ABOUT THE FUTURE THE STORY SO FAR…

About The Future... For the majority of people and the music industry, About The Future has been an invisible band, yet in its background it treasures four full-length albums, out of which two Rock Opera concept albums, one staged Rock Opera and a Rock Film, being the latest work. After 20 years of constant dedication to the music and art creation and production, the band is ready for a new adventure in the heart of Europe: Vienna.

Fully immersed in that strange but glorious path, the band reveals something of an intriguing and curious story. Not only was the band founded for the pure love of rock and roll and black soul music, but it has been travelling the historical, geographical and spiritual road that, looking back, coincides perfectly with the motion and awakening of the new consciousness in humankind. There is much of what may look like a “coincidence” or a “surprise” on that road, like being in the centre of Tian ‚An Men Square’ uprising, or amidst the Balkan civil war, or seized by sudden inner revelations and unexpected spiritual experiences...

Always pushed by that mystery of life of joy, pain, beat & sound and constant quest for “another kind of love”, the band has continued composing, growing and singing ... about the future.

About The Future was founded in Beijing (China) in 1997, where Ana Vukovojac, from Belgrade (Serbia / ex-Yugoslavia) and Roberto Falsetti (Rob Setti), from Rome, lived and met one day.

They did not expect that their love for alternative music and desire for adventure would become the crossroad of their lives. At that time, Rob`s 80‘s mod revival band The Underground Arrows, was play- ing its last two concerts in Rome and released a collection of works on a CD. Also another Rob`s invol- vement - with Beijing based experimental band The Nightmares (a live band in which Rob was playing with today China mega rock star and Chinese rock and roll pioneer Cui Jian) was over.

Ana and Rob both felt that Europe was calling them back and that it was the right moment to start wor- king together on new ideas. From 1997-1998 they lived in Belgrade, witnessing the dark moment of the last days of a civil war conflict that lasted almost 10 years and dismembered Yugoslavia.

They called their band Never & TheLess and the first ideas ended up in a demo album and the produc- tion of their first video for the song Hold On.

But it was the time to move again. In 1999 the band moved to Rome and started the collaboration with other musicians in order to properly record and mix the album. In June 1999, they played their first con- cert at Forte Prenestino. The music of that time was Power Pop with extensive use of sequencers, but despite the freshness of the music and the messages, that line up and project did not continue. Love Today - Album Considering their more and more nomadic nature, the band founders thought that The Migrators would be a more appropriate name for the band, which was also stepping on a new and more original path, musically and spiritually speaking. The new songs were created in the atmosphere of Ana and Rob`s personal and artistic transformation and migration of self-awareness caused by Ana‘s sudden ilness, which eventually led to a new perspective on life. They shared that experience in new songs. Beginning of 2000 and a limited edition album titled Love Today was released on their own label. It is the album of spiritual awakening and creative joy - which includes also a spoken story, a fable, titled Goodbye Uncle.

Let Love Back Home - Album From 2000 to 2003, Ana and Rob were again in Belgrade. These were the years of exploration of new and exciting meanings they saw in their lives and the lives of others. The feeling of infinity penetrated the daily life and the music. The music was enriched with new approaches - jazz chords, counterpoint harmonies, Middle East tunings and powerful percussive rhythms - still remaining deeply rooted in the power-pop, mod and psycho-soul background. They started cooperation with the new musicians in Bel- grade, who for a short time joined the band with the intention to record the album. There, they also met a known ex-YU music producer, Vladimir Negovanovich, who has become an important collaborator and friend in their future work.

A journey of those days, in the „inner fields“ brought to the surface many answers, new questions, con- sistent demo material and a 13 tracks album 13 entitled Let Love Back Home. The album was officially released in 2004 on a major Italian record label in Rome. Despite undoubtedly fruitful musical output and constant work on networking and promotion, The Migrators` public appearance was practically none and the band continued producing in the shadow.

Goodbye Uncle – Rock Opera From 2004 the band is resident in Rome and has a new recording studio. As a reaction to the lack of exposure the band has a new idea - to turn the story of Goodbye Uncle (writ- ten in 1999) into something more than an album – into a proper Rock Opera. What a challenge! But the creative undercurrents were stronger than the fears, so the work on the music of the Opera started and in 2006 there came to the light of the day a 19 tracks demo concept album.

