WHEN Edinburgh group Future Get Down made their live debut in January 2017 at the city’s Sneaky Pete’s, the gig was not without technical difficulties. Feedback plagued the five-piece’s set, and during their final song, a synth managed to come loose off its stand. Maybe that was all the vibrations from the crowd dancing.
Despite such challenges, their compelling meld of limber synth figures, dynamic grooves and chanted vocals from frontman Oli Kass made the gig a triumph, with one reviewer describing it as “an amazing feat for a band fresh off the starting blocks”.
Now, more than a year later, Future Get Down release EP1, the first of three EPs the band plan to release themselves this year. It was recorded in Leeds with Richard Formby, a producer acclaimed for his work with Mercury Prize nominee Ghostpoet and Ivor Novello Award nominees Wild Beasts.
“We had wanted to work somewhere different with someone different to get us out of the circles we’d been working in,” explains Kass, who formed Future Get Down with his brother Richard and Ally Dennis.
All three had previously played together in experimental electronic pop group Homework.
“The EP was originally going to be the second Homework album,” says Kass. “I guess about halfway through making it we realised that Homework wasn’t going to be our thing anymore. So what was going to be a second album for an old band became a debut EP for a new band. When we went into the studio we went in with an open mind, and came out with something a bit different.”
He continues: “We went down to Leeds with a collection of demos we had, picked ten songs and just set about them basically. We worked on making the tracks gel and getting rid of things where there was just too much going on. There’s still quite a lot going on, mind you.”
There certainly is, so much so that Kass and Dennis soon realised they needed more members to bolster their lives shows. Percussionist and vocalist Jeanne Laidlaw soon came on board, as did Brian Pokora, a familiar face to many in the Scottish music scene.
“Everyone knows Brian – he’s played in so many bands,” says Kass of Pokora, who, among other projects is one half of excellent electronic duo Super Inuit alongside Fern Morris. “Brian does a bit of everything really: a bit of synths and samples, percussion, lots of odds and sods.”
Another new member is Sam Bigwood, who takes over on drums from Richard Kass. While it is the latter’s lithe, jazz-influenced rhythms that feature on the EP, he is no longer a member of Future Get Down.
“Fairly early on we realised Richard just wouldn’t have enough time – he was going off and doing a lot of his own stuff,” says Oli, who notes that the band need to get some new promo shots done to reflect the line-up. Richard Kass’s “own stuff” is as part of Scottish jazz ensemble Trio HLK with fellow musicians Richard Harrold and Ant Law. A group which take apart jazz standards and reconstruct them in new, unexpected ways, Trio HLK make complementary partners to the world’s premier solo percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, with whom they are currently touring.
For Future Get Down, the plan for the remainder of the year is to continue to record and play live. Having supported Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flur earlier this year, they are set to play with searing noise-makers GNOD at Glasgow’s Broadcast on Monday, as well as the Kelburn Garden Party and the Bluedot festival at Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire later in the year.
“We decided that we were going to record three EPs this year,” Kass explains. “We’re just finishing off the second one now, so we’re on track for doing that.”
Recorded at Edinburgh’s Post Electric Studios, which is run by producer Kris Pohl and Idlewild’s Rod Jones, and at Leith Depot, where the band rehearse, the new EP is set to be mixed by Formby.
“We loved working with him for the first EP, and though he won’t be producing this one, hopefully there will still be a bit of what he brings to it,” says Kass.
With the roles of Future Get Down’s members still evolving, the five-track EP format is ideal for the band at the moment, he says.
“I’m not sure we’re entirely sure about what we’re doing yet, so the advantage of doing EPs is that it gives you a chance to experiment a little. We’re also putting them all out ourselves, certainly in terms of this one and the next one. When you start looking for something like a label, it always causes delays, so we’re going to plough on with our plan for the year on our own. Then again, if any labels want to get involved, I’m sure we’ll hear from them.”
They’d be wise to make contact – tracks such as last year’s End Of The World After Party, a dark duet between Kass and Laidlaw which doesn’t feature on the current EP, are ready-made hits. Championed by BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq, EP opener Van Eck Phreaking is an off-the-wall dance floor banger driven by a tight, trundling bass line and featuring a huge chorus.
“We don’t just sit around and listen to techno all day,” says Kass. “I like writers who do their own thing, who just kind of exist in their own space, whether that’s someone like The Blue Nile, or Neutral Milk Hotel or someone like Mark E Smith, or David Byrne. You can hear their influences, but what they’re doing seems to kind of exist out of time.”
Van Eck Phreaking is nothing to do with the $38 billion investment management firm of a similar name, Kass explains.
“It’s from a book called Cryptonomicon which is this mad, sprawling novel by Neal Stephenson,” he says. “Van Eck Phreaking is a way of hacking into someone’s laptop using radio frequencies or something. It doesn’t have anything to do with the lyrics, which I think are pretty middle-of-the-road, it just seemed to fit the sound of the track.”
Fitting the dark, dystopian dancefloor sound of the band is also why the name Future Get Down was chosen, a moniker with multiple meanings, depending on your emphasis.
“Maybe, just maybe, there’s a little bit in there about kicking against technology a little bit, even though that’s pretty ironic as we obviously use technology in what we do,” says Kass. “It was the name that all of us could agree on.”
April 30 with GNOD and White Hills, Broadcast, Glasgow, 7pm, £14.85. Tickets: bit.ly/FGDGNOD
June 29 to July 2, Kelburn Garden Party, Kelburn Castle, near Largs. See www.kelburngardenparty.com for tickets and full line-up
July 19 to July 22, Bluedot Festival, Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire. See www.discoverthebluedot.com for tickets and full line-up
EP1 is out now
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