Futurenow

Background

For Go West's 20th anniversary, the duo undertook a UK tour in 2005, and at the same they had started working on the songs for what would become futurenow. On the tour the duo incorporated some of the new songs to get reception from their fans. The long-awaited album was released in June 2008, containing seven new songs and three older tracks. The album was entirely written and produced by Cox and Richard Drummie. It was recorded at redfish studios and Les Ballons du Chien. futurenow saw the band gravitating to a more guitar-based sound. It was met with mixed reviews and its critics relentlessly questioned the band's decision to be the producers of their own album as opposed to handing over the responsibility to a production veteran. The album did not chart in the UK.

In 1993 the band performed live at Birmingham's NEC, and this concert was later released as a live album in 2001. Released by Blueprint Records, two new studio songs were included; "All Day, All Night" and "Hangin' On For Dear Life". Both of these tracks would later be added to the futurenow album, and at the time of the live album's release "All Day, All Night" was released as a single. Directly released from futurenow were two singles within the UK. "Let Love Come" had become a live favourite and therefore the first single from the album. It was initially released as a promotional single sent out to Radio stations, then sold exclusively through Townsend Records. "Only Love" was released as the second CD single.

On the band's 2007 DVD Twenty One, which featured a live concert from 2006, a number of futurenow songs were performed live; "Let Love Come", "All Day, All Night", "Never Enough", "Lolita", "Faded", "Glow", "Stars Don't Shine".

In a 2010 interview with Cox for This is Not Retro, Cox spoke of the album's lack of success, and how this led to him taking the role as a singer in Manfred Mann's Earth Band instead of recording a new Go West album. He revealed "For one reason and another Richard and I weren't on the same page about making another album in the middle of last year, and after not being very lucky with radio support for the 'Futurenow' album Richard was a little demoralised while I was wanting to be immediately writing songs and recording another album. So it seemed that we weren't going to be making another record any time soon and I then got a call from Jimmy Copley, who was playing drums for Manfred, because a situation had arisen and he wanted to know if I'd be interested. At the time it seemed that the Go West train had pulled into a station for the time being so I thought I'd try and see if I could make these two things work concurrently."

Release

The album was released as an MP3 download on such sites as Amazon and iTunes. It was also issued as a digipack CD, through Borough Music, manufactured and distributed under exclusive license to Borough Music Limited via Blueprint. On 21 January 2009, a CD version was released in Japan. Blueprint licensed the album to BMG Japan, Phantom Sound & Vision. Including the four-page inlay that was featured with the UK CD version, the Japanese release also featured a -page booklet with liner notes in Japanese and lyrics in English and Japanese. For this edition, two bonus tracks were included; "Only Love (Radio Edit)" and "We Close Our Eyes (Radio Edit)".

Track listing

1. "Let Love Come" - 3:52
2. "Stars Don't Shine" - 4:19
3. "Man on Fire" - 4:39
4. "Lolita" - 3:51
5. "Glow" - 3:54
6. "Only Love" - 5:31
7. "Never Enough" - 3:53
8. "Faded" - 4:09
9. "All Day, All Night" - 3:52
10. "Hangin' on For Dear Life" - 4:19