So, you know the Future right?

 

It’s a prefix that’s been heavily employed over the past year or so. There’s “Future Bass”, “Future Soul”, “Future Garage”, “Future Funk” and plain old “Future”. Sometimes it also gets called “Chill Trap” depending on who’s selling it to you. Chief exponents (for me) would be Mr Carmack, Troyboi, Just A Gent, Grant Bowtie, Hegemon and YK. There are loads more and I’m sure I’m missing someone important, so I’m sorry if your reading this and thinking, hey, what about me?

 

Now, as much as I like (what I perceive to be the style of) Future, I’m not quite so sure it’s really a new genre. I think I see it’s current form borne of the work of Hudson Mohawke, Daft Punk and producers like  Flosstradamus. But, you could go back further with the influence of Timbaland with his double time fills and minor chords. In fact there also S.O.S. Band type 70’s Jazz Funk in there too as well as the whole influence of practically all dance music since the birth of modern electronic music in the 80’s. So House, Garage, Hip Hop, Drum and Bass, Dubstep, Broken Beat, Detoit Techno, Euro Hardfloor, Dirty South and later Genre’s like Juke and Footwork are all represented here. It’s influence is the culmination of 30 years or so of great dance music.

 

It is also interesting how the music is presented, with blog behemoths like EDM.com and Thissongissick.com being the main pushers and more or less controlling what’s up and what’s not. So it ain’t new and if it really is the future, then we shouldn’t have heard it yet, surely? Wouldn’t time fold in on it’s self or something equally disastrous. It’s a paradox!

 

 

To me, Fuse by Hudson Mohawke from five years ago, sort of provides the blueprint for Future Bass:

 

 

Here’s a few of my fave “Future” tunes from the past year or so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now here’s some fresh shizzle!