Sounds of da future: the new wave of electronic garage

Left: Romanian producer TRG


The endlessly shifting, fractious DNA helix of dance music evolves and mutates from one week to the next. What could be the biggest news of the moment is quickly old hat, as genres become new ones, sub strands are conceived from the fecund loins of rave culture, and sounds move on.

While dubstep and the new wave of UK funky (think Afro house beats and offbeat Soca percussion, mixed with electronic dubby basslines) are considered to be the best thing since sliced bread right now, a sleeping giant is already stirring from its slumber, and threatening to engulf those sounds in 2009 - that of future garage.

Indeed, like many such nebulous descriptions, the glibly conceived term future garage has its roots in music that has already existed - UK garage, Detroit techno, grime, and of course dubstep - but simply arranges them in a way so compelling and crisp that it induces legions to follow its lead, and create their own twists on the formula.

For many, Burial's 'Untrue', with it's sublime screwface Brian Eno posturing and melancholic psycho-geographic audio depictions of London, was year dot. Pitch shifting the ultra bright, pink neon love lorn tones of UK garage and R&B divas into tear stained, fractured, abyssal stares, and ditching the rave entropy SSSLLLOOWWW beats of dubstep for the polyrhythmic bump 'n' grind funk shuffle of UK garage and two step, but of course drenched in dark London rains of synth sadness, Burial was molding something new, an evolved language from the much missed glory days.

But the man also known as Will Bevan's late 2007 darkage classic (both in the sense of dark garage and 'dark - age') was not the only record to embrace the shuffling rhythm and pair it with more pitchy backdrops. Beneath the surface, a whole movement has been gathering that looks set to rapidly consume the molasses drums of dubstep. This mutant two step is everywhere- from Romanian producer TRG's conflations of prime era Photek, hardcore rave stabs and the bump 'n' flex beats of '97 London, to Cloud's 'Timekeeper', a bizarre boom tick tick track blending Aphex Twin atmospherics, the dubbed out melodica of Augustus Pablo, and those tell tale street rhythms to mesmeric effect. Spatial, Pangaea, Martyn, 2562, Silkie and many more have all twisted the mid tempo, sinuous grooves of garage into their own singular forms. But why now?

With dubstep's dominance at an all time high, it's perhaps become apparent that the slowest beats of that genre simply don't translate to the dancefloor all that well. Burning trees at home is a different matter, but however rib rattling the bass waves sound pumping out of a Funktion One stack in a club, if the beats are too slow, all you can do is shuffle around moodily. Future garage gets the best of all worlds, capturing the dark atmospherics, and sublow pressure of dubstep, but wraps them in those bubbling beats - impossible to resist in their funking mood to swing.

Future garage takes those early flipside experiments of the Groove Chronicles, El-B, and Menta set - the darker, bass heavy instrumental'dubs' of more commercial garage tracks tucked away on b-sides, that so fascinated a young Skream, Hatcha, et al and kicked off dubstep - and continues the lineage in a more literal, and yet more willing to experiment manner, within the rhythmic strictures, of course. This is set to be an endless fascinating annum in the continual evolution of the genre. Reload and come again!