Future Past (Duran Duran album)

Future Past is the fifteenth studio album by English rock band Duran Duran, released on 22 October 2021. It is the band's first album to be released through BMG, and their first since 2015's Paper Gods six years prior.

The album, co-produced by the band alongside Mark Ronson, Giorgio Moroder and Erol Alkan, also features guest appearances by Tove Lo, Ivorian Doll, Japanese band Chai, and Mike Garson. Blur's Graham Coxon is the guitarist on the album.

The band released the album's first single "Invisible" on 19 May 2021. The tracks "More Joy!" featuring Chai, "Anniversary", "Tonight United" and "Give It All Up" featuring Tove Lo were also released in advance of the album.

Background and content
John Taylor described Future Past as a "very emotionally deep album", revealing that the lyrics were primarily written before 2020's COVID-19 lockdowns: "Many of the songs are about emotional crises, or long-term intimacy issues, let's call them. When we came back after lockdown, I felt that those lyrics, particularly 'Invisible', spoke to the moment, because the last 18 months have really been about intimacy politics."

Cover art
The cover is a colourised and combined image of two black-and-white pictures by Japanese photographer Daisuke Yokota. Nick Rhodes met Yokota in 2017 while researching for a documentary about Japanese photographers. The album's art director Rory McCartney laid the images over the top of one another, creating the effect of a stationary silhouette in red with another silhouette in green moving beyond it, which resonated with McCartney.

Critical reception
Future Past was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 75, based on six reviews.

Personnel
Duran Duran
 * Simon Le Bon – vocals
 * Nick Rhodes – keyboards
 * John Taylor – bass
 * Roger Taylor – drums

Additional musicians
 * Barli – backing vocals
 * Graham Coxon – guitars
 * Joshua Blair – piano, programming (all tracks); string arrangement (1–3, 5–8), keyboards (3–8), guitars (6), additional keyboards, keyboards programming (9, 10, 12)
 * Erol Alkan – programming (1, 9), synthesizers (1, 3), drum programming (2–5, 9, 10, 12), hand clap (2, 10), percussion, tambourine (2)
 * Tove Lo – vocals (3)
 * Giorgio Moroder – additional keyboards (6, 7)
 * Saffron Le Bon – backing vocals (6, 7, 9, 10)
 * Mark Ronson – guitars (8)
 * Ivorian Doll – vocals (10)
 * Chai – vocals (11)
 * Mike Garson – piano (12)

Technical
 * Wendy Laister – executive production
 * John Webber – mastering
 * Mark "Spike" Stent – mixing
 * Joshua Blair – engineering, Pro Tools
 * Austin Creek – engineering (12)
 * Peter Karlsson – vocal engineering (3)
 * Cory Bice – vocal engineering (3)
 * Ritchie Kennedy – additional engineering (1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10), engineering assistance (3)
 * Tom Herbert – engineering assistance (1–5, 9, 10, 12)
 * Ed Farrell – engineering assistance (1–5, 9, 10, 12)
 * Matt Wolach – mixing assistance
 * Benji Compston – production management
 * Hannie Knox – production assistance

Design
 * Rory McCartney – art direction
 * Daisuke Yokota – cover art, photography
 * Nick Rhodes – band photo