With songs concocted like candy coated anti-depressants, Future Of What premiere reflective glances of the inward and outer on the afternoon pause of, “Daydream 99”. Their debut album, Pro Dreams, scheduled for release January 13 from Feat. Drake Records finds the trio of Blair Gimma, Max Kotelchuck, and Sam Axelrod taking their vision to professional levels, featuring big-time co-production from Brian Thorn. As indicated in the earnest and intimate illustrations of inner emotions, Future Of What embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty of life’s grey areas in painfully honest self-assessments.
“Daydream 99” pulls you into the rapid eye movement visions experienced like the dreams that take place in the mind’s theater during a daytime nap. A song for sleepy “fruit punch red” eyes is lead by Blair’s “girls don’t cry” series of sentiments that fold feelings like origami designs in the face of thunder and lightening adversaries. The lyrics drift into the sun-beam-kissed mix of keyboards and guitars that provide a sense of calm for the tempests that plague lonely hearts. The downcast projected sentiments of feeling of “down, down” are sewn into the chorus as a hook that faces discouragement and the resemblance of depression with an affectionate smile. “Daydream 99” counts the collection of thoughts and feelings that circle around the course of the day into an unconscious, free play stream of emotion and evocative feelings. Future Of What described the single, and upcoming album in an interview immediately after the debut:
What sorts of daydreams informed the 99 or so visions that made up the beautiful, utopia like world of “Daydream 99”?
Visions of dying via drowning in fruit punch, or realizing that your blood is actual fruit punch. This song was written near the end of a relationship and it is about trying to stay afloat despite the issues piling up that weren’t being dealt with. Escaping into visions of beautiful storms and sugary death was a way to escape the sadness of a relationship ending.
What methodologies do the three of you employ, and how do you all go about the song composition and arrangement process?
This song started with Blair many daydreams ago. It has gone through many incarnations. When we first played it live it was more of a shuffle-y number. Blair thought it was Velvet Underground-ish but that is debatable. We basically remixed it into the sassy but (hopefully) soothingly poignant one you hold in your ears right now. We feel like we brought it to the right place.
What sort of futuristic notions and ambiguity contributed to your chosen name of Future Of What?
It’s good to question everything, to not buy into a collective conception of existence or definition of what life is. We’re always pro dreaming, but we don’t assume there is something ahead of us.
Looking into the crystal ball, how does Future Of What describe what the future may be like, for better or for worse?
We are pretty sure that nothing matters, but we do love our friends, our boos, and each other. I guess we like to raise the question, ‘What is anything about, anyway?’ Sadly, the idea that we are all communally working towards a future together is not something we relate to. Not because we don’t want to, but because the capitalist system isn’t interested in our future. So, likewise, we aren’t interested in the future of capitalism. We can see beyond our role as citizens with no future when Sam does his spellbinding dances at band practice.
You all have been working on Pro Dreams for two plus years, what has the process of drafting a full-length album been like?
Long, long, long. Exhausting, exhausting, exhausting. Gratifying, gratifying, gratifying.
It has been epic. We were interested in doing a whole big thing, demos, editing, real studio time, having an engineer. So we went for it. On the flipside, it isn’t good to get too precious about what you make, so over the past two years, we’ve had to make sure we sometimes forget that we made Pro Dreams, and continue to work on other songs, other aspects of the band.
What do you feel are the next great new things (bands, phenomenons, underground DIY venues, etc) happening in Brooklyn that the outside world doesn’t know about?
We will never know how much the ‘outside world’ knows. But: Taste of China, the buffalo chicken sandwich at Champs, Book Thug Nation/Human Relations, Genius (née RapGenius), Prinze Jr, Oppi, Morgan Blair, Jane Morgan, Henry Thorn (see Hope Thorn’s instagram).
Future Of What’s album Pro Dreams will be available January 13 from Feat. Drake Records and via Bandcamp.
