"Welcome To The Future"

This past summer I attended a music festival called Summer Camp. It was late at night (or early in the morning depending on how you want to look at it), and I decided to follow my ears towards the robotic sounds that had been emanating from the stage area. When I arrived I was completely shocked to find an audience of thousands going absolutely bonkers (mind you this is at 2 AM) for a band that I did not recognize. I quickly spotted a few of my friends, and curiously approached them eager to get some information about this wild trio that was on stage. When I asked a friend what was going on, he simply replied in a robotic voice, “Welcome to the future!” As it turns out this was my first experience with Future Rock, a Chicago based trio whose music is the product of improvisational experimentation. If you listen to any live Future Rock, you quickly learn that their title is very fitting. “Did I wander through a time warp into the year 2050?” you begin to ask yourself as the show rages on. “Maybe we are the butt of some mad scientist’s cruel prank?” No. This is Future Rock. The group is composed of a keyboardist, bassist, and drummer. It really is quite shocking that a group playing regular instruments is able to put out the spacey sounds that Future Rock has come to be known for. The group gets some help from their DJ equipment, but for the most part it is completely live improvisation. The group released their debut album in May of 2006, and did not receive much attention from the music scene they were attempting to infiltrate. It was not until they began getting booked at music festivals like Summer Camp and Camp Bisco that they began to arise as a jamtronic powerhouse. Their quirky, danceable sound is what makes them so popular in the jamtronica scene. Each member samples and loops their riffs throughout a song to create an intense, chaotic sound. With a name like Future Rock, one might be led to believe that the band’s music sounds like that of modern DJ’s. By this I mean one might think that all the songs are driven by a repetitive pounding bass with high pitched synthesizers squealing in the background. However, this is not the case with Future Rock. They utilize a huge variety of calm rhythms and melodies, which gradually over the course of a ten minute jam will have more and more sounds layered on top of it to create the sound that is Future Rock. What intrigues me and the fan base of Future Rock is the new, fresh music they produce. This is not your run of the mill rock and roll band, and it is because of this fact that there is definitely a future for this style.