AMG Review of Future Now [Bonus Tracks]

Dave Thompson
All Music Guide

If Nadir's Big Chance was to be retrospectively tagged as Peter Hammill's proto-punk masterpiece, The Future Now was the album that it prophesied, a darkly taut, aggressively threatening and almost maliciously unsettling collection of songs, whose energies were only amplified by their comparative brevity. There are no epics on The Future Now, but a clutch of classics that rank among Hammill's most dramatic compositions regardless -- the opening "Pushing Thirty" and the flamboyant title track, the pulsating "A Motor-Bike in Afrika" and, most dramatic of all, "Mediaevil," a chilling chorale chant for the nuclear silos that were the cathedrals of the late-'70s arms race. As usual with these reissues, the bonus tracks are disappointing (two more cuts from the Kansas City concert), but the remastering is spectacular; if you've been living with the late-'80s CD that was this album's digital debut, you will scarcely recognize half of what's going on in the mix.