Monolith Cocktail Blog

Future Kult ‘S-T’
(Action Wolf Records/AWAL) 25th February 2022

Decamped in the outliers of Hidalgo, miles away from Mexico City, the sonic-visual partnership of Sion Trefor and Benjamin Zombori have tasked themselves with producing the music of the future.

Leaving behind both Cardiff and Berlin they’ve pitched up off the beaten track in the mountainous valley of one of Mexico’s smallest states; breathing in the geography, history, allure of this hacienda and river settled “nowhere”.

Bringing together both multifaceted artists and their respected disciplines – Trefor a professional concert pianist, violinist, percussionist, producer and composer for visual projects, his foil Zombori the founder of a music, arts and video agency and artist in his own right – Future Kult is an omnivorous grab of inspirations and borderless fusions.

A barrier, or at least warning against the ever-imposing forces of technology, their self-titled debut album corrals post-punk, indie-dance, no wave, electronica, pop and umpteen on-trend genres into a simmering and explosive dense dystopian sonic nightmare for all the senses. They marry the reverberations of the poor missing sisters lost over decades in the Mexican borderlands with the esoteric and the soulless algorithmic takeover of Silicon Valley across an often intense album of hushed and on occasion falsetto vocalised yearns and sinister-laced despair. That’s not to say it’s a resigned, or even wholly dark, songbook as magical filters of light and dance-like euphoric crescendos emerge from the industrial throbbing gristle and gothic bones. 

But just as you think you’ve got a handle those esoteric chants and nuzzled drug-doped saxophone honks and hints of The Big Pink and Renegade Soundwave shatter the Mexican posed hinterland vibes.

Binding together opposing forces and cultures the badly-lit underpass R&B flowing ‘The Wolf’ sounds like Gary Numan taking an E, whilst the sober warning brooding ‘Red Sands’ wields Belbury Poly harpsichord horror dream-realism with Ed Scissor & Lamplighter. ‘Luciferian’ rides a minimalist Tresor techno wave of Catholic-electro guilt.

Front 242 touches gloves with Amorphous Androgynous, DAF, Moroder, Nukuluk, Marilyn Manson and Nitzer Ebb on an electrified mind-warp of crushing malevolent technological forces. Kept as virtual prisoners in the web, Future Kult send out pulsating augurs and border-crossing sonic explosive pleas that will melt or send those algorithms into a frenzy: a great statement from a burgeoning partnership.