A crunching 4/4 beat, a soaring synth melody and a melancholic vocal walk into a pub. The barman says "hi there futurepop, what can I get you?"
It has taken 16 years since my first VNV Nation gig (on the good ship Thekla in Bristol) for futurepop to finally click. Four years before that, Angels & Agony briefly caught my ear as I prowled the metal section at Camden's Resurrection Records (RIP). I find myself wondering how many other rivetheads were initially put off by the genre by how lightweight it is for something that is purportedly part of industrial music, and how many of us fell in love with it after getting into trance and suddenly making the connection.
I asked me old mucker Øyster and she told it slightly differently, describing her reaction to Welcome To Earth as "the goths are making trance", clear blue water separating it from EBM and industrial. But she also recalled thinking "something ain't quite right" upon hearing the more industrial influenced sounds of Icon of Coil, which on reflection is probably what put me off them at the time as well.
The "industrial" element of futurepop is liminal, barely there, and if you're not in the mood for that kind of delicate balancing act you'd go off in search of either meatier industrial crunch or purer synthpop nectar. But when reappraising the genre on its own merit, rather than trying to compare it against the unambiguously industrial or the categorically harsh, n0teeth has come to love futurepop for what it is: a glorious cocktail of EBM, trance and synthpop which creates a distinctive mood that is both melancholy and euphoric (a word that, as we shall see, comes up a lot when people profess their love of this genre).
Judging futurepop on its own merits rather than "goths doing trance" or "EBM lite" is easier said than done when you only ever hear it in the context of goth and industrial clubs. Only by listening to it away from the club some years since I last rushed to Call The Ships To Port on the middle floor down Torrens Street was I finally able to appreciate it for what it is (not that anyone will believe me, but I actually didn't set about writing this piece after staggering in from Slimelight with dilated pupils). Perhaps it was never intended to be enjoyed this way - maybe these artists were always fully conscious of the fact that they were working in a subgenre within the broader goth/alternative/industrial continuum, and that suited them just fine.
There's no other music quite like it.
It's too banging to be synthpop, too melancholy to be trance, too euphoric to be darkwave, too melodic to be EBM. It's music you can rave to at your lowest ebb, rushing on a good bit of disco sherbet while tears and mascara stream down your face, the empathogens and electronics truly tapping into the heart of what it means to be human. These kinds of bands have to walk a fine line between majestic/euphoric/melancholic and just being plain cheeseballs. When they actually pull it off the results can be breathtaking.
"Isn't futurepop just synthpop but with a trance beat?" is somehow the most accurate description of futurepop and the dumbest and most reductive thing anybody could say about it. It's the equivalent of some nerd observing a game of football, with all its intricate tactics and rules and athleticism, and describing it as "some people kicking a ball up and down a field".
A decade or two before Andy la Plegua halted Icon Of Coil to make way for Combichrist, a certain Cuban-American musician also made a conscious effort to put his synthpop past behind him and work on a much darker, harder and more aggressive sound. The difference is that after With Sympathy Al Jourgensen went on to make some of the best music of his career, while post-IoC, Andy La Plegua went on to make some of his worst.
Futurepop succeeds in coupling the simple, driving, infectious rhythms of EBM with the gratuitously sugary synths of trance and the somber, melancholic introspection of synthpop. Hell, even bad futurepop succeeds in doing this; badly, but successfully nonetheless. Contrast with its twin genre, aggrotech. I say twin genre because they grew up more or less alongside each other and gained popularity around the same time, with more or less the same crowd: goths who'd just discovered ecstasy and fluorescent colours. And aggrotech is, of course, another hybrid genre of recognisable parts. You take a surface-level appreciation of EBM's aggression, an unwavering commitment to precisely two different trance synth patches and a middle aged heterosexual rubber fetishist's knowledge of hard house and you slap some incoherent Bill Leebisms about a dystopian future over it in godawful cod black metal vocals, and Bob's your uncle.
But hey, I didn't start bashing out this piece just to remind the reader once again of my contempt for aggrotech, so let me wax lyrical some more about futurepop, aka the best contribution goths have ever made to dance music. (Side note: it might even be the goths' only worthwhile contribution to dance music, unless you're the kind of graceless oaf who lumps techno-influencing EBM legends like the Ebb, the DAF and the 242 in with "goth", in which case get your greasy meat prongs the fuck off my website immediately.)
Futurepop is a couple of generations removed from Kraftwerk.
In between you've got the likes of Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb: futurepop took the Mode's more melancholy moments and made them even gloomier still, while adding punchy trance synths and 4-to-the-floor beats. From the Ebb, it took a modernist, forward-facing attitude; the aggression of classic EBM reinterpreted as a positive, empowering force. Complaining that futurepop doesn't stack up to EBM in terms of hardness or aggression is like criticising Maria Sharapova for her lack of football skills or taking a pop at Yo Yo Ma for being a lousy bassoonist or pointedly asking why the Scottish National Party has never won any seats in Essex.
