes”/“Another Moon,” the third of a trio of annual 12"s for London’s Whities label, he had reached his destination. Gone were the blunted moods and busted sonics of his early work; in their place, glistening timbres and exhilaratingly precise programming whose swiveling movements were reminiscent of robotic arms. That record remains among the most futuristic-sounding dispatches from the past decade of electronic music. On his debut album, Finlayson keeps moving further outward, fashioning a distinctive take on club music that seems determined to wriggle free of linear structure.
The first thing you notice about Second Language is its iridescent finish—on track after track, the synths have a vivid, shimmering quality—and the next is the force of its punch. The heaviest tracks hit harder than Minor Science ever has, shot through with concussive kicks, writhing basslines, and finely tooled drum work. But even at their most powerful, these songs are remarkably nimble. “Balconies” wraps footwork rhythms in a cushion of empty space, accentuating the springiness of the drums’ attack; “Gone Rouge,” another 170-BPM standout, takes earthbound rave tropes (dub sirens, Korg M1 organ basslines) and sends them darting through midair, deft as dragonflies.
Like Jlin and Objekt, Finlayson is a masterful sound designer. His targeted use of reverb, delay, and, crucially, the absence of those often ubiquitous effects, paired with filter sweeps and sudden moments of silence, suggests wild, artificial spaces where the laws of the universe no longer hold sway. And his shape-shifting arrangements, full of fake-outs and hard lefts, contribute to the sense of being strapped into a four-dimensional roller coaster.
It’s a short album, blazing through 10 tracks in 36 minutes. Even the club anthems, like “Polyglottal” and “For Want of Gelt,” don’t go much over four minutes; the tempos throughout are mostly breathtakingly fast, as though Finlayson felt he didn’t have a moment to waste. But the record has a unified palette, held together by bright synth melodies that occasionally hark back to Autechre’s wistful early albums. (Along with footwork, electro, and drum’n’bass, IDM is a major influence here.) Thanks to smart sequencing that balances bangers with pensive interludes, it feels less like a collection of club tracks than a suite broken into 10 interlocking movements.
Occasionally, Finlayson’s fidgety tendencies get the better of him. He has a habit of building up to a drop, deploying a heart-in-mouth cue that things are about to kick off in earnest, and then abruptly changing course, leaving all that tension unresolved. Doubtless this is on purpose, though sometimes it feels like he’s deliberately moving two steps forward, one step back, and one giant pole vault back to the starting line. But his playful qualities are commendable: There’s an explosion of percussion at the climax of “For Want of Gelt” that sounds like an entire rack of drum machines jolted to life by a power surge. It’s so over the top that it’s almost laugh-out-loud funny, which is a nice change in a genre that can be awfully self-serious.
The most exciting moments happen when Finlayson’s restlessness yields entirely new sounds, like the major chord that flashes out just once toward the end of “Balconies”; Finlayson seems to understand that repeating it even one more time would diminish its uniqueness exponentially. I’m particularly fond of a Durutti Column-like guitar that calls out and falls silent in the closing “Voiced and Unvoiced,” or the lo-fi, tape-warped guitar that pokes gingerly through the opening “Second Language (Intro).” That one’s even got a little distortion on it, a detail that stands out all the more vividly against the rest of the track’s pristine sonics. Perhaps, having mastered spotlessness, he’s ready to let a little dirt in again.
