Hand me a late pass on Two Fingers, a UK based production team consisting of minor avant drum n’ bass legend Amon Tobin and his virtually unknown pal Doubleclick doing their best Timbaland impression. Their album dropped months ago but only appeared on my radar recently when I was at the bottom of a Timbaland tangent. You see, more often than not the dreaded Timbaland tangent ends with the question of “what ever happened to Ms. Jade?” It turns out Two Fingers happened, enlisting her for two tracks on the album.

So here we are, thirteen years after Timbaland broke onto radio with “Pony,” placing him right on the point of the timeline where nostalgic outsiders pick up on trends and run with them. Now British are producers trying to revive that old Timbo sound, reaching back to him in authentically in degrees through collabs with his near-been protege as if she was Lyn Collins or Terry Callier. St-st-st-stuttering space-hop is the new rare groove and I’m officially old. Next thing you know a reunited 1 Life 2 Live** will have booked a week at the Jazz Cafe.

But but but wait it gets better. Like Ms. Jade herself, Two Fingers are actually pretty good at what they do. Timb’s current influence in overground trends extends only as far as his recent output, which means most of his classic creeping staccato chirp stuff has fell to the wayside in favor of big synths and throwback 80s moves. The few indie (sorry) artists that draw on his work have either shifted his populist impulses outward (in the case of shining happy hipster bait like MIA) or stripped them completely (all the masturbatory wonky kids who incidentally owe about as much to Tobin and the Ninja Tune camp as they do Timb and the Tunes). People seem to forget just how evil early Timbaland sound. He was basically making goth radio hits back in the day.

TF picks up on that in a way none of his twenty first century stateside successors have, sprinkling his sound with just enough arbitrary digital detritus sprinkled about to assure Tobin’s typical adventurous listener fanbase that they aren’t actually listening to pop music. Sway, a once buzzed grime UK rapper from when people still buzzed about grime UK rap, is responsible for the bulk of the rhyming here and he does a decent enough job despite his unfortunate case of being born with a British accent.*** The late, great Tommy B weighed in on the record over at Pitchfork when it first dropped, and pretty much nails it.**** Quoth the Breihan: “it’s a weird nostalgic rush, like finding an old sci-fi pulp novel and marveling about how its visions of the future were so much cooler than how the future actually turned out.”

And that’s the thing about Timbaland. He is one of a but few electronic music producers – Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin – who have been able to make futuristic music that hasn’t aged as time caught up with its intentions. Most of these acts were so goddamn unique that even their immediate peers were unable come close to their brilliance or style, let alone worshippers decades removed. Timbaland is different in that his sound always been on some Mastermind shit – easy to learn, difficult to master. People aping him thirteen years later *still* sound like thirteen years ahead of themselves and thirteen years behind him.

All this math is further muddled by the fact that Tobin is technically a peer, if not a predecessor, of Timb’s, though he was operating in a completely different genre.***** And further muddling that muddle is the fact that Timbalands future music has more recently lead him to his own nostalgic experiments. In the 80s, no less – a past that was obsessed with the future. So Timb himself is working with a futuristic past while present day artists adapt his past future and we’re in a bad Quantum Leap episode. The one where Sam goes back into the body of Kurtis Mantronix and has to rescue MC Tee from a malfunctioning drum machine.

Two Finger’s myspace announces somewhat cryptically that “Two Fingers is now moving into Phase II: production for other artists.” It might be interesting if some of those beat tapes were to find their way across the pond. Or it might cause the universe to collapse.

_{* You thought this was another Jay-Z post, but I tricked you, I tricked you.
** Did anybody ever hear their unreleased album? I remember it was supposed to have a song with Goodie Mob which could have been good but more likely sounded like that time they challenged TLC to a game of ghetto laser tag. Weirdly enough I once saw an instrumental promo on 2xLP but I didn’t buy it, which I sort of regret. But I can’t imagine their non-Timbaland beats were at all worthwhile. The second Timbo beat in that video is pretty great. And there is something intriguing about an overweight female rapper who would be so bold as to name herself after a mythological ox.
*** Rapping with a British accent is close to the musical equivalent to kickboxing with no legs.
**** Pitchfork should really implement a writer-specific RSS so I can read Breihan and David Drake write about rap without fear of accidentally stumbling into an Ian Cohen review.
***** When Timb first became a household name there was quite a fuss****** made about how he was borrowing from Dn’B. I never really heard it. But if he was, we can now see that it was obviously a two way street.
****** See now I am writing British.}