Interview: Futures

Earlier this year Ant West, Casey Roarty and George Lindsey shut the door on Tonight Is Goodbye, a band that had been apart of their lives for 3 years and released 2 EPs, played Taste of Chaos and headlined the UK Now Stage at the Slam Dunk Festival in Leeds 2008. More importantly it was a band that had lost 2 members.

As a result of this the 3 surviving members decided to start a new band with a different sound. With a new bassist, Christian Ward and Ant taking on guitar duties, the band relaunched themselves under a new moniker, Futures.

Now as 2009 comes to a close, Sean spoke to guitarist Casey Roarty about the transformation from Tonight Is Goodbye to Futures, their forthcoming album and more.

ATP: Tell us the story of how Tonight Is Goodbye became futures?
Casey: Well after our Castles EP, Tonight is Goodbye began writing our first full length. We spent about 6 months writing it, and a month in the studio recording it. Somewhere during the writing/recording process two of the guys realised their hearts weren’t in it anymore and left. After thinking about splitting up, Ant, George and I decided to go ahead and put out the music we had been working on, along with a name change (as we had been discussing in TIG anyway). We welcomed Christian on bass and decide that Ant would play guitar. And here we are…

ATP: Does futures have different sound or are you picking up where you left of?
C: It’s definitely a different sound, but it wasn’t something we planned. It’s definitely a lot closer than before to the music we would actually listen to.

ATP: I hear you have already written an album. Has that been recorded? If so tell us how the recording went?
C: Yep, the albums all done! We recorded it with Pete Miles in Devon, and we’re stoked with how it sounds. The recording was a lot of fun too, but very hard work. We spent a lot of time on pre-production, playing around with the songs to bring out the best in them, it definitely paid off. We also spent a lot of time playing Grand Theft Auto, winding up George, playing football, cooking vegan and eating way too much.

ATP: What can we expect from the album?
C: I’d say the song ‘16’ sums up the feel of the album quite well, if you like that, I hope you’ll like the album.

ATP: Any idea when the album will be out?
C: Good question, we're not sure at the moment, we're looking at the different possibilities of how/with who we're going to put it out, watch this space!

ATP: What bands/artists have influenced you, especially the new material?
C: As a band, a few big influences on us have been Death Cab for Cutie, The Starting Line and Brand New.

ATP: What has the reaction been to the new band? Do you think it will be difficult to show people you are a different band now?
C: The reaction has been amazing, we couldn’t have hoped for better. We just played our first headline show in London which ended up selling out, was so amazing for us to see so many faces at our first show.

ATP: Are there any plans to tour in the near future?
C: Yeh we’re talking about touring plans right now, we’ll definitely be on the road before the year is out. We’re getting really impatient though, if it were up to us we’d be on tour all the time!

Futures on MySpace and Twitter

Sean Reid