Worriedaboutsatan: The Future Can Wait

The cover art of worriedaboutsatan’s latest release, The Future Can Wait, is thought-provoking. Above all else, though, it feels northern. A social club setting, jolted into a new life with bright light and colourful wallpaper adorning a space that is often enveloped with the stale odour of damp while John Smith’s is spilt across well-worn table surfaces drowning a stray crisp or two.

It’s a provocative statement from Bradford-based producer, Gavin Miller. A constant voice across the experimental landscape, both from the vaults and through the lens of social media, Miller is a fierce advocate for progression; his messaging in the public domain bleeding into the sounds he creates under the worriedaboutsatan guise.

With the likes of 2023’s Falling But Not Alone and last year’s Ricochet – just two of the many highlights among the worriedaboutsatan repertoire – The Future Can Wait sees Miller shifting the needle once again, finding new terrain in his sound world, and this time it’s via the vessel of long-form in how he reaches it.

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Miller’s persistence in not making the same record twice is arguably his greatest strength. It’s also the reason why each release is met with intrigue. Inspired by the glittery inflections of ambient touchstone, Brian Eno and later with the likes of Jon Hopkins and Andy Stott, Miller has always orchestrated the kind of melodic noise that feels like it was conceived in big luxurious studios.

And that immaculate, mansion-like electronica sound remains on The Future Can Wait. Comprising of three long-form compositions that surge with possibilities and questions that many of us ask ourselves more and more each day. But… will there actually be a future to wait for?

If so, it will be vastly different, and that’s where Miller carves out his own hypothesis. Take opening piece, What Exactly is a Dream? – over 13 minutes, Miller teleports his listeners to some ethereal metropolis, as dark inflections and an icy pulse builds across something that forms as a distorted, futuristic backdrop.

The aptly titled American Will Continue Until Morale Improves sees Miller manoeuvre slightly to something more song based. With a meandering post-rock sheen, thrumming bass and hissing cymbals are built around a repetitious guitar riff that works its way under your skin. It possesses a similar effect to following a beat in the early hours tucked away in the corner of a warehouse rave. Equal parts motorik and cyclical, the latter point is indicative of a society that can’t break the mould through its own comfort and need.

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On La Mouche, Miller smashes together the aesthetics of the preceding two pieces in what is synth-led electronica that sees post-rock and tech-house finding common ground. What Miller also does here is shape a futuristic idea of psychedelia. Perhaps those same notions can be attributed to the social club that adorns The Future Can Wait’s cover art, and how that space will look in years from now? Like everything else born in a previous time, I suspect it won’t look like much, instead bulldozed by high powers for new development and profit. Perhaps it’s one of the many reasons why the future can wait? The fantasy of freezing time…

These are aspects that Miller explores on The Future Can Wait, and while the worriedaboutsatan experience is primarily built around the soundscape, there’s the equally vital thread of politics that runs through the project’s patchwork. And on The Future Can Wait, Miller pulls that thread harder than ever.

The Future Can Wait is out now. Purchase from Bandcamp.