The synergy between bass and downtempo cannot be understated. As two opposing forces birthed from the same vibration, these cosmic sounds are the yin and yang of bass music.
Downtempo, a flow of soothing beats and ethereal melodies that take you to a space where sound stretches and breathes can be seen as the yin. In contrast, bass music, the volcanic force of heavy wubs and explosive bass drops erupting into chaos is the unbridled yang.
Together these two genres not only form a symbiotic relationship of sound but embody the duality of life. While bass reminds us of the fire within, and our capacity to rage, downtempo soothes that fire, grounding us in the quiet truths of being and introspection.
For Nick Rowland, the visionary mind behind Super Future, this synergy of sound isn’t just the foundation of his Augmented Duality Tour but is a powerfully healing experience.
Inspired by his downtempo festival sunrise sets, Augmented Duality is a two-set tour that first launched in February 2024 and will make a return in 2025. Built around the duality of bass and downtempo sounds, Super Future kicks off each night with a bass-fueled throwdown followed by an immersive downtempo experience.
“The well-rounded experience is different from what you get every other weekend,” Super Future explained in an interview with The Daily Frequency.“So many good feelings and people processing emotions with the downtempo set, right after having a blast with me headbanging… it’s hard to explain but you just have to experience how cool that duality is.”
“Augmented Duality” is a play on words from “augmented reality,” he added. “That’s what I really feel it does too. The experience you have is augmented by the duality of the two vibes you get to experience for the price of one ticket.”
However, playing a downtempo set during sunrise at a festival is a lot different than closing out with downtempo in a club setting. Looked at as high-risk and unconventional by promoters he had to lay down the groundwork before kicking off the first phase of the Augmented Duality Tour in 2024.
“DOWNTEMPO IN THE CLUB BABYYY!” Super Future exclaimed. “It’s been a goal of mine to pioneer something that I think more downtempo labels should be pushing. I had to give people a bass set and a downtempo set to convince promoters and fans that it’s a really beautiful (and believe it or not, very danceable) time to see it in a prime-time club setting.”
“In 2023 I laid the groundwork for this by doing more sunrise festival sets, and also my “Full Spectrum Tour” was just me showing people that I have more than bass and trap to offer. Then 2024 came and I was ready to push it into 2 sets with an audio/visual component to link them. I felt deeply that this would work if I give people the 2 sets in one night because at the moment bass music sells. I’m also a Gemini, so I’m dual-natured as well which is the funny thing about all of this. Feels like I was destined to have a split music personality, but I’m so grateful that I do have all this range.”
The idea was to create a sonic experience that was both powerful and deeply healing and for Super Future that starts with cultivating a shift in energy.
“The key is that I finish the nights with downtempo, everyone else starts the night with it. That scares promoters, and rightfully so, it’s unconventional. But I felt so strongly about how it needed to go. Until you see it, it sounds like a bad idea by normal standards of what people think downtempo entails.”
But, Super Future’s take on downtempo is more like a warped version of experimental bass than the typical slow ambient sounds you’d expect.
“Technically downtempo is not limited to chill and ambient, by definition it’s just a range of beats per minute below 70 and above 50. My “downtempo” sets can be further explained like this… It’s not ambient music first of all, but it’s as if bass music and experimental music were chopped and screwed. However, among all of that, it’s full of plenty of beautiful, emotional, transcendental moments that I started doing to help myself heal.”
“That’s the reason it’s resonating and growing to be more than just a sunrise set thing. About the energy shift between the two, I knew I would have to keep people hooked when they’re at a venue past midnight, but I wanted to play into the intrigue of “How will he top a bass set?” The answer is a deep and powerful A/V transition, a wardrobe change, dramatic lighting, and a killer opener to the downtempo set to lock them in. It felt so fun and dramatic to me.”
Not only was the first phase of the Augmented Duality Tour in 2024 a resounding success but deeply resonated with fans due to the healing energy of the whole experience.
“Seeing how it resonated with people at sunrise sets, and now pioneering it in club settings… it feels just as natural to me as trap and bass. People need the healing, emotional, deep dance music too. Not just moments of it, but a whole hour or more to process some things. Selling the first night out for 1400 people in Denver and then 3 more sold-out shows just told me that we had to go bigger… so in 2025, we’re doing our first-ever 2-night run with both sounds and fully stacked lineups. Can’t wait to share more on that but one might guess where it will be.”
However, just as he found the balance between bass and downtempo, Super Future had to find the balance in life and shift his energy from full-time producer to full-time father. With the last date of the tour ending in early June, he had just a few more shows before his son was born, one of which being a milestone set at Electric Forest.
“It definitely felt like a fantastic ending to the first half of the Super Future story. Volume 2 is now underway and things do feel like “that was the past and I finished it perfectly”.
“Electric Forest won me over as my first festival I ever attended back in 2015. I went on to win a songwriting contest to play the silent disco in 2018 there, but it definitely felt like “this is just practice for my real debut at EF”. Fast forward to 2024 where I’ve earned that spot on my own merits, it was so huge to see a literal gridlocked ocean of people in the center of Sherwood Forest for me. The Levity boys and I found out together that we had a conflicting set time but we took a second and then agreed, nahh we are just gonna fill that whole forest up together regardless! That’s exactly what happened. It felt like one of those sets where you can hardly remember what happened because your emotions ran so high. Looking back at the videos on YouTube and the ones my team took got me gasping and tearing up though haha.”
