Newly minted label Psychic Relief poses up and flexes shamelessly with its inaugural release Muscles Hug Your Bones, a brawny EP of swirling technoid psychedelia, muscular bass-weight, and unabashed sentimentality by Philadelphia-based rave rascal Furtive.Bringing things into motion is Convoke, an impellant, rippling track opening with a stalwart kick and shifting, auroric sheets of harmonics. This densely textured wormhole slinker isn’t ostentatious, but its unrelenting progression and deliberate percussive maneuvers will command feet to move, summoning dancefloor supplicants toward pulsing speaker stacks.The EP’s title track punches in with a crunchy, energizing bounce – primed to bring packed rooms into full, rocking swing. The immediacy of its peppy, rambunctious groove and rolling, skittering percussion is bound to start frothing things up… and the acid line hasn’t even come in! Once that rippling squelch starts bubbling up, the frenzy of this sweaty, muscular weapon simply has to be felt – it’s a proper belter, while also perfectly arranged for slick and easy playback. Muscles has been play-tested in many packed rooms, and it always does the trick!
Three digital tracks supplement the vinyl release. With Hedera, Furtive conjures another billowing textural wash of staggered, thumping psychedelic techno, steadily mounting into a cresting wave of rippling oscillations. Leafy Spinach is a salad of dreamy bouncing, of twinkling and winding bubbles, a track that would be outright goofy if it wasn’t for the seriousness of the bass punches. Wet Glass is a romantic, cinematic dreamscape – a warm, glowering collage of snippets of field recordings with uplifting, ghostly story-time synths and spectral piano plinking.
Furtive is a full-gonzo rave conjurer and relentless creative tinkerer, intractably committed to the rave as a producer, DJ, underground event organizer, and dancer. Furtive brings a scintillating and sentimental touch to their many polished and focused genre-spanning productions, informed by over a decade of experience in the studio and yielding a rich selection of self-released tracks, contributions to VA comps, and recent vinyl pressings.
A veritable product of the contemporary American underground, Furtive cut their teeth as a DJ and DIY event organizer in Washington, DC’s warehouses, where they played a turnkey role in putting on some of the District’s zaniest techno parties. Furtive now co-runs an intimate, blossoming off-the-books venue in Philadelphia. As a DJ, Furtive has supported internationally celebrated, no-nonsense acts and held court in dingy local watering holes with eclectic selections and a steadfast focus on pacing and dynamics, regularly jumping genres to build moving and impactful sets. Beyond the fog and speaker stacks, Furtive creates art in a variety of mediums.
