UTILITY's 'Futures' Is a Borderless Masterpiece of Club Collaboration
The Sonic Breakdown
UTILITY is Austin Benjamin — a Sydney producer and curator who founded TRACKWORK, and who, per Bandcamp Daily’s Stephanie Barclay, “has made it his business to connect innovators in the underground rap and club space.” Futures is his debut, written and executive produced by him, and collaboration is not a feature of it but the whole premise: eleven tracks, twelve credited guests, assembled through long-form exchanges between artists in Sydney, Kampala, Durban, Paris, Rome and Los Angeles. George Nicholas mixed; Ryan Schwabe mastered.
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Sound-system logic governs everything. The album’s own description promises movement “between deconstructed rap forms, ambient collage and low-end sound-system structures,” and the sequencing bears it out — the 32-second “Vital” and the 33-second “Magnitude” function as pressure-release valves between the heavy tracks.
The Spatial Dynamics: Barclay’s read on the record is that it works like a conversation: “Futures is one such chat log (among many others) with a roster of innovative producer/vocalists spanning nearly every continent.” The register shifts hard between tracks, and the mix is what keeps it coherent.
Standout Performance
Barclay’s own roll call is the best guide. MC Yallah, from Kampala, “spitting verses with a militant defiance on ‘Tobuza Buzibwa’.” DoloRRes and Brodinski “surfing ‘Ora Siamo Noi’’s dark, apocalyptic reggaeton.” Bbyafricka, Boyz of Corruption and Dro Carey delivering “the mutant gqom” of “Commodore.” Vv Pete’s “whine-inducing delivery on ‘Money Maker’.”
Why It’s Certified
⚡ Eleven tracks and barely twenty-five minutes of them. Nothing outstays its welcome; “Follow” is under a minute and still lands.
🌈 Kelman Duran appears twice — on the opener “Get Destroyed” alongside Brodinski and Modulaw, and alone on “CA 90005” — which gives the record two anchor points at either end.
🌈 Barclay’s closing thesis is the reason this one is here: across all these scenes and languages, “what these disparate artists share in common is universal: a living philosophy that to innovate is to defy.” Benjamin built the room where that happens.