Welcome to Future Fresh, where the expiration date on these tunes never expire. This will be a tall glass of freshness into the futuristic sounds of future garage, UK funky, wonky, garage, 2-step, experimental dubstep, bass music, and most recently juke. Basically it's time to relax, hop in your DeLorean and take a roller coaster ride to the future. The names of the genres are not whats important, what is important is how these songs were put together. You will hear a range of BPMs, not everything is in 130-140 BPM range. Another thing you will notice is that the music features very off-kilter loops within the 4/4 time signature, and many songs will feature a gliding-synth that just won't sit still, pitching up and down blasting you off into the future. It's been a while since I last showed face on here, but luckily that has given some time for this burgeoning style of music to mature a little bit more, and now it's slowly capturing the audience it deserves.
This time around I wanted to bring you a fresh new sound sweeping the underground. It's called juke, and while juke has been around for quite some time, it's enjoying a resurgence of late. Originally called ghetto house, it has evolved into a fast, energy driven, pulsing type of music. Juke, eventually born out of ghetto house, got even faster, employing BPMs around the 150-160 range, and featuring Roland's famous 909's and 808's as a staple. Although juke in some form or fashion has been around since the late 80s and early 90s, I believe this is the year this style of music gains a bit more world-wide appeal. The appeal is mainly due to the new artists it's attracting, its fresh style, fast pace, and the fact that there is a lot of room to experiment and explore the 150-160 bpm range which has traditionally belonged to such genres as drum and bass and jungle.
New artists are taking Juke/Footwork to a whole new level now with deep vibes, chorded synths, intricate melodies and a fresh approach to an established genre. But enough of the brief history lesson, lets get to the meat and potatoes and dig into this future fresh plate of tunes.
P.S. If you are going to be at SXSW, be sure to check out many of the aforementioned artists, and hit me up on twitter, I will be roaming the streets of Austin looking for the freshest of the fresh.
