Three of the names on 'Hypercube 1.0' already had records of their own on SquareLab Music's shelf before this compilation: Vruha, who opens with 'Tao Pai Pai', released 'Nekinek' there; Tumult, behind 'Dream Collapser', signed 'Radiant Sparkle'; and Wode, author of the insolent 'Mediocre Piece Of Shit', has 'Sedative Seeker' in the same catalogue. That matters: this selection — “Selected by Winny”, per the label's Bandcamp — doesn't gather strangers, it paints a house portrait.
And it's a peculiar house. SquareLab Music operates out of Buis Les Baronnies, France, as an underground psytrance and psytekno label, describing itself as a showcase of “global artists and friends from all over the world”. That family spirit explains the coherence of the batch: fourteen cuts, one label, a single genre tag in the metadata — and yet two different records living inside it.
Two speeds, one square
The first half — 'Tao Pai Pai' through 'Asymmetrical Deal' — is annotated between 82 and 93 BPM, the genre's usual half-time metadata reading, and descends in a near-perfect staircase: 93, 89, 87, 86, 85, 84, 82. This is rolling, long-form psytrance, with Darkestra's 'Here We Go Again' stretching to 9:18, the longest cut on the record. With Sev's 'Thanks God' the counter jumps to 160 and never leaves fast territory again: 'Come', 'Mediocre Piece Of Shit' and the Lostmind double — 'In the Light' alongside Malákia and 'Everything Changes' solo — hold up the hi-tech face promised by the release's style tag. Only 'Double Dropped', at 129, sits as an unclassifiable hinge between the two worlds.
There is a subtler identity marker too: eleven of the fourteen tracks are in major keys, with G-flat major showing up three times. For a label that lives in psychedelic noise, this is a strangely luminous record. The '1.0' in the title does the rest: this isn't framed as a snapshot but as the first instalment of an inventory Winny has only begun to sort.
Sources: Bandcamp