Futurisk - Army Now

Futurisk were a synth band that started in ‘79 when a teenage Jeremy Kolosine won studio time & money in a competition with his drum-machine triggered guitar-synth act called ‘Clark Humphrey & Futurisk’. Jeremy decided to form a band around the truncated name ‘Futurisk” and recorded this 7inch on his own label, Clark Humphrey Records. Who Clark Humphrey is and what relation he is to Jeremy Kolosine, is a question for the ages. Maybe David Caruso could help solve the mystery? After all, Southern Florida was the Futurisk stomping ground and the band played a few shows in synth-punk meccas like Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach. There has to be some DNA somewhere that can implicate Clark Humphrey further?

Futurisk then released a second EP (Player Piano) in 1982 and promptly called it a day. An alternate version of the track Meteoright, from that album was on the Found Tapes Minimal Wave 2 comp from 2007 which was where I first heard of them. Unlike the minimal synth of the Player Piano EP, this 45 is more synthpunk. The guitars are more pronounced on the A-Side and the lyrics are political. The production is a little more raw sounding as well. The B-Side, What We Have To Ask, is my favorite track by Futurisk and it really reminds me of the Units. From what I understand, Futurisk were the first synth punk band from the South and its cool to think that they were doing similar things at the same time as bands on the other side of the country. Jeremy is now involved in The Receptors, an awesome analog synth project that has just recorded an album of Kraftwerk covers all on 8-Bit video game systems. This one goes out to my good friend Mark by the way, who initially shared the Futurisk stuff with me a few years back and who also records some awesome and very jaunty music on 8-Bit machines.