Imagine you could go back in time: revisit a past life, and find out what could have been, all at once. Like a time capsule whose cover reads: ‘Do not open until 2017,’ Predictions of the Future is ready to share, twenty-one years to the month after it was begun in 1996.

The mid-90’s scene in Montreal was a jangling, crunchy, fuzzed-out circuit of guitar bands schilling 7” vinyl releases and cassette tapes in beer-drenched bars along St. Laurent Boulevard. It was the dawn of indie rock, of women in rock, and in September 1993, with some heavy, grungy guitar work and catchy, harmonically-deft power tunes, there was Goldfish.

Fronted by songwriter/guitarists Carrie Haber and Victoria Klingenstierna, Goldfish played dozens of shows between 1994-1996 with bands like Fugazi, Elastica, Yo La Tengo, Eric’s Trip, and local brethren Bite, Tinker, Stellar Dwellar and Blinker The Star. They released 7” singles Ride/Swallow, Condor/Fondly and a 5-song cassette EP, recordings that lived on Canadian college charts in those years. The quartet was rounded out with drummer/co-founder and songwriter Gary Jansz and bassist Christopher Pollon.

Goldfish recorded a full-length album on 16-track analogue tape with Howard Bilerman (Leonard Cohen, Arcade Fire, The Dears) in a building near Old Montreal that no longer exists. But before the project was completed, Victoria departed for her native Sweden, and the rest of the members went their separate ways.

If it weren’t for the artifact of these 21 unmixed, unreleased songs on tape, the whole Goldfish affair might be a distant memory. Montreal record producer Howard Bilerman observed: “In my 25 year career, I’ve never seen a band come so close to completing a project without releasing it.”

After deteriorating in various Montreal basements since 1996, mastering engineer Harris Newman had to bake the tapes in a food dehydrator to restore them. The band threw down the few missing tracks, in some cases singing harmonies with younger versions of themselves.

The album is finally completed. Goldfish will play one show in Montreal to finish the job of blowing the cover off this hidden moment in local music history, leaving us with an actual document instead of just a rock’n’roll dream. Goldfish will play an album launch before boarding flights to opposite ends of the planet. And from there; "Predictions of the future, come as they go..." from the track Fatalist