by Ryan Martin (@ryanwhowrites)
I knew for a while that I was missing out by not listening to Future Punx. I was aware of their first album, This is Post-Wave through their contemporaries but for some reason hadn’t dove in yet. This all changed when I heard their new album, released in June, 2020. It took everything I loved about their contemporaries and amped it up a notch. It was one of those records that, especially in our current situation, made you want to walk out the front door and go see any live band and dance. It was breathtaking, nostalgic and a breath of fresh air all at once.
Through my multiple listens I asked myself why this album wasn’t being talked about more and assured myself that this was something special. My interview with Jake Pepper via e-mail confirms my theory. This is an album that captures a band in an era. It defines their live show and sound for the past few years. It’s an essential document of one of the most underrated bands in New York today.
RM: How would you describe the album?
FP: 2020 is an attempt to capture the energy and flow of our live shows and the breadth of styles we cover while also conveying how we’ve evolved and where we might go as a band. In light of recent events, it’s also very much a document of us in a certain era, specifically the peak of Nick Martin’s time with us as a drummer. He took leave last fall after recording this album to start a family. His wife Natalie gave birth to their daughter Inez, who we’ve dedicated this record to. With any luck he’ll return to play with us at a later date, but until then this is the best place to hear his excellent drum work with us. And with the pandemic in mind, it’s hard to say when we’ll be able to play in public again at all. So even more so now, this album is a snapshot of that era and what we were doing right before all this happened.
RM: How long have these songs existed?
FP: The songs on this record range from back when we first started writing for the band in late 2012 to a few months before recording. Specifically, “Daytime Crime” and “Woman’s World” were ideas that Chris brought to the band very early, but we struggled to work out arrangements for them until Nick joined the band. Those two are outliers in that sense.
“Up for You” and “I’m Still Peaking” are the oldest of the songs that were actually written after the first album, having been played live as early as 2016. “Body Rock” and “Intent” are probably the most recent, and the rest were written between 2017-2019. We played around 100 shows during that era, so everything on here was pretty thoroughly road-tested before we recorded - our two most played songs overall are “I’m Still Peaking” and “Woman’s World”. In a way this album feels like a greatest hits of our recent live shows. It’s also worth noting that we had the record title picked out in late 2018. This thing has been brewing for quite a while!
RM: When did the recording process begin & end?
FP: It took around a year, from March 2019-March 2020. We recorded this in a somewhat haphazard fashion due to timing and a limited budget. The basic tracks (drums, bass and most of the guitars) were recorded at Alphaville between a short tour we did in March 2019 in support of our previous release (The World Is a Mess EP) and another month long tour we did in June 2019 supporting the Mystery Lights. The first round of vocals and some other overdubs were recorded after that June tour with our incredibly talented friend Jonny Schenke.
We all felt there was a lot more work to do after hearing the reference mixes from those sessions, and we intended to have someone else mix it just for the sake of having fresh ears on it. But since we weren’t really sure where and when this would be released at the time, there wasn’t any external pressure to finish it. Between that and our dwindling budget, we ended up sitting on the mixes for a while as we decided what to do.
Eventually I started to get fidgety to hear it, so I started mixing it on my own in Ableton, just messing around with plugins and such to make it more listenable. I ended up getting really into it and over a couple months developed a solid full rough mix of the album which I then showed to the band. After some more listening and discussion we agreed we could just finish it on our own. Then it was another round of a few vocal re-dos and a mixing session together at our friend Andy Chugg’s studio (where we’d recorded the previous EP), and the mixes were finally done this March.
RM: Anything about the creative process for “2020” that is different from previous releases?
FP: Definitely. Our first album (This Is Post-Wave) was arranged around a conceptual framework with deliberately repeated musical and lyrical themes throughout to symbolically indicate a story underneath the music and was recorded slightly more methodically in general.
I was a little obsessed with making it a concept album, and my bandmates patiently humored my somewhat feverish attempts to convey my ideas with diagrams, charts, and an expository essay/short story. I was reading a lot of heady shit and was obsessing with concept albums in general at the time. I became very concerned that the album had to justify its own existence by loading it with symbols that could perhaps be unlocked to promote spiritual awakening in the listener.
