FUTURE DEATH TOLL ... LIVE TONIGHT, ON MY CASTLE OF QUIET

Future Death Toll are an exciting performance and sound-art troupe, with a mighty presence on YouTube, and luckily for us, a library of terrific songs as well. Three orange jumpsuits seem to indicate that they are prisoners as well, though by appearances, prisoners of their art, or the world, rather than a Maximum Security incarceration facility.

Personally, I've been preparing for this most of my life, as I know I will kill someone eventually, but we're not here to talk about me, well sort of not. I did have one of those PURE musical experiences with this band, you know the kind—where you are only peripherally aware of what you have playing, until it rises to engage and energize you fully, as in, "what the hell is THIS I have playing? THIS is GREAT!: "Ill get a flashlight." You read the tape case and BOOM!—A star is born, in your own little encapsulated world at least, a kind of highly personalized American Idol in your brain.

Musically, F-DT are a more friendly, but still weird-as-fuck Genocide Organ; home brewed and delicious without all the rape and general nastiness; I don't actually know what they're singing about, could be rape, but the general tone of whimsy in Future Death Toll suggests otherwise, not forgetting that their name is Future Death Toll after all, but sonically therein, lies the suggestion of everything from The Residents to DEVO, to the colorful roster of Rainbow Bridge Recordings; and it's on the strength of this self-released cassette alone that I proposed a LIVE visit to My Castle of Quiet and WFMU, track after track engaging in a way similar to the homespun multi-track charms of the original lo-fi cassette era of the 1980s, and labels like Subterranean and Posh Boy; and what makes it apropos to the horror-shaped goings on of this show are the droll, apocalyptic references, the tone of the vocals, and the suggestion that one "just crawl into a body bag instead of going to work" -and yea, my simple-enough needs are MET!

There's also enough crackle, thump and jarring sounds to call this noise, though the relatively short, catchy (my definition) tunes make it pop—pop-calypse, that is. Contemporary noise-heads won't know the difference, they'll jump-along, and those with an older, broader sense of underground musical history will enjoy the accidental or intentional references to a wacked-out attitude that sits comfortably alongside Nash The Slash or The Poetics.

This is a band after WFMU's sonic heart, and I'm thoroughly energized to see what they'll do with the opportunity to render a live radio set. RSVP Facebook.

I gently finger the threads of rope at the end of my tether, @ midnight.
F-DT @ 12:30, 12:40 a.m. approx.
WFMU 91.1FM (NY/NJ)
WMFU 90.1FM (Hudson Valley)
in Rockland County @ 91.9FM
wfmu.org LIVE on the Web.