FTR SHK (2019)

In the second decade of the 21st Century, humanity began to realize that it had overdrawn the goodwill of its precious blue home.

Over 150 years of industrial expansion had led to the greatest atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in human history. The reliance upon fossil fuels, one of the richest sources of energy our species has ever found, proved to be the source of both our supremacy and our undoing.

Global warming and climate change, predicted for decades, finally found realization in stunningly severe weather - enormously powerful hurricanes, intense flooding, and fires which ravaged lands from California to Australia. The winters grew brief; the summers, intensely hot - and in some places, unendurable. The 5 hottest years on record took place during this second decade of the 21st Century, and the next 4 took place since the turn of the new millennium.

Equally as stunning as the change in climate was the fact that the species could not seem to agree upon the cause.

Enamoured with sport utility vehicles, disposable food packaging, with convenience of any and every kind, the species failed to make the changes necessary to save itself, not to mention the many other species who suffered as a result of the orgiastic banquet humanity could not resist.

And those who led humanity - their politicians, their financiers, their celebrities and captains of industry - largely, they were complicit in this eleventh-hour gorging. Preoccupied with providing ever-increasing quarterly returns to stockholders, obsessed with self-photography and the vanity of social media, and concerned largely with reelection, they stepped aside as humanity marched into the fire.

So those who saw what was to come organized into communities.

Some in an attempt to survive. Others, simply to find kindred spirits with which to spend the last days of civilization. And many of humanity’s artists set at work, documenting what they saw on the horizon.

Riley was no exception.

2019 saw the beginning of a chapter Riley had planned for several years, called Chrome Empire. A futuristic set of songs, unlike anything he had released before, the Chrome Empire material would address these prognostications of doom & gloom in the way Riley knew best - as a fictional story. Cyberpunk rock and roll. For if Riley (and everyone else) was going to go, he was going to do it dancing in the ashes.

“I was born in the 1980s,” he says. “The level of privilege my cohort experienced was without precedent. In Western society, we came of age with absolutely incredible pop culture; largely, there was amazing access to food, entertainment, healthcare…across the span of civilization, there are few comparisons. And so we were all disillusioned by the Great Recession. Brokenhearted by college degrees which landed us not in offices, but in coffee shops. And so we were already a bit crushed.”

”But I always thought we’d have a future. By 2019, many of us weren’t so sure anymore.”

So Riley set at capturing the zeitgeist in the fictional milieu of Chrome Empire.

The very first release would be FTR SHK. Shorthand for “future shock”, the song’s shortened title was both sci-fi typography and a comment on shortened attention spans.

“The market did not demand albums any longer,” he notes. “It honestly resembled the heyday of Motown and Capitol in the mid-1960s. Singles were king, on Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else. So I refused to record 10 or 12 songs and just throw it into the wind. And the single approach was just as fun, in a different manner; one gets to spend a great deal of time on the song, really hone it to perfection…and each one gets much more attention than they would were they compiled on a full-length LP.”

New Vine Records, the independent record label to which Riley had signed, would release FTR SHK as the very first song by Riley as a signed artist. As a testament to their faith in their new signee, the music video would be Riley’s highest-quality release yet. For the very first time, special effects, computer-generated imagery, and 4K videography would be utilized in realizing Riley’s vision.

FTR SHK would see Riley adopt a new name for the musicians he recorded & performed with. In a bid to provide recognition for the gifted players in his band, Riley would henceforth release his new work under the designation kurt.riley+praxis.

This new group would spend the summer and fall of 2019 performing at festivals and venues across New York, reaching new audiences and field-testing the Chrome Empire material, FTR SHK included.

The year would end in a perverse confluence for Riley. Amidst collapse on an interpersonal level, and projections of the same globally, his partnership with New Vine Records saw greater artistic achievements than ever before.

It was in this chaotic mélange that Riley entered the 2020s.

Composition, arrangement, lead/backing vocals, electric guitars, video editing: Kurt Riley
Synthesizer: Charlie Jones
Bass guitar: John Carter
Drums: Tyler Flewelling
Mixing/engineering/mastering, color correction/VFX: New Vine Records
Videography: Patrick Campbell
Graphic Design/Cover Artwork: Kurt Riley