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Further Future festival to take 2017 off

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Attendees sit and dance atop a metal heart above the Robot Heart performance area at sunrise during Further Future on Sunday, May 1, 2016.
Photo: L.E. Baskow

The brainy, ballsy programming that defined Further Future, the niche festival launched in 2015 at the Moapa River Indian Reservation, seemed almost too good to be true, especially for the Las Vegas area. The question now might be: Was it too good to last?

On February 25, organizers—who also head up music event promoter and Burning Man mobile soundcamp Robot Heart—finally addressed the festival’s fan base through its email mailing list and announced that it would “not be holding a large event in the first half of 2017” to “focus on the evolution of the Further Future concept.” The festival has traditionally taken place during the first weekend of May.

One day later, they updated the Further Future Facebook page with a post that clarified—and lengthened—the fest’s hiatus by stating that they “will not be holding the full FF003 event this year.” (Reps for the festival didn’t reply to emails asking for clarification.)

It’s one of those take-that-as-you-will statements that, while not announcing the end of the festival, also doesn’t differ much from other events that have permanently vanished from the national festival calendar, including our own Vegoose, which ended its three-year run by not holding a 2008 event. (Further Future did say far more than the lip-zipped organizers of Rock in Rio USA, which is thus far foregoing a previously announced biennial follow-up to its 2015 debut.)

Hopefully, it is just a yearlong break to dream up something new. Robot Heart might also need to determine how to program a futurist festival in the tempestuous Trump era, and/or acquire new financing for its increasingly ambitious production. In 2015, this publication bestowed Further Future a Best of Vegas award in the music-festival category. Until it can return, it leaves a void no other Southern Nevada music event can fill, and certainly doesn’t deserve any eventual puns about being too ahead of its time.

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