Future Bass

around 2010 to 2011 · Glasgow, Scotland, later centered in Sydney and Oslo

Future bass grew out of Glasgow post-dubstep around 2010, picked up trap's 808s, and went pop when Flume remixed Disclosure in 2013, per DJ Mag and Resident Advisor.

The sound

Detuned supersaw chords stacked into wide, pulsing pads, pitched and chopped vocal samples used as the lead melody, and syncopated trap-style 808s and hi-hats under a build-and-drop structure that stays warm and euphoric instead of aggressive.

Listen for: How the drop trades dubstep's snarl for something bright and melodic, and how the vocal chops do the work a guitar or synth lead would do in pop.

Things to know

  1. Rustie's 2011 album Glass Swords, widely credited as future bass's founding record, still leaned on what Resident Advisor called serrated and plunging dubstep basslines while pulling in progressive rock, trance, and hip-hop influences.

  2. DJ Mag describes Illenium, one of future bass's biggest late-2010s names, as specializing in an epic and melodic version of the dubstep sound that also draws on trap, hardstyle, and future bass.

Key tracks

Family tree

  • Post-Dubstep: Future bass is the melodic strand of post-dubstep grown into its own genre. Rustie and Hudson Mohawke's Glasgow records kept what Resident Advisor called serrated and plunging dubstep basslines and pointed them somewhere bright and maximal. The lineage held all the way to the commercial peak: DJ Mag still describes Illenium, one of the genre's biggest late-2010s names, as an epic and melodic version of the dubstep sound.
  • EDM / Big Room: These two grew up in parallel scenes and merged later. Future bass borrowed EDM's festival-scale build-and-drop structure and its pop crossover instincts, and by the late 2010s EDM's mainstage absorbed future bass producers right back. Illenium topping Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums chart with Ascend in 2019 happened inside the same commercial machinery, the festivals, major labels, and dance charts, that big-room EDM built.
  • Melodic Dubstep: Melodic dubstep and future bass cross-pollinated all through the 2010s. They share the same detuned supersaw chords, vocal-led songwriting, and euphoric drops; the main split is drum programming, half-time dubstep skeleton versus trap-style 808s and hats.
  • Trap: Future bass was built on EDM trap's foundation. It kept the tuned, gliding 808 sub-bass and half-time swing but swapped trap's aggression for warm, detuned supersaw chords and pitched vocal chops, softening the drop into something euphoric.

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