EVERY GENRE PROJECT - March 2 - Future Bounce
Genre of the Day - Future Bounce
Album of the Day - N/A
With writing today’s column’s opener, I am at a genuine impasse. To mention Crab Rave, or to not mention Crab Rave? For those not aware, Crab Rave is a song and accompanying video of, you guessed it, crabs gleefully raving on a beach. The 2018 video became a near-instant meme, and has been used in varying contexts since, such as mashing it up with suspect choices such as “This Is America” and rejoicing in Rush Limbaugh finally dying. Crab Rave is perhaps the most well known future bounce song. Is this a badge of honor, or a point of embarrassment for the future bounce community? Or are they just busy at their MIDIs making that bouncy bass without a care in the world? I can’t say I know.
Either way, future bounce is another orphan genre, one not bolstered by a single album to boot. Or maybe RYM users have just failed to recognize one and there is one in existence. Either way, I had to scrounge together my own quasi-album for your listening pleasure, like bachatón.
Candy by Mike Williams and Dastic (2015)
Flash by Retrovision and Martin Gutierrez (2015)
Bouncybob by Martin Garriz, Justin Mylo, and Mesto (2015)
Make Your Move by Brooks (2016)
Jumping Jack by Justin Mylo (2016)
Chatterbox by Fox Stevenson and Mesto (2017)
Voodoo by Pegboard Nerds and Tony Junior (2017)
Like I Do by David Guetta, Martin Garrix, and Brooks (2018)
Get Down by RetroVision (2018)
Crab Rave by Noisestorm (2018)
Future bounce now ironically lies in the past for the most part, with releases peaking in 2018 and the sound falling out of favor in the EDM community as the cyclical nature of dance music tends to go. Future bounce takes the metallic drops of future house and electro house while eschewing other elements of deep house and combines them with several elements of its spiritual predecessor Melbourne bounce, which is characterized by offbeat, ‘bouncy’ basslines—hence the name—playful, vibrant melodies, and an overall simplicity. I hear this music and think of gamer YouTube intros, I can’t lie. These songs are deeply emblematic of a moment in time, like New Jack Swing.
There’s a characteristic across all of these tracks that’s not easy to describe with my lack of musical knowledge but there is simply a carefree sound that cuts across the whole instrumental. It’s as if the producers went into logic and just created a knob called “Happy” and cranked it to 100 on all of the tracks. The piano keys are sharp, bright, and marimba-like. Nearly all of the pads and leads are sunny and euphoric. The melodies of the basslines in the choruses are interesting as they tend to depart from the more melodically straightforward verses, but generally don’t vary much between tracks, with the emphasis being more in the movement of the basslines and the added depth of the brass stabs that come in with the bass. While not the best known track here, “Flash” feels like the quintessential thesis of future bounce: joyous, punctuated by its high energy thumping bassline, with glittering keys drizzled all over the track. I guess Crab Rave was onto something all along: listening to these songs, I really do feel like those crabs, removed from the world and basking in this purely fun and straightforward dance music.