After an iconic performance in the Forest, it was time for the next phase of the Super Future story where he took a brief hiatus to adjust to his new role as a family man.
“This new phase is like a two-sided coin. From the day I found out we were pregnant I had mad writer’s block. It was planned and I was grateful, but I was flying to play LSDREAM’s Rave Cave and embarking on my first 2 weeks of bus touring with him and I was just literally on autopilot, hardly able to speak. Thankfully I’d played the caverns before and know how to still play a great set, but behind the scenes, I was sitting wide-eyed on a bus not able to tell anyone what was really going on in my brain. A huge shift,” he described.
“Fast forward 9 months later, and the writer’s block was obliterated by the arrival of my son, and I was twice as thankful. I achieved the fatherhood dream and I was all of a sudden writing hits again! I love to share that story because of how profound the process is. I talked to dad DJs like Barclay Crenshaw and Jantsen about what’s to come and it is still beyond comprehension and nothing can really prepare you for the rollercoaster. We are very happy he’s healthy and happy too, and that gives me more drive to succeed for people beyond myself. I can’t wait to show him the music world he’s entered!”
With the birth of his son, he not only achieved his dream of becoming a father but discovered new ways to deepen his connection to his music.
“I learned recently that “writing out your emotions” when you have strong ones, has led to the best music. Right now I am in the “banger mode” of the two sounds I oscillate between but I’m excited to tap back into very artistic, emotive sounds of downtempo for the upcoming tour. I love the authenticity that comes out in that side of me and I think all the time spent raising a kid so far is building up that emotion I need to express and let out.”
Ending his hiatus with performances at Lost Lands and Big Fam Fest, Super Future marked his return with a self-assigned 90-day producer challenge.
“I felt like I needed to do three things really badly: (1) overcome the hurdle of not being a natural at video content, (2) overcome the feeling of not having enough time to do music and dad life, and (3) FINISH THE HUNDREDS OF ID’S.”
Inspired by Barclay Crenshaw he saw this idea as a way to keep himself accountable and hone in on his creativity while offering fans a glimpse of the process.
“I saw Barclay do this for his Open Channel album and I thought it was a clever way to stay accountable to a timeline and complete a huge goal. The pregnancy writer’s block really hurt my productivity and there are a few labels waiting patiently for EP’s from me. So this was the way to really prove to myself I can be a Dad and still do this, I can find an authentic way to do videos, and it might be fun for people to see more of me in the studio and what I’m sitting on. It’s also a great way to get my fans to inadvertently help me decide which projects need to be released. I have missed days, but every time I come back and catch up, it’s always been a different project the whole time. Now at day 45, I feel like I could do better, but the real goal is to just finish these damn tunes up. It’s always been the hardest part because I love to start songs way more.”
Cementing his return, Super Future officially announced Phase 2 of the Augmented Duality Tour alongside a very special mix which he calls Future Flowstate.
“I am so proud of it! Actually, this is pretty much the downtempo set I played for the Augmented Duality Tour phase 1 so it’s a perfect taste of how the second phase will feel. I wanted to build up anticipation for this mix series and capitalize on that because, for 5 years, in 2021 and earlier, I was putting out a yearly mix I called the “Sunday Bass” series. Not sure why I called it that but probably because it felt like Sundays when you relax and vibe out a bit more, or heal from the weekend benders haha. Just early stages of not knowing how to brand things. Now, I have so much involved with Super Future that I wanted to deviate from that and brand something that will ring out in the downtempo ethos I’m building. Future Flowstate is how I feel during these, it’s a nuanced feeling of flow that I tap into with these. Conversely, I call my bass sets “Super Heated” like the extra hot phase of matter. Branding the new parts of my project as I go has been fun, especially now that I’ve reached a very authentic phase of the journey. A fun thing that people might not know about my downtempo mixes too… They were inspired by the “Zeds Dead Catching Z’s” mix series. Those blew my freaking mind.”
Like the Sunday Bass series, he hopes to make Future Flowstate a yearly release.
“Future Flowstate should be a yearly thing if I’m able to make it all work, it’s not easy carrying two distinct sounds, as well as a side project with Wreckno (that’s gonna become more active too). All this range I have is limited by my time, and that along with new fatherhood has been the reason why I put out so little music in 2024. However, I’m basically just putting it all out in 2025 so it should be a huge year music-wise on all sound types. I’ve had to build my team bigger to make it all work as well! As far as the Future Flowstate series goes, you can expect sexy, healing, deep, and powerful music all rolled into something that is me just as much as my bass sets are. Like I said, it’s all the fun and energy of my bass sets, just chopped, screwed, and sexy.”
For Super Future the Augmented Duality Tour, Future Flowstate, and downtempo itself, is more than just a journey into sound but a way to channel his true authentic self.
“The fact that it’s created through my experience of strong emotions, anything from anger to bliss, is what makes my downtempo projects feel so real. The authentic me comes out in those tracks, sets, and mixes. There’s something very powerful harnessed by creating while you’re emotional. I’m chasing that feeling the most in my career, and I’m pretty sure people can feel that. Every artist should try it, I’m sure it will manifest in different ways but it’s such a cool phenomenon to me.”
Now, with the first date Augmented Duality Phase 2, set to take place on Janurary 10, Super Future has a simple message for his fans.
“I hope you’re ready to feel something :)”