In the Future by Failure

The internet is fucking scary. The culmination of a century-and-a-half long global experiment in communication has created the most effective Skinner box since Skinner interjected for a moment and insisted we call it an operant conditioning chamber instead. It's nice to hear a band tackle the issue of gorging yourself on cookies, especially one with the rep sheet that Failure has. In the Future is apparently the first of three EPs dropping, though after listening to it, I'm left wondering if a full-length would've been better. At four tracks and 15 minutes, with one of the tracks being a damn ambient interlude, In the Future is certainly more packing peanuts than product. That's not to say what's here isn't good, but we used to call this a single, and those used to come out alongside albums.

Still, it's nice to see Failure trying something different. "Dark Speed", the opener, is a pretty groovy spoken word piece that smacks of The Information-era Beck. Really, compare it to "Dark Star"; I'd call it a Xerox if it wasn't also a far better track. The dissonant stomp of "Paralytic Flow" is more Failure's normal speed and continues right where The Heart is a Monster left off. Everything else is a bit up in the air. "Pennies", a Fantastic Planet outtake originally from the Golden collection, appears in a lovely full-band arrangement that's as radio-and-Napster as ever, but ambient nonsense like "Segue 10" is pretty much worthless on a package as short as this. Clips of the band fucking around are tolerable on a full-length; on an EP, it's bad form. Here's hoping the band can pull out a more substantive release next time around. Skinner continues to be proven right.