Dubstep

This one is going to cause some controversy.

It's the word on the lips of nearly every young person in the UK. I heard it's even big in Canada these days. No matter which way you look at it, 'dubstep' has become massive (someone told me they were using a Skream tune on an advert for the BBC?). It has become the genre of the moment, the thing that people get excited about at the weekends. It is very 'now'. I myself have split opinions on this form of music.

For those of you who don't know, dubstep evolved out of the UK garage scene, with an emphasis on bass, minimal drum beats and rhythms, and a generally 'ghostlike' tone (for lack of better terminology). Early dubstep artists included producers such as Steve Gurley, Oris Jay, and Zed Bias (people which you have undoubtebdly never heard of). The scene started to grow thanks to nights at Forward (residents including Hatcha, Kode9, Jay da Flex, Zed Bias and many more), which was originally held at Velvet Rooms but moved onto bigger places such as Plastic People and The End (now ended.. ha). Regular dubstep radio shows on RinseFM also helped to spread the word.

For a timescale, this is all happening before 2003. Most of us were 12/13 years of age.

Walking around my college, I regularly hear dubstep being played on phones. I recently asked someone (who was playing cockney thug on her phone) when she first started listening to dubstep. She replied 'around 2 years ago'. I walked away. I'll admit, I'd never talked to this kid before, but I'd bet my middle finger that she wasn't listening to dubstep two years ago.

So fair enough, this is one person in a pretty big pond (and the BRIT school of performing arts of all places...). But the point that I'm trying to get across is that people aren't listening to dubstep because they like it, they are listening to it and going to places where it is played because they think this is what they should be doing to look cool. I'll admit, being and trying to act cool is alot of what being a teenager is about. But who in their right mind would listen to a whole Benga album on the bus? Or have it on their iPod in general (iPoditis is a disease I may delve into in a later post), except to play at parties? Now you could say this about alot of dance music, but I believe that dubstep should really only be played in large spaces where people are intoxicated on one thing or another (hell, it's the only place I can stand to hear it).

It's a shame, but I can see dubstep dying. This generally happens when an underground culture meets the mainstream, we need look no further than new rave for a better example. Can you think of anyone who would start a new rave band now? Thought not. Also the quality of dubstep is getting worse and worse. Compare a Burial track from his debut album (released 2006) to a production from Benga's latest escapade, released last year. Ok fair enough, they are two very different producers, but they are both supposed to be in the same genre. I had a lesson today on synthesis, and just from my teacher explaining and demonstrating on a Juno-6 how subtractive synthesis works (stay with me), I heard at least 4 different techniques used in modern dubstep tracks. What I'm trying to get at is that as dubstep grows, more and more people are jumping on the bandwagon in a race to be part of this 'emerging' scene, and the quality of productions is suffering. Badly. Some people may argue that aslong as people are dancing it doesn't matter, but let's be honest, on an average dubstep night at an average club in Croydon, you generally aren't going to hear more than 5 or 6 different drumbeats or 2 or 3 different bass sounds/lines, and I would give you a shiny golden star shaped sticker if you can remember 20 songs that were played that night. This is going to sound really anal, but as an electronic music enthusiast and a musician, listening to modern dubstep is painful to the ear, and hurts even more knowing that I could have probably knocked out the same tune in around an hour on my laptop.

I myself give dubstep until the end of the summer before it dies out completely, you can generally tell a genre going out of fashion by the fact that younger and younger kids start to catch onto it, I've seen kids who are out waaaay past their bedtimes hanging around in Shoreditch (don't ask why I was there) chatting about how sick the dub police are (and who the fuck are they?). It's a shame because it started off as something totally fresh and different, a breath of fresh air to the UK electronic music scene, and the fact that it has warped into what it is today makes me feel sad inside. It also has attracted alot of females to the producing and DJing circuit, including the likes of Ikonika and Subeena, and a lot more females to the clubs since dubstep is slightly more chilled out than drum and bass and grime (it's more... dubbed... man).

So long dubstep, hope you go out with a wub. I'll be the first one in the club at the revival in 2027. If we're all still here.

More clubbing, but less wubbing.

James