Future Conditional - Isotech (2022)

It was such a sad moment when the acclaimed ghost rockers of Piano Magic said their final good byes in a classy way by releasing their last album Closure in 2017. But luckily, the Glen Johnson and Cédric Pin duo makes for a real continuation of the band's legacy and they proved it again after 2018's dark The Burning Skull album.

The project is called Future Conditional, the album is called Isotech and it's clearly very different but also very familiar to any fan of the British band. While the music is definitely shifted towards minimalist electronica/synth kind of vibe, the vocals and, most importantly, the lyrics feel very ghost rock-like. The elephant in the room is most certainly Demolitions, the track that is filled with Piano Magic's urban-oriented melancholia and which, very literally, refers to The Last Engineer from PM's masterpiece Part Monster. I appreciate the musicians' urge to self-development and experimenting and as such, the album can be seen as a continuation of Piano Magic's discography with a sudden shift in style.

This style is seen as a futuristic (I'd say retro futuristic even) idea presented by Johnosn himsself when he said: “I had this idea….well, more of a hope, that, in the future, there might be clubs where androids go to dance and humans are banned". This coldwave-like take on club electronica surely can buy me too. Apart from the familiar faces, there's also a couple of guests on the album with Amanda Butterworth aka Mücha and Trembling Blue Stars' Bobby Wratten and Beth Arzy as the most prominent ones. And their melancholic vocals  match the tone of the album perfectly.

Isotech costs 9.5 EUR (7.99 GBP).

Check: Demolitions

Country: UK

Genre: ghost synthpop

Label: Second Language Music

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