- An Introduction -
Austin-based Future Clouds and Radar, the multi-instrumental art-pop ensemble headed by Robert Harrison, released their ambitious self-titled double-disc debut in 2007 and by growing critical consensus, it ranks among that year's best. Harp Magazine named Future Clouds and Radar "Debut Artist of the Year" and called the release 4th Best Record overall.
It seems musical vision continues to emanate from the group who released their follow-up recording, “Peoria”, in November of 2008. Where the first album showed Harrison as the central figure in a large musical cast, FC&R's latest offering finds the core band focusing their kaleidoscopic vision into a single cinematic narrative about mortality. Flanked by keyboardist Hollie Thomas, bassist Joshua Zarbo (formerly of Spoon), longtime associate and drummer Darin Murphy (Cotton Mather's Kontiki) and gifted multi-instrumentalist Kullen Fuchs, Harrison stays true to his genre-bending eclecticism, leading the journey through a maze of fuzz-box vocals and ethereal keys.
Blurt Online recently listed “Peoria” 5th Best Record of 2008.
- The Beginnings -
In the American musical lexicon of confounding careers Robert Harrison has earned his rightful place. After walking his band of Austin garage heroes, Cotton Mather, to the brink of international stardom in 2001, Harrison abruptly dissolved the group and disappeared into the Texas hill country on a three year "spiritual healing retreat". Fans were understandably mystified. But anyone who believes there are no second acts in show business hasn't heard.
- Future Clouds and Radar -
In 2006, Harrison emerged from hiding offering a sound completely unlike Cotton Mather created by a multi-instrumental ensemble of “rag-tag loyalists” who were equally as comfortable "essaying dreamy, electronicaized psychedelia, blue-eyed soul anthemry, Latin-flecked jangle-pop, or full-guns a-blazing, fuzzed-out garage" (Harp). WXPN/Paste Magazine's Bruce Warren described their ambitious 2007 debut as a “double album of majestic, psychedelic pop that fans of Guided by Voices and The Flaming Lips will love.” The Philadelphia Inquirer raved, “Future Clouds and Radar remind you why God made double CD packages: to experiment wildly while creating pop that glistens.” While Q Magazine praised it as a "whopping 27-track extravaganza of snappy power pop, '60's-soaked psychedelia, ELO-styled orchestrations and more, performed with all the glee of a five-year-old in a sweet shop."
The Austin Chronicle's Austin Powell describes the album as "ambitious but not overwrought, the 27-song collection showed flashes of the Flaming Lips' orbital bliss, the desultory brilliance of Big Star circa Third/Sisters Lovers, and the bristling eclecticism of Elvis Costello, with radiant instrumental interludes and tangents into glam-garage rock and pastoral psych-folk." Most bands wait decades to release double disc sagas, but the task seemed natural to Harrison: "I felt a renewed sense of freedom and celebration with music. This was a body of work that kind of revealed itself in one swoop. That's where we wanted to put the bar."
- Peoria -
In February of 2008, Future Clouds and Radar piled in the van and struck deep into the nation's heartland to confront the enigma of their own obscurity--destination Peoria, Illinois. And what began as an odyssey to query the people of America's renowned test-marketing capital became a dynamic sojourn about the illusory nature of mortality itself.
Thus the sophomore endeavor, "Peoria", was born. Mixed by Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips, MGMT), the original version of the album was intended to include collaboration with the Fiery Furnaces. The duo later opted out, when confronted with a tight recording schedule. Production was fast-paced and condensed into a three-week whirlwind of writing and recording at The Star Apple Kingdom compound. "The whole making of the record is a blur," admits Harrison. "I went with an empty cup, and the skies just opened. It was a beautiful downpour."
Released at the end of 2008, "Peoria" has already earned respect amongst critics and is gaining increasing momentum on the national stage. Pitchfork describes "Peoria" as [a record that] "craftily pits hold-your-hand pop against more shadowy terrain within its half-hour (35 minute) lifespan, resulting in a record that stands easily on its own merits". Blurt magazine raves, "'Peoria' becomes a study in moods--baroque, buoyant pop (the stately "Old Edmund Ruffin" and its more hectic sibling "Feet On Grass"); cinematic psychedelia (the trippy-lush, effects-strewn "Mummified" has an almost Magical Mystery Tour vibe); blazing, glammed-up hard rock (with its serrated guitar and swaggering horns, "18 Months" could pass for a Mott the Hoople outtake); even jazz-tinged Prog (the complex, suitelike "Follow the Crane")."
Austin Powell sums it up in his feature review of the band: "On a spiritual and philosophical level, though, 'Peoria' gravitates toward The Dark Side of the Moon, at times sounding like Pink Floyd interpreting William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood," particularly on the album centerpiece "Mummified." The eerie, seven-minute ballad slowly decomposes into a heap of nonlinear piano runs, lunar transmissions, and scribbles of guitar. Yet even when expounding on existential ideas or drifting into the ether, Future Clouds & Radar always radiate with transcendent splendor."
- The Future of Future Clouds? -
Watch out for Future Clouds and Radar on national tours, and always playing locally in their home town of Austin, TX.
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