The music of Goodbye Uncle rock opera is taking the listener through various eras of pop and rock mu- sic, from 60’s R&B and Freakbeat, Funky and 70’s Disco, ’77 Punk, Power Pop, heading for the 90’s and 2000’s – a small scale 20th century music encyclopaedia! The performance on the vintage instruments, like Vox Jaguar organ with Leslie, Rhodes electric piano, Framus, Rickenbacker, and Hoffner guitars, with the use of vintage amps, was combined with digital editing, creating original analogue sounds that under- lined the concept and the story. The Migrators were growing in music recording, editing and production.

In 2006 it happened that an opportunity came to test the structure of the story and the music by producing Rock Opera as a theatre performance. The 50 minutes Goodbye Uncle Rock Opera premiere was staged on 19th April 2006 in Rome, after only a month and a half of production period and one day of rehearsals.

The main show was a climax of a whole day of dress rehearsals open to public. The eight piece band, dancers, and actors, with full volume PA & Lighting, steered by a crew of sound and light engineers, per- formed within the walls of the Anglican church of All Saints. Big rock sounds coming out of a 18th centu- ry Gothic church in one of the busiest commercial streets of the city, attracted diverse crowd in and they were all there in the evening to see the show. The premiere was a surprising success. A Roman monthly in English language wrote: „All told, the musicians, the actors, director and producer have come with quite a slick production... halfway between bizarre and brilliant.“ The production of the Rock Opera had another fruit. Two new crucial music figures, the bass player Gianni Colaiacomo (a former Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Italian ’70s legendary Prog band) and Massimo Rosari, the „quickest learning drummer“, joined the band. The band decided to record together and the final mix-downs were done in studio Sky of Vlada Negovanovich in Belgrade. In June 2007, Goodbye Uncle concept album, containing 19 tracks and the Photo-Book according to the visual concept created by Ana, Rob and the photographer Massimo Paradiso, was officially released. The album was distributed and promoted worldwide and received reviews and coverages in press and media both in Italy and abroad, including USA and UK. The Opera performances in All Saints Rome, however, were discontinued as the church members found this type of artistic expression inappropriate for its activities and premises, thus ending the cooperation with the band. Cooperation with other venues, at that time in Rome were not doable for the band.

The Story of J.C. - Rock Opera Once again, The Migrators reacted creatively and jumped on a new train of adventures, by starting to write a new Rock Opera based on the last 3 Chapters of the Gospel of Mark: The Story of J.C. They wanted to go for a masterpiece. It could have sounded a pretentious wish, but such seemed the importance of The Story of J.C. for our times, that the authors wanted to stretch their creativity to the point of finding an „utterly new language“ in audio – visual terms, to convey the concept of the Gospel in the 21st century.

While working on the script and the music, Ana and Rob also worked hard on new network possibilities outside Italy with the artists, musicians, theatre, film and video producers in order to pave the road for a new dream: a Live Multimedia Rock Opera.

The greatest feedback came from the acclaimed music video Director, Jörn Heitmann (director of German top Rammstein´s video clips), who loved the music and the story and invited them to Katapult Filmpro- duktion in Berlin, to start a collaborative work on staging The Story of J.C. Multimedia Rock Opera.

In 2010, the two band members moved to Berlin and began the cooperation with Katapult Filmproduk- tion and Jörn Heitmann. Berlin became a new chapter in the band´s life. Life and cooperation in Germany was a great kick. It brought a fresh air of joy, hope and creativity. Berlin, a new centre of international community of artists and technological geeks, with its complex historical and cultural background, expan- ded Ana and Rob‘s knowledge and vision of the Opera, especially in terms of the use and purpose of the visual digital technology in the Opera concept.

In 2011 The Migrators‘ founders registered Shaking Foundations Multimedia Productions GbR com- pany in Berlin, and started collaboration with Eberhard Hasche (senior professor at Brandenburg Univer- sity of Applied Sciences) developing the visual multimedia concept of 360 ° Live Movie Experience ®.

From 2012 Ana & Rob, now creative and managing directors of Shaking Foundations embarked on the train of technological multimedia development and innovation in order to hugely expand the possibilities of storytelling. They coined the word 360 ° Live Movie Experience to say that the Opera will be the a crossover between a film and a live performance, allowing the audience to arrive to such a level of im- mersion to actually “be in the film“.