Why in the name of all that is holy does the artwork for this reissue have that hideous neural network splodge on it?
Futurepop should always be beautiful.
Futurepop that isn't achingly beautiful is rubbish, pointless, a waste of time and serotonin. Non-beautiful futurepop is about as much use as power noise that is neither noisy nor powerful, or martial industrial that doesn't have a politically ambiguous aesthetic. Every futurepop song you hear should always be simultaneously the saddest and most uplifting song you've ever heard; it should break your heart into a thousand pieces before rebuilding it with steel wires and silicon, it should make you feel like you're hurtling away from a dying earth at warp speed to a brighter future in another galaxy and above all it should make you want to vigorously shake your ass on the dancefloor while crying your eyes out. Otherwise it's just a Scandinavian bloke sulking over some synth presets.
Going back to aggrotech for a moment: compare and contrast the lyrics. Aggrotech and futurepop lyrics both tend to describe a dystopian future in which this old blue rock of ours has become uninhabitable. But while aggrotech prowls the radioactive wastelands growling about what a pig's dinner humanity has made of it, futurepop looks to the stars and yearns for a better life elsewhere in the universe. Futurepop is escapist, but it doesn't shy away from reminding you what we're trying to escape from:
"Our line will have long diminished before it reaches the farthest star" - VNV Nation - Farthest Star
"We have to find a way to survive / We seek Colony 5" - Colony 5 - Colony 5
"But it's time for me to leave / The Arcadia is calling my name" Code 64 - Leaving Earth
If you go far back enough in synth music history, the uncertainty of humanity's future beyond the solar system has always been a concern:
Our other half is missing / It's floating up in space
The people there they are looking / For another place
And now they've found it / But we were unaware
We didn't know they'd be hostile / We didn't really care - Solid Space - Tenth Planet
Transhumanism is another scifi theme that regularly crops up:
You can't revive a genre that still sounds like the future.
The hacks will have absolutely no idea how to handle a hypothetical futurepop revival. Supposing a new band comes along retooling futurepop for the 2020s: Hack A will dismiss them as "trying to do 80s dark synth but being weirdly 90s about it" and Hack B will dismiss them as "trying to do 90s EBM without the aggression". This is because futurepop was genuinely futuristic, ahead of its time, and not in the slightest bit derivative despite its influences being plainly audible. So anything new that comes out that can accurately be classed as futurepop will, by definition, be impossible to label as a revival of this or that sound from this or that era.
In all likelihood, however, there probably won't be a futurepop revival any time soon, for the simple fact that it never went away. Even after its reign as the dominant goth/industrial club sound was usurped by mediocre aggro-EBM or whatever the fuck VNV Nation's post-Futureperfect synth rock pish is supposed to be. Acts that have been around since 2000 or earlier are not only still active but still making music that is clearly, identifiably futurepop, whether they accept the label or coyly pretend they can't be pigeonholed. I'm only just catching up on a lot of this stuff - such as gorgeous releases from Lights of Euphoria and Solitary Experiments that dropped in 2022 and 2018 respectively - and cannot give a clear, honest, zoomed-out view on how much or how little the genre has evolved or diversified over the years. But I will say that I have yet to hear anything that made me yawn and think "this could've been made in 2003". Perhaps new technology is disguising old tricks, or perhaps when I climb into my futurepop escape pod I enter such a state of bliss that I neither notice nor care that it's just the same old craft with a fresh coat of paint.
While trawling Spotify for more sparkling futurepop nuggets I encountered a phenomenon that I believe is a first in my ongoing musical explorations: there is absolutely reams and reams of this stuff out there and it's almost all listenable. Most genres I get excited about are either disappointingly sparsely populated with a few brilliant mavericks, or saturated with shite. With futurepop I feel I have barely scratched the surface of the goldmine despite making a fair bit of headway past the obvious Covenant and VNV club hits I remember from my uni days. Even a band like Apop who I've always thought were a bit naff can still hit me where it hurts with a track like Kathy's Song (Come Lie Next To Me).
Even so, there are elements that occasionally creep into futurepop from its musical environs that n0teeth can safely say we're not a fan of at all. "harsh", "aggro" vocals, for instance: about as welcome in futurepop as guitars in a Nitzer Ebb song, raisins in Bombay mix or flatulence on a packed tube carriage. Imagine you're mid-shag and suddenly your partner starts talking like Gilbert Gottfried for no apparent reason. You wouldn't stand for that kind of bizarrely inappropriate carry-on in the bedroom so why should you tolerate it on the dancefloor? Furthermore: I still hate the use of schaffelbeat in electronic music and will throw a fire extinguisher at any DJ who introduces it to their set.
But n0teeth has rambled enough. What do our friends and associates think?
