Welcome to Jointhefuture.net. It’s the online home of Join The Future, an ongoing, multimedia project from journalist, author and researcher  Matt Anniss.

What is the Join The Future project all about?

Join The Future focuses on electronic dance music and club culture, with a particular interest in hidden histories, under-documented scenes, and musical movements that have previously been omitted from mainstream narratives. While much of the historical content we research and share is centred on events within the United Kingdom, it sometimes touches on histories of individuals, collectives, communities and movements in the United States and Europe. Join The Future is not just a platform for writing and audio related to dance music histories, though, as we also include content on contemporary electronic music, events, and books and documentaries that chronicle or analyse the culture.

The Join The Future project began life a decade ago through Matt Anniss’s research into the then hidden history of bleep & bass. This research led to a critically acclaimed book on Velocity Press, a compilation album and a series of events featuring a mixture of talks and DJ sets. Join The Future is now also a monthly radio show/podcast on Noods Radio, with episodes available to stream on demand via our dedicated audio page.

What are ‘hidden histories’?

Hidden histories are exactly what the term suggests: histories of people, events, communities or musical movements that have previously been omitted from authorised, ‘official’ cultural and social histories. We believe they’re important, not only because we can learn something from them, but also because they often contradict the mainstream historical narratives that frequently appear in popular culture histories. Hidden histories are often, though not always, those of marginalised people and communities. Uniformly, they are those that receive or have historically received little media coverage (for a variety of different reasons).

Working with Join The Future

As a project and brand, Join The Future is well regarded thanks to our efforts to provide content that is thoughtful, rigorously researched, well argued and presented with a strong, coherent visual identity. Our founder, Matt Anniss, is an experienced communicator, journalist, host and speaker, used to charing panel discussions, DJing at events and curating line-ups. If you have an idea for a brand partnership or an event that you would like Matt or Join The Future to be involved with, please email us at hello[at]jointhefuture.net or get in touch via our contact page.

Who is Matt Anniss?

Our founder Matt Anniss is a music journalist, author, researcher, DJ, copywriter and dance music historian. He has been DJing in clubs since 1997 and promoting events since 1998. He began writing about electronic music and club culture the same year and has not stopped since. He is a regular contributor to DJ magazine, Juno Daily and Resident Advisor, has penned countless sets of sleeve notes and liner essays for various music releases, and has previously written for Red Bull Music Academy Daily (RBMA) and Mixmag, amongst others. He was Editor of IDJ Magazine between 2006 and 2008. Since 2009 he has written countless non-fiction books for children, young people and adults on a wide variety of subjects. For a full list of these titles, and other work credits, visit his website. Matt is currently undertaking a part-time research degree (PhD) at Southampton Solent University, researching the history of rave culture in East Anglia.