The scene opens with a beleaguered music critic sitting at a desk in near darkness, his face lit up with the spectral glow of a computer screen. He is an android. His fingers twitch hesitantly and anxiously, hovering above the keys, yet striking few and far between. The frustration is palpable. He snaps to attention as the phone rings.

“Hello? 1992? Did John Connor surface in that string of the space-time continuum again? No? You need me to lay waste to an entire midnight rave? Ok, will do.”

Back in a fictional version of Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-two, our mercenary critic is slowly stalking his prey, eyeing an unsuspecting DJ by the name of Zomby. Sounds of a weakened LTJ Bukem or an aged Source Direct flit past the critic’s ears, driving him to the verge of insanity, his rage fueled by a nostalgia for drum'n'bass that didn’t seem derivative or plainly retro for retro’s sake. Zomby becomes aware of the critic sent to retire him before he can do further damage and spins off “Euphoria". This little rump-shaker employs a nice trick of sampling an environmental sound from a movie for background looping. In this case, the sound emitted by the nocturnal swarms in the guilty-pleasure Vin Diesel vehicle Pitch Black is utilized to throw the critic for a loop. He is off balance and at the defensive now.
   
“We Got the Sound” has a high-stepping beat with guttural bass line that commands instantaneous dancing, which further throws off the cybernetic critic. He soon finds himself locked in a death dance with Michael Biehn, who’s also been sent back in time to protect Zomby. As they continue matching muscle and wit, Zomby throws in “Daft Punk Rave". The critic’s childhood memory replication banks cringe: the song is just a sped up version of the break beat from “It Takes Two” by Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock (James Brown & Lyn Collins’ tune “Think (About It)”). The ensuing explosion of rage enables him to finally dispatch Michael Biehn into the ether and he approaches the DJ booth. Before the moment of judgment comes upon him, Zomby drops an Oakland-gangsta-rap-infused dancehall bomb, “Pillz.”
   
And with “Pillz” stinkily legging away in the background, our cyborg critic grips Zomby and screams at him through the sonic muck: “MC’s shouldn’t rap at half speed over 140 bpm breaks. In fact, that shit just shouldn’t happen anymore at all, especially with the ‘Girl, he geeked up!’ chorus sung by women that sound like they were pulled from off the street outside the studio!”

The last sound Zomby is allowed to enjoy is a hyped-up baseball organ driving the crowd into a klonopin-heavy haze. Then the space-time portal opens up to swallow the critic back into anonymity.

-Gabriel Bogart