Ever since they released the video for Tunak Tunak Tun on Youtube over a year ago, I've been getting more and more excited for the release of The Tomorrowmen's new album. Looks like tomorrow became today hur hur. Their Double Crown Records debut "It's About Time" was the exactly the sort of forward-thinking brand of instro that keeps this genre alive. It's immediately apparently that that spirit was kept intact on Futourism, and that a tremendous amount of thought and love was poured into this.
In fact, let's hold off from the music for one second. The album art is absolutely beautiful: some of the most accurate vintage Popular Science/Pulp book cover material I've seen anywhere. The CD version will include several postcards with even more art. These days space is a priority for me, so I'm often very happy to take a digital download, but I might have to get the CD in this case to get the full visual experience. A vinyl release would have REALLY been nice in this respect, but given the state of the vinyl pressing industry at the moment, we wouldn't see that until much later. Also of note, this is one of the few Double Crown releases that you can also find on bandcamp and cdbaby, AND that has a press release! I don't really need one for these guys, but it's nice to see and shows that they REALLY want this to be heard.
And they should. While this is still a Tomorrowmen album through and through, it's distinctly different from its predecessor. It's About Time was tenacious, always pushing forward. As the title suggests, Futourism dials down the tempo a bit but expands outwards, giving you more space to hear the wealth of sounds in each song. The afore and aft mentioned Tunak Tunak Tun is probably the closest that it gets to their previous speed. It never slows down too far; this isn't cheesy easy-listening surf, and it's still very much a guitar-based surf-born creature. "Rack 'em up", for instance, is practically trad surf. But it's tracks like "New Democracy" that really exemplify the heart of this album. It's lush, large, and full of adventurous thoughts.
It took a while for my favorite tracks to emerge from It's About Time and I suspect that will be the case on this one too. I'm only about 1.5 listens in right now, so I'm definitely not there yet. But I think I've heard enough to know that this will not disappoint. As mentioned before you can get it from Double Crown (not up as of writing, but I'm sure it's be there in no time), CDbaby, Bandcamp, and a few of the bigger guys that don't need my links
