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

Five years after it was first published, Matt Anniss’s critically acclaimed alternative history of UK dance music in the acid house era is returning to stores in updated and expanded form. Boasting even more interviews, sharpened analysis, strengthened arguments, an updated recommended listening list and a whole new ’afterword’ chapter, this is the definitive revised edition of what author Matthew Collin called ’a significant addition to the canon of dance music literature’.

Join The Future traces the roots, origins, development and legacy of bleep & bass (sometimes known as ’bleep techno’), a highly influential but previously overlooked style of UK dance music that emerged from Yorkshire and the Midlands from 1988 onwards. Mixing social, cultural and oral history, Anniss puts forward a persuasive argument that it not only inspired the development of more celebrated styles of British dance music, but should also be considered the foundation of what many now call ’UK bass’ (that collection of styles that put heavy sub-bass to the fore).

Since the book’s publication, it has become a ’must-read’ for anyone interested in the development of British dance music culture and received hugely positive feedback from critics. In 2021, Rolling Stone UK cited it as one of the best non-fiction books on British dance music culture, alongside music books that are considered genuinely key texts such as Dan Hancox’s Inner City Pressure and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming. Other critics have highlighted the level of research behind the book.