Future Bass
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Future Bass is melodic bass music built on sidechained chords, pitched vocal chops, soft trap percussion, bright supersaws, and drops that feel more emotional than aggressive. It usually keeps a half-time or syncopated bounce while letting chords swell, duck, and shimmer around the vocal. The style's clean digital gloss made it unusually compatible with pop songwriting, festival EDM, and streaming playlists.
History
Future Bass grew from post-dubstep, wonky, UK bass, trap, and maximalist synth work by Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, Cashmere Cat, and early Flume. Flume's 2012 debut and 2016 pop breakthroughs helped give the sound a global center, while San Holo, Louis the Child, ODESZA, Illenium, Mura Masa, Wave Racer, Whethan, and Porter Robinson-adjacent artists made it a mid-2010s youth-EDM language. Its vocabulary later fed melodic bass, future pop, hyperpop, advertising music, and mainstream dance-pop production.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Sterefox future bass history
- Run The Trap future bass decade list
- Future Audio Workshop genre DNA
- Music Metrics Vault future bass artists