Costax's first Bedrock release is a co-write, not a feature

Vanessa Nguyen · 4 November 2024

Don't Say and Around are billed to Costax and Timo Maas jointly. No featuring credit anywhere in it. Two tracks, six minutes and seven, both written by both of them start to finish. That's how Bedrock's run things since 1998 — its own catalogue page still calls itself "purveyors of electronica," and this EP fits the description down to who gets credited.

The vocal on "Don't Say" is the reason to play it. It's chopped and stretched out long and lazy rather than cut into the tight stutters this end of melodic techno leans on right now, and it's doing three jobs with that one part — vocal, stab and pad, all at once, sitting under the track the way a pad would rather than firing off on top of it. Everyone's stuttering a vocal this year. This one takes the same idea and pushes it further than most bother to. The build into it isn't short, either, and it earns the wait rather than just delaying the drop.

That's not the ordinary way a label brings a newer producer onto its roster. By the time this EP landed, John Digweed had already been playing Costax's solo tracks in his own sets, alongside support from Timo Maas and Paul van Dyk. The safer route is usually a remix slot. Or a track brought in with a bigger name attached for weight. This one put Costax in a room with one of the label's own artists and let the two of them write together.

Costax posted the announcement himself, calling it "my first collaboration with my brother @timo.maas" and saying "working with these two legends of electronic music feels amazing." He added that Digweed had already tested "Don't Say" out live ahead of the release date. The crowd's response, he said, was strong on the night. A track that's already worked on a real system, played out by the person who runs the label releasing it, is a different kind of bet than one signed off from behind a desk.

Run times carry the rest of the argument. Six minutes for "Don't Say." Seven for "Around." Both long enough to sit mid-set rather than open or close one, with the space built in for a DJ to bring a record up slow and take just as long letting it back down. That's the pace Digweed's own sets have run on for decades: patient, not built to peak in ninety seconds, closer to Lane 8 or Sudbeat's catalogue than to anything cut for a festival mainstage. "Don't Say" leads because it's the one that had already been road-tested. "Around" runs the extra minute and closes the pair, with enough length in it that an edit down to radio size wouldn't have to cut much.

None of this plays like a favor done for a newer name. Costax runs his own label, Dioscuri Records, founded in 2023 and built in the same lane: melodic techno and progressive house, the rooms Bedrock has worked in for over two decades. He already had backing from three of the scene's established names before this EP existed. Timo Maas has been releasing records since the late '90s, long enough that putting his own name equally on both tracks reads as a decision rather than a courtesy. It's on both tracks. Not just the lead single. What the EP actually documents is a label with Bedrock's history choosing a real collaboration over a feature credit, for a producer three of its own artists had already been playing out solo.

Find Costax on Instagram and Timo Maas on Instagram. Stream Don't Say on Spotify, Deezer or Apple Music.