I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I wrote or ran the whole thing or anything like that. Everyone was very deeply involved in various aspects. I just definitely took the reins on the background conceptualizing. I was going through a period of intense inspiration in that area and I really appreciate that my bandmates went with me on it and allowed their creativity to be channeled in that direction. It’s funny, I cringe a little about some of my behavior in retrospect, but I stand by the method we used. I’m really proud of how that album came out. I know we’d all agree it is a somewhat daunting listen in full, and like most great concept albums, the story it tells is vague at best. I look at those as charming qualities in a way though. It’s just slightly overambitious for a debut perhaps. It was also mainly produced and mixed by our drummer at the time, Jason Kelly, who has since left the band. The whole thing was such a learning process and we really got to know each other more and our strengths and weaknesses deeply through that album's creation.
I think we were all a little exhausted by that process and it wasn’t too long after the touring for that album that Britney and Jason left, and we had to sort of start from scratch in many ways. Nick came in and sort of re-energized us, especially in the live realm. In the years since, we’ve put a renewed focus on streamlining and developing our show, trying to become a band that people look forward to seeing more than once. Around this time, I started to re-embrace my love of jam bands and started pulling some things from that world to try to make our shows more unique. We took some time to develop a deep enough repertoire to not repeat sets and have lots of songs that naturally flow into each other, and some moments where we groove out more and even a little bit of improv included. A lot of the songs I wrote during this time were deliberately written to encourage these kinds of developments. We also did a full show of Talking Heads covers in 2018, and a 3-night run of 1.5-hour long sets for Halloween the same year. Needless to say, we were rehearsing quite a bit.
So in the background of all that 2020 was deliberately planned to be less conceptually driven and more just a collection of the best songs we had written since the lineup changes that gelled musically and thematically, while hopefully providing a broad range of what we do and emulating our live sets to some degree. Chris and I produced and mixed it. Neither of us really have a history as record mixers but we both attended audio schools and have done home recording stuff for as long as we can remember, and Chris has years of live mixing under his belt. We felt confident that we could trust our ears and are really happy with how it came out - I think it’s easily the best of our records and the one that gets closest to how we sound live.
RM: Is there a theme that connects these songs?
FP: This record is intentionally very surface level and straightforward. There was no deliberate theme beyond documenting our development at this time, and the intent to produce something both accessible and psychedelic, or engagingly fun and thought-provoking. There’s definitely themes that pop up, which I think is indicative of our general theme as a band - There’s an overall frustration with the unbalanced state of things mixed with a desire to change for the better and genuine hopeful optimism that we can collectively transcend humanity’s big problems and evolve, and the acknowledgment that love and music are keys to that transcendence.
I think there’s a musical theme too, of just showing off everything we do and pushing out the edges of it a bit further. We’ve always been a fairly very diverse band musically, though we tend to get pigeonholed as a new wave or post punk band, and I think we set out here to show off the breadth of styles and deeper attention to groove and interplay that we’ve developed over the past few years. There’s some new wave-y stuff on here, but I think more of the tracks were inspired by various dance music styles this time, and that’s likely to be a trend that continues in our writing.
RM: How’d the artwork come together?
FP: Our friend Braulio did it - he and Chris go way back. He had done a flyer for one of our shows at Alphaville - it was a good enough flyer that we got some nice prints of it to sell at the show, which is pretty rare for a small show like that. We all loved his stuff and had him in mind as soon as we started thinking about artwork. We sent him the record and he was down. Chris and I met up with him and talked about it a bit over coffee in the village. That was definitely one of the last few “normal” social hangs I had before the lockdown. He came back with a few ideas - we all liked this one the best. It feels like patterned chaos to me, perhaps similar to the music inside and the times it sprang from. I really hope we can get this thing on vinyl sometime soon, partly because I want to see that art blown up and hold it in my hands. His work is such a feast for the eyes - definitely check out his portfolio.
RM: How does Jonathan Schenke fit into Future Punx? I’ve noticed he’s done quite a bit of archiving shows as additional mixing credits on the new record. Is he like an unspoken 5th member?
FP: I would say Jonny is one of a few great friends and colleagues of ours that could lay claim to “unspoken 5th member” status. He’s deep in our history and has helped us immeasurably in lots of ways, mainly as a producer/engineer/mixer of our recordings, but also with his genuine loving support of what we do. I love working with him because he’s incredibly patient and enthusiastic in the studio, and also just talking with him about music and life. He listens very deeply and responds very thoughtfully.
