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Dean de Benedictis — Salvaging the Future
(Spotted Peccary no#, 2026, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2026-10-03

Salvaging the Future Cover art

Salvaging the Future is the third part of a trilogy of albums that started 21 years ago with Salvaging the Past, and followed up ten years ago with Salvaging the Present. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the first, but I do remember the second and it was quite good, as well as unusual for a release on Spotted Peccary, as it was a full album on a mostly-electronic label with no synthesizers. That could apply to the album at hand also — at least I’m not hearing much of any, although there is plenty of studio processing, raw electronics, use of custom samples, loops, and more to inform the sound with a very futuristic feel, as well as some standard instrumentation like piano, guitar, flutes, percussion, and more, along with found sounds (samples) and voices, all mixed together into a heady stew that is like nothing else. De Benedictis plays nearly everything, but he is joined by no less than four guest vocalists (one of who doubles on Native American flute) and an electric guitarist, not on every track of course, but as needed in service to whatever arrangements the moment calls for, often dense and heavily layered, acute and visionary. Just the task of simply recording all this sound and still having it sound good at the end is an amazing feat in itself, and one can be fairly certain that the eleven tracks at hand have been in the works for quite some time, although De Benedictis has a lot of parallel projects going on at any given time (Surface 10, Stratos Ensemble, Desensitized, more) and that may have slowed down progress somewhat. No single track on the album exemplifies it in its entirety, every piece is very different; “Voca” uses a fast-paced rhythm loop, voices and spoken word samples, whereas the opener “My Love Is Like an Extinction Event” is like an unsettling journey through multiple mysterious caverns all superimposed on one another. A powerful pounding echo opens “ASMR Tragedy Lines” before floating ambient sounds and curious voices conspire to take the listener in new directions, while “Future Incandescence” is a more typical — yet nonetheless interesting — slab of floating ambient sounds with curious ornamentation. I’ve only detailed but a few, but there are many more engaging tracks in this final episode of De Benedictis’ Salvaging trilogy. Explore more at the link below.

Filed under: New releases, 2026 releases

Related artist(s): Dean de Benedictis (Surface 10)

More info
http://deandebenedictis.bandcamp.com/album/salvaging-the-future

 

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