Once seen as Vaporwave's happy-go-lucky sibling, Future Funk (also known as Vaporboogie) is a musical genre and aesthetic that takes the sampling aspect of Vaporwave, but rather than try to turn it into a decayed version of what it once was to mock the hollowness of capitalism at the time, Future Funk takes samples from 1970s and 1980s disco tracks and cut them in a way to make a completely new, groovy track for the people to enjoy, by cutting the "extra fluff" and focusing on the part of pop songs most people tend to remember.
The Future Funk sound tends to draw a lot of inspiration from French House and Synth Funk and makes new, fun, poppy music. The aesthetics from Future Funk have a strong crossover with Animecore, taking lots of inspiration from anime from the 70's, 80's, and 90's (Sailor Moon and Lum from Urusei Yatsura, in particular, are very popular to use in Future Funk, making them unofficial mascots for the genre). However, in recent years, Future Funk has grown into being a unique aesthetic in its own right, embracing more Kawaii and City Pop elements than before, but still maintaining the same happy-go-lucky nature that made Future Funk popular in the 2010s.
Visuals[]
Visually, as popularized by the YouTube channel Artzie Music, Future Funk visual aesthetics are usually just a looped GIF of a classic anime set to the track (popular animes to utilize are Sailor Moon and Urusei Yatsura, although other classics will pop up like Dragon Ball, Lupin the 3rd, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Macross) so elements of Animecore and Kawaii to the visual aesthetics of Future Funk are extremely common, but it's also not unusual to find aesthetic cues from Vaporwave, Synthwave, and Lo-Fi either.
Music[]
As stated above, Future Funk takes musical cues from Vaporwave, French House (which gives it some very subtle connections to the poppier entries into the Synthwave genre), Nu-Disco, and Synth Funk to create fun, happy tracks to dance to, taking samples of old funk tracks from the 70's and 80's (bonus points for using Japanese funk music, which is very obscure compared to its American counterparts) and repurposing them in a manner similar to Vaporwave (to the point where Future Funk will often just be lumped in with the genre despite the very clear differences in musical philosophy between Future Funk and Vaporwave.) Future Funk is also heavily influenced by City Pop, Japanese New Wave, and 80s British Synthpop (particularly the likes of Japan the band), and as Future Funk has grown as a genre, these influences have become more pronounced. GIF videos are made for these songs by YouTube channels like Neon City Nightlife.
Some popular artists in the Future Funk genre include:
- architecture in tokyo/Young Muscle
- FIBRE
- Flamingosis
- Future Girlfriend 音楽
- Mike Tenay
- Moe Shop
- Night Tempo
- Rollergirl!
- Saint Pepsi/Skylar Spence
- Starjunk 95
- Sui Uzi
- Topaz Gang
- Yung Bae
- Yuni Wa
- マクロスMACROSS 82-99
- スーパーセックス永遠にSUPERSEX420
- 悲しい ANDROID - APARTMENT¶
- LemKuuja
- What's a Future Funk?
- QB9
Resources[]
External links to help get a better understanding of this aesthetic.
Playlists[]
- Official Spotify Future Funk Playlist
- Future Funk by HXRT Network
- FUTURE FUNK GROOVIN' by SHEIKOCAT