photo credit: Jari Heikkilä
It was hot everywhere this summer. Even in normally moderate Helsinki, Finland, singer Sam Huber felt the burn. It inspired him to shift gears from his regular musings on love, relationships and just generally having fun to write the sweltering ‘Hot Summer Burning‘ the new single (and video) from his new album, UP (True Groove Records).
“On the surface, it’s basically about climate change,” he notes, “but it also deals with lots of other global malaise that really seemed to hit a boiling point over the summer. At its core, the song is really about the stress we were all feeling.”
Despite the rather sobering nature of the lyrics, the song has an unshakable deep soul groove that looks to Isaac Hayes vibes for inspiration while staying firmly rooted in 2021. The video, directed by Huber’s longtime producer/collaborator Tomás Doncker, is a sweaty, black and white missive that reinforces the song’s brooding nature. Interestingly enough, while ‘Hot Summer Burning’ is the darkest track on UP, it still fits in seamlessly with the album’s otherwise upbeat grooves. UP is only 28 minutes long, but Huber uses every single minute to near-perfection to lay out the definitive blueprint for his self-dubbed ‘Future Soul’ ethos; a musical manifesto deeply anchored in vintage soul while looking and thinking beyond the horizon at the same time. While UP is the Future Soul side of the equation, the follow-up/companion album DOWN will tread into Future Funk territory.
“UP is uplifting, positive and more traditional (even though it has the Future Soul ethos), whereas DOWN is where you Get Down— on the dance floor, on the downbeat — and it has a darker undertone of Future Funk.”
DOWN will be released two weeks after UP, and the entire project will come out as a double vinyl LP called UP & DOWN next year.