I’ll see if I can tell our history briefly, this might get a little convoluted - I first met Johnny when we were both touring with Frankie Rose, I think in 2011 or so, in support of her “Interstellar” LP. I was playing bass and he was doing sound, and Jason Kelly of the band Fergus and Geronimo was playing drums. We were all kind of hired guns on that tour and developed an instant camaraderie, as music nerds will do, and kept tight after the tour.
Not long after that, Jason and Andrew Savage (who was the other main member of Fergus) asked me to play guitar on the next F&G tour. That’s where I first met and bonded with Chris P, who played bass on that tour. After that tour is when Chris asked Jason and I to help start Future Punx with him, because Andrew was starting to get busy with Parquet Courts at that point. Jonny had just done their Light Up Gold record which we were all obviously blown away by, and had done the last Fergus album too, so it just made sense to ask him to help us with our first recordings.
We did the first 7” on my Tascam 388 at my cousin’s loft in Bushwick and Jonny mixed it. We also mixed the first EP I’m So Inspired with him at Doctor Wu’s in Williamsburg. I think he sat out the next few recordings. But he helped a ton on this newest LP, recorded the vocals, let us borrow his drum mics, and provided all kinds of indispensable guidance. Needless to say, his golden ear in the studio has helped refine our raw recordings into listenable gems on many occasions. We’re really lucky he digs what we do! He’s also just an amazing friend, a genuinely kind and thoughtful guy.
As you may know, he’s a member of a few awesome local bands - the band P.E. (which is a collaboration between his band Eaters and ex-Pill members) just put out their debut and it is easily one of the most interesting and inspiring records I’ve heard this year. Definitely check it out.
As far as the live archive goes, I think you may have mistaken Jonny in this case for Joe Knecht, another good friend of ours and probably our biggest fan. He’s voluntarily taken on the role of Future Punx archivist and has been recording all the shows since about mid 2019 and has posted most of them to archive.org. Joe Knecht is definitely another unspoken 5th member of the band. Thank you, Joe!
RM: How did COVID-19 affect the roll out for 2020? Is there potential for an album release show down the line?
FP: We had really just finished the mixes finally about a week or two before lockdown. We had no deadline - Dull Tools is Andrew and Chris’ label so there’s never any kind of pressure in that sense. So, our rollout plan was still somewhat vague and was going to mostly be based on when we could get it mastered and vinyl made. We had a 2-set show booked to play out at Rockaway Beach in early June that we were loosely hoping would be the album release party. For a couple weeks there it seemed like we were on course to make that happen, with a tour likely to follow later in the year. I was definitely getting pretty excited loosely planning those sets when this all went down.
It wasn’t long after lockdown that it started really hitting home how long it would be before we’d be able to play live again. Chris and I discussed it and agreed that we wanted to just put the album out digitally for now, figuring we don’t really need a pile of new records until we have shows to sell them at, and if the music can bring a little joy into folks lives during this weird time, that’s as good of an outcome as we’d hope for!
That said, we definitely had hoped for this to be a more momentous drop, and I am optimistic that someday - hopefully next year? - we’ll be able to have a proper “party” for the album and have reason to put it on vinyl. I’m also hopeful that we’ll be able to work together as a band and possibly produce some new recordings in the meantime - which would create an even more unique context for this one in a way. Maybe there will be a whole other album to celebrate by the time we can come back?
RM: After this shit show we’re in, who would be some of the best acts to catch around NY?
FP: Oh wow. Just all the bands. I’m gonna be so grateful to see literally anything. Guerilla Toss and BODEGA immediately spring to mind. I miss seeing them. I really want to see P.E. again now that I’ve digested their album a bit. We’ve played with so many incredible bands that have blown my mind just in the last year - Tall Juan, Penthouse Boys, Godcaster, Real World, Pottery. It sucks they’re not all playing shows this summer, but it is fun to imagine how energized they’ll all be when we get to come back. Chris probably would know some deeper stuff as he’s been more in tune with the local scene these days. I’m a jam nerd and for the last few years I’ve been really embracing that in my show going habits. We’re all big Deadheads and are psyched for the next Dead and Co tour to get announced, and I already have a ticket for Phish in AC next August. I honestly wonder if that will actually happen though. Fingers crossed!
