After the future... that's quite the proposition, isn't it? A little while back, I got my hands on a very cheap copy of Jack Womack's socio-political crime drama Let's Put the Future Behind Us set in post-Soviet Russia, and was struck by the portrayals of violence and corruption the book depicted as well as the ruthless fungibility of human values and social connections which such violence necessitated in a mise-en-scène where the future had abruptly and irrevocably been postponed. But what I still think about the most is the end, how after all the murder and mayhem had ebbed, the reader is led to believe that the surviving characters were going to continue their ironic and twisted adventures well into the ensuing decades, undaunted by the perpetual patterns of gruesome misadventure that splayed out before them. This brings me back to my initial ponderance... what happens when the future's over? Do we all just roll up and die, or is there still something worth living for when all our castles have turned to ash? I'm not sure NYC's Kaleidoscope have all the answers, but they're clearly interested in prodding at the mists of time to see if they can't find a passage to the other side of this opaque cloud of destiny. After the Futures (yes, they imply that there may be more than one) is the group's one and only LP as of this writing, a rough and apocalyptic blend of hardcore and anarcho-punk that hums like a bandsaw and handles like a convertible skimming the rocky rim of a long desert canyon- tempted by gravity to topple to its doom while clinging to the rough terrain with almost more resolve than rubber. This carcass crashing burnout is brimming with chastising screeds against austerity and the "sub-prime" nature of proletarianization, the tightening noose of surveillance technology, and vampiric arrangments of extraction which drain the life force from people and places for profit. Kaleidoscope bears their oppositional political posture with every charged second of erratic, economical aggression on this album, doing everything in their power to wake the listener up and confront them with the epiphany that the dumpster fire they thought they were observing at a distance is actually the room they presently occupy, reflected back at them through the fun-house mirror of neo-liberal hegemony. Even with all these points well made, the question still remains: When that fire goes out- when this hell finally freezes over- what's next? Поживем, а там посмотрим.
