Yeah I'm sure he's said this in passing on his blog. A mate of mine made the very fine point that if Reynolds had been going to clubs in the last 5 years instead of criticising them from afar, he would have seen that the dubstep->brostep shift had much more in common with the steady transformation of a certain kind of drum'n'bass in the late 90s from being hard-edged but with 'nuum' levels of innovation to totally dilute jump up for people who don't really like dance music.
I think instead he's drawing on a binary which had a lot of relevance for 90s nuum music: an inherent tendency in the scene (and elsewhere) to reject 'hardcore' traits - impurity, cheesiness, hi-energy - as 'unmusical' and move towards a Bukem-like aesthetic built around 'musicality', which is often a dead end for scenius.
But I don't think it's so simple now to say that your Night Slugs/Hessles/Swamp 81s would use the vocabulary of 'musicality' to elevate what they do over what Skrillex does. I don't think Doctor P or Borgore are motors of a kind of innovation which is going (critically) unnoticed because it lies outside the aesthetic criteria of critics etc. I don't think they are motors of innovation at all.
Also Reynolds is always going on about the constant and simultaneous looking back & looking forward in nuum music - a hyper-awareness of the past mixed with a kind of fever for the future. I don't hear that in, say, Skrillex at all. If anything those artists construct a fictitious 'year zero' for dance music, where everything they do is OH SHIT TOTALLY NEW. I guess that's probably how most dance music sounds to an ex-screamo singer.
whoops mega nuum post LOL
pretty much agree with that. I think the fact that Reynolds now lives in NY and has admitted to not seeing a lot of the stuff he rubbishes in the club anytime recently is pretty telling - or I'm presuming, the stuff he praises (I somehow can't imagine Reynolds 'getting down' at Dub Smack or whatever if it's anything like the equivalent in Brighton: http://tinyurl.com/68fvnr9).
Plus, like you say the ten odd seconds of hardcore at the top of Sweet Shop definitely does NOT a hyper awareness of the past make.
While this thread itself on DSF is pretty standard (bitching, etc), I think the song itself is worth a listen...
http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=225029
I think this is quite an interesting move for wobble to go in... And I (never thought I'd say this about a Circus Records release)quite like it... It's fun, its got some groove (drums could definitely be better). Definitely pure cheese, but i quite like the mix of 'that' bass sound and the horns. Though could do with less of the bassline at times. But I'd rather hear this out than probably anything else on Circus....
Or maybe I've just completely lost it & the only reason I like it is because of all the Circus fans posting on FB about where the bloody bass is.