On his new album, SCREAM, Sam Huber quite literally amplifies his dueling ethos of Future Funk and Future Soul with a heavy injection of guitars to hone the third prong in his musical trident, Future Rock. Huber conjures up a groove-heavy cross-pollination of sounds with a result unlike any of his previous releases. Subtle tips of the hat to everything from Nile Rogers to Bowie to Killing Joke and more lurk in SCREAM‘s core DNA over the course of eight songs.
“It’s not a pure rock album in the traditional sense,” he offers. It’s rock in that it has a very guitar-heavy sound, all the songs were worked up on electric guitar. But there’s a lot of other genres mixed in; it’s my take, what I think rock is right now. And there always, ALWAYS, has to be a groove.” Sonic wizardry aside, producer Tomás Doncker’s criminally underrated guitar playing leaps to the forefront here, playing the perfect foil for Huber’s vocals.
“Sam brought in sketches of this group of songs he’d fleshed out on guitar,” Doncker notes. “It was obvious they were decidedly in a post-modern rock direction, which is intriguing because, as a singer, he can sing anything, and as a conceptual lyricist, his point of view is always very exciting and non-traditional. This sort of thing always lends itself to a realm of possibilities in terms of creating musical soundscapes to support his voice and lyrics.
“SCREAM is borne out of post-pandemic angst. All of our perceptions of where things are have changed, and I think Sam found a way to express that.” Aside from the musical departure from the Future Soul and Future Funk vibes that have been the calling card of his recent work, the album is a marked evolution for Huber as a songwriter. “The more I work, the easier it is to write lyrics,” he notes.
“Lyrics can be hard, but I’ve started to develop techniques that make the process more fun and less intimidating. It helps when you get the machine going more regularly. I usually mumble something barely coherent and then maybe some key words jump out. Suddenly there’s a phrase or sometimes even just a word, and then I sit down and work it.”
SCREAM furthers Sam Huber’s musical evolution and infuses exciting new grooves into futuristic rock and roll.