Really though I think the best thing to see will be the unknown new bands that are forming right now and will get a full year of practice under their belt before it’s even possible to play out. I might try to start a fresh project with this in mind. I’m really itching to play.
RM: Is there a mission statement behind Future Punx? A collective thought or feeling that unites everyone?
FP: We used to talk a lot about “Post-Wave,” which initially was Chris’ foundational idea for the band, of mashing up post-punk and new wave to indicate that we were pulling threads from those genres together and through to the present. That term came to mean a lot more for us over time, indicating our intent to coagulate all sorts of non-musical influences into our sound too. We explored the philosophy behind the term deeply through making the first album and haven’t explicitly talked about it much since. Over time we’ve refined and crystalized our approach and it’s led to a more intuitive understanding between us and a less abstract and more direct tone in much of the songwriting - though we’ve always been pretty direct.
I would refer back to the question about the themes on the new record here - in a way by naming it 2020 in the year 2020 it’s like a time stamped self-titled thing. Like a state of the band address. So, these themes of the record - of frustration mixed with hope for change through love and music are a consistent thread for us. Maybe by stamping it and by way of this accidental enforced hiatus, some new themes will begin to emerge. I can’t wait to get together again and see what my bandmates have been thinking about and vibing on.
RM: What has everyone been doing over quarantine? Any recommendations?
We haven’t been able to hang much so I can’t speak too much to everyone’s activities. I know Chris and Heather have been doing a bit of hiking and camping when they can do so safely. Nick’s been busy raising his new daughter, so I think it’s been a blessing of sorts for him to have this time. He just went back to work though, as most of us are around now in some sense.
Chris and I chat fairly often, mostly about the Dead but also about band matters. I think we both hope to get back into playing as soon as we can, but in the meantime we posted a live album to Bandcamp of a 2018 Alphaville show, and we hope to follow that up with some more low key live releases to keep some sort of momentum and presence going. Chris also released a solo EP of drum’n’bass that is awesome and extremely energizing - listen to that here.
I’m grateful to have been able to use quarantine mostly to spend time with my girlfriend, deep clean our apartment, write new music, take part in some protesting, meditate, and reflect. I’ve managed to work online through most of it too. I work at a record store and there’s probably been a slight uptick in online sales during this time - hardly enough to make up for not having a store, but enough to keep me busy.
With all that said, I’ve gone through a whirlwind of emotions during quarantine, as I’m sure most people have. Really running the gamut and taking personal inventory and coming to terms with myself on a lot of things. As a performing musician, I feel more rudderless the longer I go without live music. It really brings home how my whole social life and sense of community revolves around a shared love of music. That’s something I’ve always known, but you can’t help but feel it more deeply when it’s suddenly gone. It’s also opened me up to some mulling over what it even means to be a musician without the context of a scene and shows to play, how the industry can distort one’s intent and point of view, what a privilege and blessing it is to get to make and share it with anyone, ever, and trying to imagine what a middle ground between all that looks like. And through all that, really finding deeper appreciation for how much music means to me and has shaped my life far outside the realm of live performance. And also taking the time to gain a deeper understanding of the various issues of racism and white privilege that have surrounded the music industry since its inception, how those things can insidiously work their way into everything, and trying to imagine ways to work against them within the context of a creative life.
There’s lots to think about and work on. I almost feel like nature is trying to force us all to just stop and think for a minute, since we have struggled in doing that ourselves. This feels like a pivotal moment somehow. I’m thinking of the first line in “Intent” now:
“I don’t understand what’s going on in the world, but I feel something big is gonna happen.”
I first wrote that lyric in 2012 and didn’t put it in a song til 2017 or so, but I still feel that way - that mixture of confusion and anticipation has been growing, and meanwhile it seems like ‘Big Things are Happening’ almost every day lately. And there’s still this sense that there’s an ‘Even Bigger Big Thing’ coming down the pike, but that we have a lot of work to do still to be ready for it. That song is essentially about persevering to grind on whatever small personal work I can do to try and make sure that the “something big” that happens is a positive one, perhaps a shift towards radical empathy between all humanity, rather than a disaster. I imagine many people are experiencing similar feelings right now. Everything feels a bit unstable; it feels like all sorts of truth is coming to light, most of it isn’t pretty but we have to face it head on to get past it.
