If Juno singer/guitar player Arlie Carstens had his way, you would listen to his band’s latest record, the achingly beautiful "A Future Lived in Past Tense," sprawled on your bed, the music piped in on a high-tech pair of headphones. The vicissitudes of every day life might have you confined to a desk with a crappy boombox, but the request itself reflects Carstens and his band mates’ interest in crafting music so sonically complex that it demands a solitary, zen-like listening experience.    

Why? Because what will happen if you shut your eyes and listen to the album intently is the kind of total sensory immersion that you’ve had over the years listening to other albums of cinematic grandeur -- Radiohead’s OK Computer, Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Musically, "A Future Lived in Past Tense" is more full of furious, twitching energy than those comparisons would imply, but the emotional reactions the album conjures are similar. Colors will flash on the backs of your eyelids and a quick chill will run up your spine. You might suddenly feel short of breath, enervated by the potency of songs like “Help Is on the Way” and “Covered with Hair” The fists you had clenched into white-knuckle balls will loosen, a smile spreading across your face as the lazy melody of “The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow” wafts alongside echoey guitar lines. The outside world will disappear and it will be just you and these eleven songs, your blood pulsing to the rhythm of Juno’s music.