New York's beat academician, DJ Spooky, does a pre-millennial mic check on "futurism" in this strings & beats & electronix collaboration with the equalling forward-looking Freight Elevator Quartet. File Under Futurism is the more interesting flip side to his recent major label rap/hip hop effort, Riddim Warfare, as Spooky and the Quartet express musically the chaos of our accelerated culture, as foreseen by the Italian Futurists in the first decade of this century. In the title piece Spooky quotes from Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto" on his love of technological change, to the mechanical rhythms of digital hardcore beats, while a melancholy string theme from the Quartet yearns for the slower-paced world of the 19th century. This theme runs throughout the album, and gets interfered with by computery sounds, tape whir, distorted bass, slow & fast breaks and in "The Revolution Will Be Streamed" by drill n bass digital fuckery. One of the highlights is "This Is What Happens" where a melancholy bass melody and brushed snares introduce a collision of Nyman-esque string melodies and µ-Ziq-style electronic beats.