Name: Past, Present, Future
Brand: Simon Bonney

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

CDSTUMM431

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2019-05-03

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

PIAS

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

5400863007805

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Total Cap

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

STUMM431

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Gold

Download code: Yes

5400863007812

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "5400863007812"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / gold

Artist

Simon Bonney

Genre GB

Singer Songwriter

Label GB

Mute

Please note, some Mute issues also carry an EMI logo. This is not a label and EMI should not be added as a label, it instead indicates that Mute was part of the EMI Group.

Founded in 1978 by [a=Daniel Miller], Mute (also known as [l36339]) releases various forms of music, with an emphasis on electronic and experimental pop. In May 2002 the label was acquired by the [l=EMI Group]. In 2010 Miller did an agreement with EMI to handle Mute as an independent label again, licensing the trademark from EMI via his company [l=Mute Artists Ltd.], but EMI kept the rights over Mute's back catalogue. After the EMI Group was dissolved, in 2012 [l206061] acquired [l636]'s back catalogue.

Branch offices exist in Germany ([l168349]) and in North America ([l36296]). 

Mute has spawned many regional and special-interest sublabels, some of which are still active. One offshoot, [l=Parallel Series], even became independent of [l636] Mute also operates Mute Bank Mail Order, which sells the label's merchandise directly to consumers. Mute Bank published two issues of [i]Mute Statement[/i], a softcover book that details the entire discography of the label and includes band profiles and photos of release artwork.

Another label strongly associated with Mute is [l=Toast Hawaii], run by [a=Depeche Mode]'s [a=Andrew Fletcher].

Label code: [b]LC 05834[/b] / [b]LC 5834[/b]

‘[b]P[/b]’, included to the catalog numbers,
generally stand for promo copies.
‘[b]L[/b]’, included to the catalog numbers,
generally stand for limited editions.

Past, Present, Future features songs from Simon Bonney’s last two albums, Forever (1992) and Everyman (1994), as well as six unreleased tracks, including his cover of Scott Walker’s Duchess.

In 1992, with Crime And The City Solution on hiatus, Simon moved to the US on an impulse, stayed for a decade and released two records; the much loved and very personal Forever and the socio-political Everyman, a record that has grown in relevance as rapid change and social dislocation has increased.

In imagining the perfect soundtrack to these observations, he turned to the melancholy and plaintive sounds of dobro and lap steel of 1970s country music, the sound of longing for the familiar, for security and stability, songs about family and belonging, memories of a childhood farm in Tasmania. The result was two country tinged, compassionate and prescient portraits of life in late 20th Century America through Tasmanian eyes. 

His path led him into outback Australia, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh - a life rich in extremes of colour and conflict, of trauma, of humanity and inhumanity, of power and powerlessness. It was not always easy to witness and eventually, as happens with all that walk this road, he had seen too much and it was time to stop. It was time to re-embrace something simple, something personal - his music. He pulled tapes from shoeboxes and listened to the old albums as well as tracks recorded for an unreleased album, Eyes Of Blue, recorded in Detroit with a band featuring Matt Smith (Outrageous Cherry, the Volbeats), Troy Gregory (the Dirtbombs, Electric Six, Killing Joke) and a guest appearance by Chuck Prophet and found that, far from sounding nostalgic, they sounded fresh and every bit as relevant - if not more relevant - than when he had recorded them.

Past, Present, Future

Music GB