All these ‘Big Things’ happening can sometimes make the work of art-making feel like a really selfish, small and insignificant concern. I’ve definitely had a lot of days of just wondering how to justify it at all. But then, I’ll put on a favorite record and it’ll take me right out of myself, and I come back to how music has helped shape my life, helped me understand other points of view, gave me peace of mind and sense of connection at times when I felt totally alienated, among so many other things. It’s the most I could possibly hope for that my music could do that for someone else, and I almost feel a sense of duty to keep at it in hopes of achieving those things.
So with so much time on my hands and things on my mind, I also started recording and releasing solo albums on Bandcamp, initially just to keep busy musically but it quickly became therapy to help get me emotionally through this, a much needed way to process things and relieve my thoughts a bit. It’s always been that - but without the context of a band or shows to play it’s been intense to dive in a little deeper.
It’s a really raw and direct experience of having this urge to act on inspiration even when it feels irrelevant but finding personal relevance in the therapy of it. I think it’s leading to a more natural feel in my work. Lately, I love just getting totally lost in a song for a whole day, and then waking up the next day and getting to hear what wild shit I cooked up. And then diving into something completely different. Where in the past I would’ve agonized about it all quite a bit more. In a way I’m working harder than ever, but I’m not really stressing what any of it is for, so there’s no sense of having to fulfill any particular image or genre.
I’ve put out two of these albums now, and am currently working on the third one, though I plan to spend a little more time on it than the first two. It should be out in the next few months sometime. You can hear them here.
(Shoutout to my good friend Zach Koeber who absolutely shreds all the saxophone on these recordings)
I understand that it’s very much a privilege to be able to use this time in this way. A lot of people are dealing with the most serious issues right now and I would not want my creative concerns to overshadow those. Sorry for the longwinded answer - To finally answer the second part of your question - If I have any recommendations, they would be to do whatever you can to stay healthy and mentally stable, take care of those you love, and if at all possible, contribute to the Black Lives Matter movement in some way.
RM: What’s the best and worst piece of media you have experienced during quarantine? (movie, show, music, etc.)
FP: My girlfriend and I watched a lot of TV and movies for the first month or so of quarantine. We saw some good things, but it all became a bit of a blur. The worst piece of media I experienced is undoubtedly in that blur somewhere, aside from the relentless barrage of idiocy from the president, daily disaster news and endless videos of fresh police brutality. Tiger King feels like a lifetime ago. We were a bit desperate at times and may have watched several old seasons of Survivor. That was far from the worst. We tend to click some random show on a lazy day. Before you know it, you’re 3 seasons deep. That’s tailed off quite a bit as the weather gets warmer, but we did burn through all of the new Unsolved Mysteries one recent Sunday. We watched Palm Springs the other night, that was a really pleasant surprise and highly recommendable, though probably best gone into with as little foreknowledge as possible.
Some of my consistently favorite times of the week are Phish and Dead stream nights, when I can virtually hang with my heady friends and nerd out about the music we love. It’s not a live show but it is an inspiring reminder of the joy we share through music. It seems like most bigger acts are doing streams here and there, but jam/improv based bands are uniquely able to provide their fans with fairly fresh material on a regular basis, since their whole point is to vary every show. Because of this they are often very well documented too.
I also have some friends who do more low-key live streams that I tune in to whenever able. They often have a personal touch that feels vital during these times. Brook Pridemore’s weekly all request shows often have me trying to sing along harmony in my apartment. And Zach, who I mentioned earlier, does frequent long form ambient sax/synth workouts. I’ll meditate to those sometimes. There’s lots of people having more bootleg parties of all kinds of classic concert videos. Zach and I have another friend who does a private weekly rare fusion concert series on twitch Wednesday nights which is always some mind melting big jazz vibes. It’s been inspiring to see the world of music live streams blossom during all this and has me imagining ways I might eventually do my own.
On a similar note, I definitely want to give it up to Bandcamp for the series of no-fee and charity-based days they’ve been doing periodically. This isn’t a specific piece of media but a source and format that is crushing it during quarantine. I’ve been looking forward and setting aside time on those dates to really dig in and just click on random things and try to find gems among the thousands of mostly unheard artists up there. It brings me back to a similar feeling of when I used to hit record stores on release days, but better in a way, because I know the money is going much more directly to the artists and labels. With any luck the industry at large will take some cues from them.