Atmospheric communications from pop’s fringes
Who They?
In a nutshell? Bernholz/Blancmange soundclash. When musician, artist and filmmaker Jez Bernholz met the all-new, stripped-down sound of Neil Arthur, it was murder. Oh, hang on.
Why Near Future?
Jez Bernholz, who also happens to be a fully paid-up member of Gazelle Twin, does a delicious line in leftfield electropop. Hook him up with the dark, minimalist warmth of the rebooted Blancmange and it’s a case of where do you sign up, right? First fruit is a super-mellow textured two-tracker containing the delicate yet insistent ‘Ideal Home’ and swollen-stringed shuddering lullaby ‘Overwhelmed’. Near Future are firmly from the school of less is more, and while their debut clocks in under seven minutes, what a way to spend your time.
Tell Us More
The project kicked off with the pair exchanging files at a specific time, down to the minute, one Friday last year. “I don’t know why,” laughs Neil Arthur. “It just seemed really exciting. It didn’t have to be structured music, it could just be sounds or words. So we each sent the other some information and we were both really pleasantly surprised at what we got.” They went on exchanging files until they’d got a couple of tracks together. “We seemed to be reading the same book and were more or less on the same page, so it just went from there,” adds Arthur, who says there’s already lots more ideas floating around. Expect an album in 2017.
‘Ideal Home’ is out on Blanc Check
