Electronics For You 2014

John Verity has had a varied and amazing career to date, including support dates with rock luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and Mountain, to recording dates with Ringo Starr, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Tim Rose, Zombies, Colin Blunstone, Phoenix, Charlie, and Argent to name but a few… Currently touring to promote his latest album ‘Tone Hound – on the last train to Corona’ a schedule that includes both unplugged and electric shows. JV has recorded and toured constantly with his solo projects- always with that distinctive soulful blues edge - and collaborations both in and out of the studio. One of these took place on a Jools Holland tour a while back when John first performed with stunning vocalist Bianca Kinane whilst promoting her debut album.

Always aware of the import of even their slightest movement, Manic Street Preachers place a lot of weight on their album titles and 2014's Futurology is designed as a conscious counterpoint to 2013's Rewind the Film. That record wound up closing an era where the Manics looked back toward their own history as a way of moving forward, but Futurology definitively opens a new chapter for the Welsh trio, one where they're pushing into uncharted territory. Never mind that, by most standards this charge toward the future is also predicated on the past, with the group finding fuel within the robotic rhythms of Krautrock and the arty fallout of punk; within the context of the Manics, this is a bracing, necessary shift in direction. All the death disco, free-range electronics, Low homages, and Teutonic grooves, suit the situational politics of the Manics, perhaps even better than the AOR-inspired anthems that have been their stock in trade, but the words – crafted, as ever, by Nicky Wire, who remains obsessed with self-recriminations, injustice and rallying cries – aren't the focus here. Unique among Manics albums, Futurology is primarily about the music, with the surging synthesizers and jagged arrangements providing not an emotional blood-letting or call to arms, but rather an internal journey.