Following a 2009 full of post-album touring and a part-time hiatus for much of 2010, The Big Pink, AKA Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell, return with another cluster of electro-rock musings.
‘Future This’ is the fruit of many hours spent in their East London ‘bat cave’ studio which, as Milo divulges, was influenced in an unknown quantity by the ramblings of Yeezy: “It’s not a hip-hop record, there’s no rhyming or spitting bars on it, but I do hope it has the feel and swing of a hip-hop record. The Kanye album had an effect on us, not necessarily just because it was hip-hop, but because it’s such a masterpiece.”
Alas, there won’t be any grime LP from the two any time soon: “We tried to spit something and we just ended up sounding like we were trying too hard. You do let down all your guard and just let the music be, but I don’t think we can let down that particular barrier down.”
‘Stay Gold’, the first single, was also the first written off the record and successfully bridges the gap between favourites like ‘Dominos’ and ‘Velvet’ from debut ‘A Brief History Of Love’. Milo assures, “It’s got a foot in both of those songs, but it hints more at the new record lyrically.”
The new-fangled piece is indeed more polished and even more so with Paul Epworth lending an assured hand: “He’s one of the biggest record producers in the UK and all the stuff we were making in our little studio, he just took and pushed to the next level. With this record, we essentially wanted to make a pop record, and that’s what it is.”
Words by Errol Anderson
Photo by Marc Sethi
TITLE: ‘Future This’
PRODUCER: Paul Epworth
RELEASE DATE: January 2012
RECORDED: Bethnal Green, London
SONGS INCLUDE: ‘Stay Gold’, ‘Superman’, ‘Jump Music’
FACT:‘Stay Gold’ is about things that make you happy, which was graffiti for a youthful Milo.