Between 2013 and 2014, the script, the metaphysical background of the story, the story-board draft, the technological concept, the concept album and the visual concept were developed and made ready for the production. Despite heavy networking and constant fundraising quests in Berlin and elsewhere, the 360 ° LME concept seemed to be too innovative and expensive for the investors to take on a risk and Shaking Foundations had to think of new solutions. It turned out that solution was close at hand: dividing the multimedia rock opera project in two separate projects. One, titled Wake Me Up When I am Dead, was to push forward the 360 ° multimedia concept and elaborate to the depth the metaphysical side of the story. However, at the time Ana and Rob understood that this project was way ahead of time and their possibilities to produce in the way they envisioned it too few, that they decided to postpone the production of Wake Me Up When I Am Dead for the future time. Dolomitenfront– Rock Film The second project was to adapt the existing music and the story of The Story of J.C. into another art form for a new production adventure, namely the film titled Dolomitenfront. The film was to become a rock film, played and recorded live on the set, it was to be a film against all wars and it was to be shot in the high mountains. Eventually the script changed completely, as well as the music style, it became alternative hard rock opera.

In 2015, after an extraordinarily short period of time of searching for the right place to produce their debut film, Shaking Foundations found a collaboration within a community and with young talents in Val di Fiemme in Trentino, in the Italian Alps (the Dolomites). In 6 months preproduction in Ziano di Fiemme, that saw a growing participation and interest for the project from the local people, talents and profes- sionals, as well as international cooperation with the Irish director, Polish and Serbian sound engineers, Dolomitenfront Rock Film was ready to go on the set. On the film set, the full band gathered again to perform and be a part of the film.

In September 2015 the music was played, recorded live during shooting in a WWI Austro-Hungarian fortress at 1800m in the midst of majestic Dolomites. The film is in Italian language. The story of a young musician recruited as a soldier on the front lines in an indefinite war, that reveals another, invisible reality behind the visible one in which another war is waged for and against humanity. Throughout 2016 Ana and Rob, who are producers, authors, composers and co-directors of 43’ min Dolomitenfront, worked on the post-production of the film. By September 2016 the film was completed and Ana and Rob continued the work on the promotion and distribution, now sending the film to various international festivals.

From 2016 and throughout 2 0 1 7, Dolomitenfront has participated and continue to participate in film festi- vals in Italy and around the world, winning the critics award for best musical film at Lisbon MUVI (Inter- national Music Film Festival), Elevation Indie Film Awards in Dublin. In Italy, it participated in prestigious Trento Film Festival and others. In order to expand and create a better network for the film distribution and promotion, as well as to trace a path for a possible production of Dolomitenfront Live, Rob moved to Vienna in 2018, while Ana remained with Shaking Foundations music studio in Ziano di Fiemme (Italy).

Rob was not new to Vienna. His first band, The Underground Arrows in Viennese mod circles has been a known name ever since the ’80s. Re-connecting with the scene that has remained alive and kicking and especially thanks to a rare soul music guru, DJ, collector, Reckord Shack producer and owner, and a friend, Jörg Lauermann, Rob and occasionally visiting Ana, felt it is a time for to open new musical chap- ter in the band‘s rich career.

Tomorrow / Where is Love – Single Again, the right place, friendship, great underground music scene in a city that has been and still is in the heart of the European cultural crossroads - Vienna - has injected a large dose of enthusiasm and creative joy. So much so that the band decided to break on Viennese music scene with the release of a new single with Tomorrow and Where Is Love, under a new band‘s name: ABOUT THE FUTURE.

The final touch to the new music vision, that shifted from the Dolomitenfront alternative hard rock sounds towards somewhat more soulful rock or maybe Modern Soul, came with a new bass player from Rome, Ivo Mileto, joining the band. Living in different cities, the four-piece band had no conditions to play and record together the new songs. The solution was just one: to record the instruments and the vocals separately in personal studios and send to Rob online to make the final mix in Vienna. What looked as a sheer necessity turned out to be a very refreshing and inspiring way of collaboration, which seemed just as a perfect growth of the ideas of a band called About The Future!

Presently the band is working on the release and the promotion of the new single in Vienna for Shaking Foundations Records and is planning the release of another one in the coming months.