Super Future stopped by to chat about life as a father, his upcoming 2025 tour, his passion for downtempo bass music, and more.
Michigan-based bass music producer Super Future won the hearts of many of his fans back in 2020 and has experienced an upward trajectory ever since. Best known for his mixes, trap-leaning bass flips, and original downtempo productions, he has more than one signature sound. But as the scene continues moving more rapidly than ever with high-energy sets at the forefront, Super Future has shifted gears to put those downtempo bass sounds front and center.
Super Future has always tapped into his more emotional roots in special sets, but it’s always been his goal to bring that sound to more stages for quite some time. Next year, he will do just that by embarking on his Augmented Reality: Phase 2 tour, where you can expect to hear plenty of downtempo and everything else he has to offer.
After such a great 2024 and a big new year on the horizon, we sat down with Super Future to get the inside scoop on what’s been on his mind and what’s to come. Listen to his latest mix on SoundCloud to get a taste of what to expect on his Augmented Reality: Phase 2 tour in 2025, and keep reading for our conversation!
Stream Super Future – Future Flowstate: Vol.1 on SoundCloud:
Hey Nick! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat – you’ve had so much to celebrate in your personal life and music career this year!
Hello! Thank you, as always, for following this wild journey I’m on!
Playing a major stage at Electric Forest was a goal you’d been working towards for years as a DJ from Michigan, and you finally achieved that this past summer. What was it like going from the renegades to playing the Observatory Stage?
It’s one of those personal goals that seems big to most, but all my ride-or-die family and friends (especially from Michigan) could feel how crazy that was for me. I honestly can’t remember more than a few moments of that set because I was blissed out, but what I recall is very special.
I also had friends from my first-ever camping group at Electric Forest reach out to congratulate me. Nine years ago, I was the new kid in the group, promising them that one day he’d be up there while I showed them my silly little songs at the campsite. [Laughs] I was that guy. But I always shot for the stars and followed through, so it all felt very fulfilling. I’ve been going to that festival every year since 2015. I remember leaving all the camping homies I had just met to look for some kind of renegade set before they were even a thing, trying to sneak into the VIP section to see those legendary afterparties.
Since then, Electric Forest has pioneered some really dope renegade activities, so I was all over it on my rise in the Michigan artist ranks. Hundreds of thousands of hours of working, writing, and dreaming later, I had the best set ever at a packed Observatory with the ones I cared about most watching. And then I still proceeded to play my usual three-plus secret sets. So freaking cool.
On the personal side of your life, you recently became a father! Congratulations on that. How have you been balancing fatherhood with work so far?
Thank you very much, every month that answer changes. Last month I did an interview and I was raving about how amazing it is. Now he’s teething, and we’re back to no sleep. [Laughs] To be clear, it is always amazing, but the new hurdles that come up every few weeks have me playing another new game of balancing it all. I look at it like I do every phase of life: more beauty, more challenges. More is a keyword for my new life – more love, effort, challenges, and rewards. The more you want in life, the more you have to earn.
The little kid absolutely lights up my life, though! There are not many people who can do what I’m doing, and I knew it would be hard, but I wish I could share how impactful it is to be the reason your baby smiles. That is a feeling only parents will understand, and it has to be one of the top feelings I’ve ever felt.
I haven’t necessarily felt any enrichment from fatherhood in my music, but I think I will one day, once we get full nights of sleep! I did have a huge writer’s block during the pregnancy, though, so I’m thankful that as soon as he got here, that evaporated. Finally letting creativity flow again which is a huge win for anyone creative. Ultimately, we are very, very happy to have a healthy little guy (who seems to like music too!).
You’re about to embark on phase two of your Augmented Reality tour in 2025. How will touring look different for you and Ellie this year now that you have a new baby at home?
For the past six months, it has been nice to have more weekends at home than on the road. I haven’t had that since the pandemic (thankfully booked and busy!). I needed that time to ground and feel some peace. My team and I purposely only took very impactful big shows between August and December. After a few years of headlining my own tours at mid-size venues and getting some solid sold-out events, I can afford, in a business sense, to be picky about what and when I perform.
To be able to do my first two-day events takes years of groundwork, and I feel like this shift with the baby included came at the right time. After this half a year of getting used to a new family dynamic, Ellie and I are cool and comfortable with me taking a 25% scaled-back tour in 2025 and keeping some weekends (and vacation months) sacred for us. I probably won’t be doing as many afterparties or red-eye flights or 4-show weeks anymore so I’m not a zombie at home… but I say that every year.. [Laughs] Sorry, babe!
