Grey Factor
When the Future Arrives Without You
Damaged Disco
Leaving no stone unturned, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, When the Future Arrives Without You collects every little absorbing, insurgent synth-pop idea Grey Factor ever had, or at least the ones recorded by the long-forgotten, alien unit.
Even the surreal pre-recorded distractions played while tinkering with their notoriously fickle gear onstage are included, as the all-encompassing 27-track compilation re-introduces Grey Factor’s outsider artiness to a world that’ll probably never be ready for it. What a shame then that new covers of Wire’s “12XU,” so colorfully buoyant and fantastically frenzied, and Campag Velocet’s “Sauntry Sly Chic,” stylishly funky and effortlessly cool in a swirling, Giorgio Moroder kind of way, could go unnoticed by most, as a rebooted Grey Factor turns itself on again.
Already unearthed and let loose in the wild, once-lost Grey Factor releases 1979-1980 A.D. Complete Studio Recordings and A Peak in the Signal: Live 1979-1980, packaged together here, were widely praised as innovative and utterly compelling, with Paste magazine even going so far as to list the former among its “Top 50 Synth-Pop Albums of All Time” (Paste, 2023). Not too shabby for a set of works that had gone almost completely unheard for decades.
And yet, when the dizzying layers of electronica, ethereal doubled vocals, and distant lashings of “You’re So Cool” are met at the door of When the Future Arrives Without You, Grey Factor demands attention be paid. Curiosities abound, mostly dark and unsettling, like the twisted “Joyful Sounds” and a menacing “Guerilla Warfare,” which crawls through dirty, yet sleek, tunnels built by Gary Numan’s Tubeway Army. Less terrifying, but perhaps just as troubling, “All in a Day’s Work” is disaffected, feeling isolated and alone, wistfully strolling along to a softly bouncing mix of squeals and squelches, while “Above the Gun” is nervy and urgent, even paranoid, and “4 Hours in a Metal Box” is a claustrophobic elevator nightmare of throat singing and clatter, narrated by repetitive recorded voices of corporate banality and a little girl’s haunting innocence.
Seemingly wandering into another room, When the Future Arrives Without You leads followers into a smattering of live material, where the writhing, vertiginous cacophony of “Why Me” leaps into a wild, hypnotic orgy of dissonance and danceability and a captivating “Inja” drones on mysteriously. Meanwhile, “No Time” twitters anxiously amid a shooting bombardment of flares and a buzzy “Everything” feels like an insistent New Wave radio hit that walked out of the ‘80s straight into undeserved obscurity.
About those “In-Betweens,” as Grey Factor called them, some suggest a more playful side, as a vibrant “Learning Disco” ricochets off the walls and “He Dreamed About the Corner” throws together a music box of little children singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm (Ee-I-Ee-I-O)” in a spectral round. Turning serious, a wailing “Don’t Turn Back” locks into a pulsating groove, as does an airy and expansive “America Today,” strident political messaging straight from the Nixon era and a burst of noise ushered in to protest it all. Synthesizing the human and the robotic, with “Don’t Put Me in a Guillotine” blending supernatural moaning with a faint heartbeat, Grey Factor specialized in out-of-body aural experiences, like dystopian shamans. They are the ghosts of futures past.
