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The Futura Experience...

28/8/2024

4 Comments

 
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Most people look sideways at me when I say that we're about to release an electronica album. And that the 'title track' is 12 minutes long. More than a few fellow musicians have suggested that this will alienate most of our fan base. A few seemed generally amused by that and I hold no animus - if we can't enjoy our friends' misconceived disasters then who can?

But bluesman Grant Haua - no stranger to taking risks himself - was excited by the concept and our good friend and electronica expert John Heighes, working down at Flying Nun in Wellington, reckons there's really no such thing as electronica any more anyway... and he likes the album.

FUTURA  was originally intended as a companion-piece to WORKHORSE. The idea was that Workhorse would be a regular "blues" album and 6 months later we'd release FUTURA, half the same songs but in electronica versions and half new songs. So two albums, with crossovers, one traditional and one experimental.

But of course we got derailed. So two years later, here we go, Plan B...

Pretty much all independent albums these days are labours of love, and definitely this one. We do not, as you've probably noticed, use electronica live; this is a departure from our usual band sound. But this is intended for home listening - we don't plan to play these songs like this live. In fact we are already well underway recording the next - regular! - Kokomo album, KOKOMO'S PAIN-KILLING MYSTERY BALM.

FUTURA exists because Nigel and I share a love of Swiss titans Yello and Brixton anarchists Alabama 3 (known for the 'Sopranos Theme'). Apolitical Euro-cool meet dirty left-wing London. Perhaps uncoincidentally they're both “song” bands not simply groove merchants. We like songs. So these are largely songs (there's one instrumental, one with very few words). We hope you'll give the new sound a chance - we realise it's a long way from acoustic blues. But that's cool. 

I better stop. I'll do another blog about the actual songs in a few days' time. Till then...







4 Comments
john heighes
29/8/2024 02:03:15 pm

Err....just for the record (pun intended), I am not sure I said that there is 'no such thing as electronica any more'.....or if I did, what I was getting at was that these days there are so many sub genres, and sub genres of sub genres, onward to infinity, that simple one word genres are often frustratingly meaningless. Most contemporary pop and rock releases now contain elements of electronic music....and much of what used to be called 'electronica' now incorporates voices and 'real' instruments.
However, there are still artists, such as Warp Records mainstays Autechre and Aphex Twin, who's sounds would still be classified as 'electronica', so the genre tag has not disappeared - it is now just a far smaller entity than it was at the close of the last century.
Glad we cleared that up and onward thru the fog :-)
,

Reply
Derek
29/8/2024 04:08:10 pm

Yes, that's a rather fuller and more accurate description of what John said to me! Thanks for clearing it up, I did go for something longer originally but edited eventually for brevity. Thanks for clarifying my friend!

Reply
Derek
29/8/2024 04:23:55 pm

And might I say that, with his comment, John shows why he is the guy I rang about this when we were making it and ran the odd track by for opinions on the "electronica-ness" of them. If any fellow musicians are confused about their sound and require any genre-defining we can put you in touch!

Reply
john heighes
29/8/2024 06:32:00 pm

Thanks Derek - always available for genre defining!

Reply



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    August/September/October 2024 - with a new album on the way it seems like a possibly good idea to let Derek delve into it a little bit on this blog. We'll see how it goes...



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