This tour will largely focus on the downtempo side of your style. Can you give fans a taste of what’s in store during your two sets each night?
I feel less anxious about this phase two run than I did the first since I demonstrated some success connecting with people in a new way… something more artistic than just the same old bass music. I’ve been slowly getting crowds ready for this sort of event for a couple of years, but I had to wait until I got the practice in at sunrise sets and then a few solid EPs and mixes to show the people just how amazing my version of downtempo music is. Once I sold out four nights of the first run and had countless people DMing me about how they needed that sort of deep and beautiful experience, I knew I needed to do more of them.
It’s come a long way since Sound Haven sunrise sets. When you put this new sort of sound in the club for your fanbase, you should give them the carrot of a typical and still very hype experimental trap and bass set because, for me, it’s all about the dual nature of this experience. You’re getting two hours and an audio-visual interlude of a ride through both sides of my heart.
I want the people to experience yin and yang together because it does feel way more fulfilling and artistic than what you’d get every other night. It’s been fun to show people that this is new and special. A full range of cathartic heavy bass rounded out (yes, as the final act of the night) by a vibey yet hard and danceable feeling is something I love, and I think giving what you love through your art is the purest form of art itself. I could go on and on, but you’re gonna love what you feel.
To make it simpler to understand if you have not listened, I tell people my downtempo is not ambient music. It’s like my bass and trap but “slowed, chopped, and screwed”… and with a lot more heart.
What speaks to you about the downtempo side of the bass spectrum compared to heavier or more experimental sounds?
It started as a way to process my emotions. During the pandemic in 2020, I was admittedly disappointed and scared about what the future held after finally getting my music out there and being booked to share it. When it all came to a halt, I had a lot of unprocessed emotions that I didn’t know what to do with. I turned to psychedelics to try and process it, and there was a new doorway that opened.
I let it all flow out of me by writing my sad, angry, intense emotions out in a new emotional sort of tone. I had never tried to “write out my feelings.” It was an amazing approach to processing my unresolved emotions that just started to pour out. It felt really pure.
At the same time, Ellie had been my girlfriend for a few years. We moved in together, and she showed me so much soul and R&B that I never really found before her. You can hear it in my downtempo mixes, too. All of this was new, but it was way different than my normal trap/twerk/experimental bass that caught people’s attention alongside Wreckno in that 2019-2021 timeframe.
I felt like I could mix the experimental sounds with some of these beautiful new pieces, and then I created my Equilibria EP for Liquid Stranger’s SSKWAN label. That connected to them immediately, and they felt how I felt about it. I never played this stuff in my bass sets, so… maybe a sunrise set would be right for it? After I did that at Sound Haven, it felt like I was giving the purest form of my art to people. That’s a much more intoxicating and beautiful feeling than just making bass for fun.
While you’ve achieved some major milestones, you’ve been fairly quiet on the release front. Do you have any upcoming tunes in store for 2025? Will some of your unreleased tunes surface from your recent sets and mixes?
It is crazy to have a year with such little music and so many huge milestones. Thankfully, my catalog still carries me. [Laughs] I’ve pretty much only made flips to keep the hype up, but I do love those too. I think I mentioned earlier that pregnancy and the fear of the unknown around me got my writer’s block up for nine months. I’m behind on two EPs and countless collaborations, so I’ve just been teasing them on tours, festivals, and mixes.
The short answer is yes: 2025 will see tons of unreleased projects! Independent releases, a new EP with Wreckno, another OdyZey EP, and a WAKAAN EP are all nearing completion. Even a rebrand! (still Super Future) Wow! It’s also not easy carrying several core sounds within one project (I’m such a Gemini, it’s kind of insane). All of this takes time, and I learned not to sign up for too much because you’ll have a year with nothing to show on the release front. But then I figured, why not just make the people wait and come out swinging for a whole year in 2025?
Now that you’ve reached these two huge personal and professional milestones in one year, what other goals do you have set for the future?
Balancing everything means being picky and finding a new drive to push everything higher. I have to get better at all of that. Growing as an artist is a constant game of self-refinement. Learning to simplify is hard when you have more going on, but simplicity is the key to everything if you can find it. The dream to achieve all this is founded in my goals of creating events where I can share all the core sounds of my art, my favorite artists, and my favorite feelings and wrap that all up in massive live events. That’s the future I’m building and looking forward to, and it’s not all that far away.