Vox Futurepops
n0teeth has had the privilege and pleasure of picking Marco Visconti's brains about electronic music before, and as sometime member of Roman scene luminaries XP8 we figured Mr V might have one or two thoughts about this particular niche. Here's what Marco had to say for himself:
On hearing futurepop for the first time:
I remember this like it was yesterday. It was late 98 and one of my first times in a proper "goth" club, Krypta in Rome - which was held, illegally, in the basement of a decrepit building from the 1600 in Trastevere, one of the most picturesque neighbourhood of Rome. It was also one of the first attempts in Italy to bring in "new" sounds, and I remember being completely transfixed by hearing Solitary (Signals Version) blasting from the speakers. I get shivers remembering it even now, as a middle aged man!
On whether XP8 was consciously intended to be a futurepop band:
More or less yes, because we were really into "goth clubbing" which, at the time, was still glorious - right before the aggrotech years ruined it for everyone both in terms of music and aesthetics. I don't think I can ever convey how incredibly cool the original cyber aesthetic was - people were young, fit, beautiful, believe it or not!
Favourite futurepop tracks:
Purgatory by Assemblage 23, Solitary by VNV Nation, Feedback by Covenant (maybe all of these are proto-futurepop), Starsign by Apoptygma Berzerk, and pretty much the entire discography of Icon of Coil, which for me ended up being THE definitive futurepop sound, perfectly encapsulating a period of time really limited (4, 5 years tops) which felt like decades - likely because we weren't lost in social media by then. I should also mention Almost Violent and Merging Oceans by Rotersand, and Velocity by Neuroticfish.
And elsewhere in oontzland:
I can remember downloading VNV Nation on fucking Napster...Darkangel just blew me away. I was still living in Dorset where I grew up, and I was always into goth/industrial/synthpop from a young age (to be that annoying person, my first CDs were Violator and Erasure's Chorus). But this felt different somehow, and it's probably why I moved to London - for the scene...other classic bangers from Covenant like We Stand Alone (which definitely evokes club memories of Slimes) or Neuroticfish - The Bomb or Apop - Unicorn...Fucking FLOORKILLER. - esteemed social media personality Toridoki
Hearing Welcome To Earth my response was just "the goths are making trance, but I'm vibing". Where I got the cognitive "eh that ain't quite right" vis a vis expectations was bands that had a bit more industrial DNA in their sounds & instrumentation - icon of coil etc...The futurepop that does work avoids attempting to create an equal marriage of the components and instead writes the tracks firmly within one genre's influence, flavouring them with the other futurepop facets. industrial & trance tinged electropop. or industrial tinged trance. Welcome to Earth, Matter + Form, Bodypop, or Imperative Reaction's As We Fall make good examples of this. - popular Twitter user and long time n0teeth associate Øyster.
No such thing as bad futurepop. Lights Of Euphoria - True Life is one of my favourites. - DJ and streamer 5arah
My cold, dark, little goth heart was melted by VNV Nation and the realisation that there was hope and light in the world. Kathy's Song made me cry on the dance floor the first time I heard it. And I saw Covenant at Infest - I was delighted that they didn't even pretend to be playing their synths, just jumping around having as much fun as the crowd was, collective joy trumping all other considerations. My favourite tunes are VNV Nation - Standing, Apoptygma Berzerk - Love Never Dies and Covenant - Dead Stars (Club mix). - anon. former teenage cybergoth
When I was a kid I didn't have many CDs, but one I did have was Euphoria, a compilation of 90s trance anthems. I listened to it religiously. Fast forward a few years and I was drifting into the industrial space, so it was quite a revelation when I discovered there was a genre that was basically trance - but a bit edgy. All the arpeggiated nonsense I liked from those old trance tracks, only made for people who wear black and look weird. I know bands like VNV Nation and Apoptygma Berzerk are more well known, but I got into futurepop quite late (circa 2008) and they weren't on my radar initially. I think the first album I really connected with in that space was Code 64's Departure, but overall my favourite track has to be Supernova by Syrian. It's an underappreciated epic. - Nighthood, DJ & promoter @ Beat Transfusion
I first heard [futurepop] at a night in Bury St Edmunds called Bury'd Alive. I recently cleared out the attic at my parents and found a flyer for it, check out the fonts! It ran at a snooker bar and venue called the Lucky Break. I think the first artist I remember hearing was Apoptygma Berzerk (almost certainly Non-stop Violence). I was just so exited to hear something different - the crowd in small towns gets lumped together, metalheads, old school goths etc. A lot of them were way older than me and, let's say, resistant to change. My 'favourite' song in the genre isn't the best song but it represents a certain time and place for me: One World One Sky by Covenant. I know, I know, but it's still attached to the feeling of belonging I felt, having by then discovered the London scene and Slimelight. - notorious futurepop enjoyer Tori
And with that, here are some (4 hours' worth) of n0teeth's favourite futurepop jams, kicking off with the one that started it all: