There’s only one more year before the world ends, which means that there’s a whole lot of crappy music genres that artists and blogs have to conspire together to create in a very short amount of time. Given that 2010 was the year that both Chillwave (“Should there be a 'chillwave meeting' where chillwave leaders discuss the future of the genre?” – Hipster Runoff) and Sun-Gaze (“Best Coast are late to the game…and we are, quite frankly, sick of this shit” – Coke Machine Glow) died very premature deaths, new kids on the block are going to have to up the ante if they want to make big bucks before the apocalypse. With that in mind, we hopped in our Hot Tub Time Machine, hopefully a film that will not have a sequel in 2011, to find out what genres you should be tweeting about in order to remain relevant as of about yesterday.

1. Terrorist House

Thanks to globetrotting DJs with far too much money and not enough ideas, the best of the world’s foreign music has been bastardised into modern dance and streamlined for mp3 downloads. While Diplo sucks up Jamaica, Brazil and wherever else he can find some slum kids to rap, Yolanda Be Cool pilfers Italian jazz and Ed Banger sells distortion to dirty teenagers in leather jackets, the Ministry (Of Sound, that is) are nervously trying to predict the next hot sound to flood the market with in time for the 2012 Annual.

We’ve been told that Ajax’s disappearance from the club scene has been due to some top secret sound-sourcing, and can reveal that Terrorist House, a mash-up of big beats and the distinctive sound of local Middle Eastern armies declaring war on invading Westerners, is set to destroy dancefloors – quite literally – in 2011. Forget the gunshots of M.I.A’s 'Paper Planes', this is a full-on aural assault. First off the mark is a mash-up of the BBC audio sample featuring a rabid crowd cheering at Saddam Hussein’s statue being toppled, beat matched over the hook from The Presets 'Are You The One?'. Dave Guetta, never one to miss out on the party, has allegedly secured access to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to bleat the hook for his next hit, 'I Gotta Feeling (That Tonight I’m Gonna Nuke Israel)'.

2. Snorkel Wave

While everyone made a big deal about the beach and the sun and all that hip shit that was totally covered by Brian Wilson and co. more than forty years ago, the one thing missing was the underwater life. It’s one thing to go surfing, or take your bros down to the beach and shoot some album covers using your Hipstamatic Iphone app, but in 2011, underwater boogie is where it’s all at.

Channelling the submerged funk of George Clinton (a man who simultaneously lives above and below the sea), the watery guitar effects of some kid trying to play his Fender in a bath and the pop sensibilities of Aqua, Snorkel Wave is so right now it’s ridiculous. Calling cards of the genre (and its hip-hop spin-off, ‘Crustacean Crunk’) include stingray ballads, disaffected sperm whale anthems and a romantic, lo-fi recording style that could only ever come from throwing your amp off a pier while pressing record. In an attempt to coast on the Snorkel Wave wave and keep themselves trending on Twitter, Wavves will record a tribute to Outkast’s Aquemini, which will, of course still sound like your 14 year old stoned cousin trying to start a band. Only this time, he’s drowning.

3. Dubgaze

Combining the two best genres in recent memory, shoegaze and dub-step, Dubgaze takes self-indulgent, skittery-beat navel contemplation to its logical endpoint – and just keeps on walking. This movement will be spearheaded by Jamie Smith of The xx, who will tire of it soon afterwards and leave it to the rest of England to fiddle around with. Imagine Burial actually burying himself while whispering lyrics about the precise movements of his bowels and you’re one quarter of the way there.

Taking inspiration from the infamous Justin Bieber slowed down 800x project of 2010, Dubgaze is not only incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t on ketamine, but is also musically sparse, downtempo and ‘inspired’ enough that NME, Pitchfork and Stereogum will all lose their collective blogs over it. Rather than shrouding themselves in black and seeking to hide their identities, Dubgaze pioneers will only have photographs taken when they are entirely naked, as clothes, just like musical concepts such as ‘tonality’ and ‘melody’, are simply constraints on their ability to create. Since it was always about deep bass drops anyway, Dubgaze will be instantly recognisible for its total eschewing of all treble frequencies. The resulting sound will seem even worse when listened to through Ipod earbuds, thus ensuring the genre’s credibility and authenticity. Sleigh Bells have a huge head start with this one; all they have to do is lose the guitars, the girl singer and about 60 BPM and they’re set to go. Which is fantastic news, because there was no way they were going to be able to capitalise on their 2010 hype anyway.

4. Wi-fi

If you put lo-fi tunes through a hi-fi and add the general filth of the internet, the result is Wi-Fi. Featuring enough sampling to make Girl Talk throw up, but all really buzzy, poorly recorded obscure indie from the mid-90s. Shazam won’t pick half of it up, listeners won’t want to, and pretension will take on a whole new level as the crap of the old becomes the sound of the new. Notable parts of the Wi-Fi aesthetic include the band the guys from Pavement were in before they were in Pavement, a Japanese Sonic Youth covers band and everyone who learned how to play chords and then pretended they didn't.

5. Homo-hetero-house

A term coined by the drummer for Sydney band The Protectors, Homo-hetero house is the sound of music so gay that it’s bent back towards straightness. Widely seen as a reaction to the not-so-subtle lesbian overtones in pretty much every Lady GaGa video of the past year, the genre puts celebrated gay icons in hyper-masculine contexts, like Jake Shears singing country & western or Kele from Bloc Party actually calling his love interest ‘she’ instead of ‘you’ and then blatantly revealing how much he wants Love In This Room Which May for All Intents And Purposes Be Called A Club. On the plus side, homophobes will now find themselves in the midst of an even bigger identity crisis, as the music they love to gyrate with dudes with, is both subtly and flamboyantly, about gyrating with dudes.

Jonno Seidler