As the group's name suggests, the most attractive quality of Future Feedback is perhaps how it escapes labels: they aren't jazz guys per se, but they understand the "free" (i.e. they aren't playing Standards, but they probably haven't hung out with Evan Parker); their rock leans toward "post" but put on Matt Schulz's bizarrely constructed / oddly catchy drum work with Enon (or the danceable noise of Holy Fuck) and try to convince me that it belongs on the stern-faced Constellation roster; bassist Ben Perkins is as comfortable on the upright as the zither-like gu qin and rudra veena and surbahar (both from the sitar family) without spinning the latter into a culture lesson; guitarist / pianist / vocalist Kevin Parrett is also great at skipping the nagging history of his ensemble without replicating where many have gone after unlearning (he does whip out some Henry Cowellisms on "Munich Structures", but that certainly isn't a deterrent).*
There is a narrative arc in Future Feedback, but it's knotty and tangled: even during the moments when one member offers up something a bit more "locked", someone else is turning the screws of harmonic / rhythmic / atmospheric dissonance. The trio's continual "ask" of the listener is to enjoy combinations of puzzles without resolution (read: if you feel mentally stimulated — not angry — at the end of Gaspar Noé stylized, amorphic films, you are suited for Aperiodic's work).
The opener, "The New West", begins in a shimmer of mechanical, electric static and a loop of barely audible metallic fidgets before Schulz sneaks in with a wash of cymbals; Parrett offers an occasional spiraling slide (pushed through some type of "liquidizer" envelope filter effect), Perkins roughly grinds strings and grapples his instrument to produce a rapturous mangle, and a fourth mysterious "player" begins runs up and down the neck of something stringed — or, due to the enigma here, maybe I have all the characters wrong. Regardless, now begins an assault that implodes into a hangover of unwinding strings and pianissimo drum rolls briefly carried into "Voided". The trio transforms the work into hyperactive, sloppy punk / noise, butting up against the Lightning Bolt realm, Glen Branca on his last song of the night, etc. until the drums remove themselves in favor of an egg shaker; if this is the set closer, "L'ange Ex Terminateur" is the extended outro where players summon feedback and meditatively seek out loud colors from amps and acoustics at the behest of audience approval. "La Pena Vivir" is an example of the aforementioned groove-settling, though it's mostly Schulz banging away over a mulched sample / vocal monologue, Perkins processing his wild performance to sound as a hollow scream from the next room and Parrett soaring into his personal interspace. On "Amalia's Regret", bowed cymbals give way to agitated bowed bass and a swaying mix of brushed snare, doleful open-pedal pan-harmonic piano chords (slightly out of tune for your pleasure) and that ghost voice on overblown ocarina (Tin Pan Alley meets Gagaku?)
I guess we're just going to have to place Future Feedback in the bin marked "Interesting — In a Good Way — Music" and call it a day.
*I wrote this without looking at the band's website. Forgive my accidental redundancy, but I guess this means I "get it"?
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