Bass music, like all its ancestors in the UK’s hardcore continuum, is keenly future-focused, and Minor Science’s debut album arrives with the force of a vessel beamed back across light years. Minor Science, aka Berlin-based Brit Angus Finlayson, honed his fusion of techno, electro, and post-dubstep over a series of singles for London’s Whities label, and Second Language turbocharges his distinctive style. Across 10 short but potent tracks, Finlayson alternates between concussive club gear and atmospheric breathtakers, pushing his sound-design chops to the outer limits of dance music’s known universe. The tempos are fast, frequently brushing up against the breakneck pace of drum ’n’ bass: “Balconies” flips between trap chants and footwork’s double-time roll; “For Want of Gelt,” even faster, spins so smoothly it barely seems to touch the ground. As storming as the beats can be, they never follow strict club convention, preferring instead to loop back and leap forward without warning, turning drops into trapdoors and builds into blast-offs—as though gravity, much like linear time, were nothing but a state of mind.