Join the Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music

If you went to a rave in the summer of '89, you'd have heard the DJ play mostly US imports from Chicago, Detroit and New York, also some from Belgium and Italy, but little from the UK. Come the summer of '92, the same DJs playlist comprised mostly from UK productions with a distinctive British sound - booming sub bass and frantic breakbeats. In the years between, the UK had been working on creating a sound of it's own, and Join The Future explains rather how this came to be, largely focusing on the Yorkshire bleep and bass sound.There have been a few short magazine or online articles covering bleep and bass, but these were often covering the same ground over the well-known Warp records acts, whilst many others remained quite a mystery to me. For example, Leeds' Bassic, and Luton's Chill, released some significant records in the genre, but online searches failed to even uncover much further details. I wondered how a whole book could be written on bleep and bass, but Matt Anniss has done a fantastic job, covering the genre in depth, whilst avoiding being too esoteric and telling a story that could captivate those with just a casual interest.Anniss has interviewed the names most closely associated with the bleep and bass genre, such as Warp Records, LFO and Unique 3, but also the aforementioned likes of Bassic and Chill, Network and D-Zone, plus it covers it's origins from Unique 3's The Theme onto the London breakbeat-bleep of '91 that morphed into hardcore and jungle. I finished the book entirely satisfied and all the more knowledgeable, without any feel that anyone had been overlooked or forgotten. With an extensive playlist in the appendix, this is a much recommended book.

A fantastic book which shines a light and gives a voice to a hugely underrated and influential part of the UK dance music scene. I'm not sure why this is the case? Maybe Cities like Leeds and Sheffield are less inclined to blow their own cultural trumpets like Manchester or London?Anyway, a great read, especially if like me you spent many an hour as a young slip of a lad down in the basement at Crash Records on the Headrow in Leeds, watching people come and go (many of whom are referred to in this book!), and listening to the strange, energetic, beautiful electronic noises coming through those speakers. It's also partly an oral history which makes it all seem more immediate and personal. The accompanying album on Cease and Desist Records is also worth listening to as you move through the book.Highly recommended!

so nice to see a version of real life events that isn't the tired re-hash of London-centric stuff we've heard a million times.meanwhile, in the 99% of the rest of the UK, electronic music happened ;)

A great read, I read it through non-stop. Highly recommended for readers interested in the history of modern British electronic dance music, and unmissable for Warp / bleep obsessives like myself.

Great book. Great detail. Great to go back in my own history of experience during this era of music.

A comprehensive history of a much-overlooked but fundamental part of dance music history. Join The Future stands shoulder to shoulder with Matthew Collin's Altered State and Simon Reynolds' Energy Flash as one of electronic music's key texts, if not even slightly above them as it shines a light on previously unexplored territory rather than simply covering the same well-worn London-centric ground and regurgitating the same old stories. This is the previously untold story of British dance music and the roots that have since fed into jungle, drum and bass, dubstep and grime. Essential.

An interesting and insightful read of an often over looked British genre. It just a shame it has a bit of a disgruntled tone throughout.

Das beste Buch überhaupt