It's time to champion this lovely and engaging Steampunk musical Futurity. Don't believe me? Then take a listen right now.


A band called The Lisps have put together a very beautiful musical. Long story short, the musical follows a Union soldier Julian Munro, and brilliant writer and very real human being Ada Lovelace. Together they work to invent an omnipotent steam-powered brain. The whole epic is set to the twang of gorgeous folk music.

The creators need funds to put together a Tommy-esque album so they can peddle it at their performances. And we support this album, because if it gets popular perhaps it will eventually get kicked up to a bigger theater, and then bigger and bigger and eventually land on Broadway and help raise the bar on acceptable genre shows on the Great White Way. Note: the band is ONLY asking for funds for the album, not to go to Broadway... but we still think they have a shot! Here's a short video of a few performances:

Here's the official run-down from their Kickstarter page.

Before we begin performances of FUTURITY at A.R.T (American Repertory Theater) and the Walker Art Center, we are recording an album of the music from the musical. Not really a cast recording, but a concept album which arranges all the music from the musical into a Lisps album. (think, The Who's Tommy). We are printing it on Vinyl, and also making a limited number of CDs. Your contribution goes towards everything involved in recording and manufacturing the album. We are recording at Seaside Lounge in Brooklyn, NY with producer Josh Clark (Beirut, The National, New Pornographers). And for recording, mixing, mastering, design, replication (vinyl and digital) and release we are going to spend about $20,000!!!!! Holy crap that is mucho dinero. We promise you will be moved by this album. It is unlike anything we've ever undertaken. FUTURITY, at is core, is a piece about war and imagination. It's about the simultaneous human drive towards both destruction and phenomenal acts of creativity. FUTURITY is about the malleability of the past and the future. It's about the way in which a feverish drive towards innovation is what keeps us alive and what can aid in our self-destruction One might argue that music is the opposite of war. Though we realize that music is so often used to promote war, the origins of music are in the human attempt to organize chaos (noise). Music is one of the earliest forms of civilization, and it possesses within it all the same potential for chaos and disharmony that society does. We've tried to create a piece that speaks to the way in which we've learned to understand our lives as artists. Being a musician may sometimes feel like an exercise in futility but we know that at a fundamental level we are creating a proposal for society. A proposal for the way in which things might be organized with an eye towards community, compassion and creativity. We like to think of music as a form of Utopianism. For us, music is science fiction.


Top image by Sam Hough.