5 Mag Book Club: Join The Future

Join The Future is what UK author and music journalist Matt Anniss calls “a corrective, or more accurately, a hidden history.” It tells the previously untold story of the late ’80s/early ’90s (northern) English bleep techno scene pioneers like Nightmares On Wax, LFO, Sweet Exorcist, Ital Rockers, Juno etc., and assesses their influence and impact on the history of UK dance music and DJ culture.

Via extensive interviews and five years of research, Anniss adds a new and much-needed addition to the often London-centric UK house music/club culture history literacy canon. Join The Future details the involvement and contribution of artists, producers, DJs, clubs and raves from Northern and Midlands cities like Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham and Leicester, and re-evaluates the bleep techno genre, conceptualizing it as a vital element in the development of UK bass music.

bleep pursued a cleaner, more futuristic sound, often using electro beats and drum machine rhythms, taking much of Detroit techno’s stately musical minimalism and austere, detached aesthetic.

The first bleep techno record, Unique 3’s “The Theme” was released in 1988, so bleep techno has a strong case as the UK’s very first reinterpretation of American house and techno and the late ’80s/early ’90s UK bleep techno sound was revolutionary at the time. While many other parts of the UK dance music production universe were leaning into breakbeats and rave “mentalism,” the bleep sound pursued a cleaner, more futuristic sound, often using electro beats and drum machine rhythms, taking on much of Detroit techno’s stately musical minimalism. and austere, detached aesthetic. And at the heart of bleep techno innovations was the addition of gut-shaking sub bass, bringing West Indian sound system low-end heft into UK dance music in such a powerful way that it never left again, cementing the genre as a central element in the further development of jungle, drum & bass, UK garage, dubstep and grime.

Join The Future is an in-depth project with Anniss taking the reader back into club history in detail to draw out the cultural strands that would grow into bleep techno. Rather than just covering the late ’80s flowering of rave and the obvious records (“The Theme,” LFO’s “LFO,” “Track With No Name” from Forgemasters, “Testone” by Sweet Exorcist, Nightmares On Wax’s “Aftermath,” Juno’s “Soul Thunder,” etc.), Anniss realized that the larger context of the years preceding acid house were a vital part of the picture too. He delves into the late ’70s UK soul all-dayer scene, the arrival of electro, US hip hop and break dancing, and the UK’s reggae, dub and sound system culture, all of which fed into the birth of the bleep sound and shape its identity.

It’s a book that’s all about detail; Anniss has clearly thoroughly researched his area, speaking with all the key players but also with many side-players and bit-players too, unearthing long-forgotten details about which Roland synth produced the bass line on a classic tune, which drum machine provided the beats, and who was in the studio at the time. It’s this level of personal storytelling that places Join The Future in the extremely welcome recent literacy trend of books-about-music that are, in different ways, broadening the history of UK dance music by giving voice to previously neglected or overlooked participants and contributors. (I’d include Norman Jay with Lloyd Bradley’s Mr Good Times, Caspar Melville’s It’s A London Thing, DJ Paulette’s Welcome To The ClubHarry Harrison’s Dreaming In Yellowand Lloyd Bradley’s Sounds Like London (as other good examples).

Now, nearly five years after it was published, Anniss spoke with 5 Mag about how he was originally motivated to write Join The Future to address inaccuracies and absences in the accepted history of UK dance music. It was a task, he told us, “that needed doing because narratives have long been skewed to omit the people, places and scenes I focused on in the book. I stand by that and my views on the role of bleep & bass and the places it emerged from have not changed – despite Simon Reynolds’s criticisms of my arguments (which are natural, since I took issue with one of his most cherished and famous theories of he). ”

this level of personal storytelling places Join The Future in the welcome recent literacy trend of books-about-music that are, in different ways, broadening the history of UK dance music by giving voice to previously neglected or overlooked participants and contributors.

Anniss is referring to Reynold’s “hardcore continuum” theory, the idea of ​​a continued and particular musical culture that began with UK hardcore rave circa 1990 when non-Chicago/Detroit elements from dub, reggae, dancehall, hip hop and funk were introduced into a new UK version of house and techno, creating a musical tradition that resulted in the UK bass music genres of the last two and a bit decades. Simply put, Reynolds includes bleep techno as part of this tradition but as perhaps ancillary to what was happening in London, while Anniss argues that bleep techno pre-dated and directly influenced the sound of the earliest hardcore rave records.

Although his view of Join The Future‘s central message hasn’t changed at all, Anniss’ idea of ​​the story he told has changed, albeit very subtly: “What has changed is that I can now see that what I told was just one specific hidden history and that there are “many others out there waiting to be documented and championed.”

Anniss revised and expanded Join The Future for the second edition, moving it closer to his original vision, but told us that he would still make some changes were writing it now. “In some ways I wish I’d spent more time getting the history from the dance floor, seeking out dancers and ravers who were vital to the scene, and I would definitely make more of an effort to get more women into the book. It was never a deliberate decision to not include many, it was just that it was a very male-dominated scene and sound in terms of DJs, music-makers, label owners and promoters. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t women involved – there were, just not in prominent positions. If I was starting from scratch I’d more consciously look for those people and write them back into the narrative.”

Perhaps some of those voices will make it into a third edition. In the meantime, Join The Future is a thorough, interesting, rich, and comprehensive hidden history of an influential UK electronic music genre, a story that was well worth telling.

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