El-B

[Blackdown]

garage back then, a unified scene as it was, was a mishmash of styles - todd edwards style 4/4, r&b-esque 2step, breakbeat garage, wookie's mad beats, Narrows-style dark 4-to-the-floor, proto grime MC tunes, early dubstep etc. Zinc beats and tunes like SOTF or Wookie's 'Storm' were part of the garage scene as a whole and definitely helped inspire some of the climate for the MC-lead tunes that were to become grime.

oris began making dark 2step tunes like 'brand nu flava,' then got persistantly breakier around the time of the early forward>> days and zinc's breakbeat output.

before the emergence of the term 'dubstep,' people referred to 'the forward>> sound' as a loose grouping of all the dark flavours of garage that were played at that club and to me oris' beats fitted perfectly into that grouping.

 

[Logos]

one of the main reasons i stopped going to forward for just over a year, about 2 years ago, apart from the music turning pretty dull, was because of the crowd: overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, with lots of head-nodding and weed-smoking going on and a dance floor virtually empty. pretty much exactly the same crowd you'd find at a def jux show, which are also soul-manglingly boring for the most part.

DMZ is quite different to fwd - come down and judge for yourself on Saturday.

 

[Tim F]

Oris Jay - classic for "Biggin' Up The Massive" and especially "Brand Nu Flava" (what a stealth bomb of a toon!). Darqwan - classic for "Confused", totally mindblowingly classic for "Nocturnal".

Kinda dud for everything else. Hearing him degenerate into sounding like DJ Zinc with a permanent frown was heartbreaking.

Menta's "Sounds of Da Future" was an amazing record yeah (but again the Darqwan remix wasn't much cop). So was "Ramp"! I liked this little moment in garage a lot - dark but still very sexy. "Ramp" was almost muscular rhythmically, but not in a boring breakstep kinda way, much more like the best booming dancehall - e.g. Lenky's Dreamweaver Riddim. I'd put "Nocturnal" in the same category. And Exemen's "Far East".

BTW another great proto-dubstep+fem-vox track: DJ Abstract's "Touch".

One thing I find notable about dubstep is the absolute devotion to the notion of bass as exclusively physical presha, these one-note glowering beasts which I'm sure sound awesome at Forward or DMZ or any of the other "you have to have been there to understand" clubs. This never really happened in jungle did it - even though bass was used in the same way (i.e. to cause your chest to implode) it was always very melodic, jumping all over the place, kinda hooky really. It's the absence of that, and moreover the commitment to this idea of claustrophic plateaus, which makes dubstep seem so much like techno - "proper" techno rather than IDM.

2-step vs dubstep... It's not just about the presence of R&B or soul or house in the former, I don't think... Maybe the most succinct way to put it is that dubstep draws a lot from dub (of both the OG Jamaican variety and the Basic Channel variety) but very little from modern dancehall, the presence of MCs notwithstanding.

 

[Logos]

Darqwan's Friday at the Limit is my stand out tune from him, I just remember at the time thinking - "those bleeps! - and he's from Sheffield!" That tune and the Mark One EP on Texture were the ultra-advanced markers of post-garage for me.

At the time I thought he was mining a rich seam that had a lot of potential in it, but when I listen back to a lot of his stuff now I'm not so sure, but I suspect that is a reaction based on my evolving tastes, and that I got sick of breaks in garage very quickly so I lumped him in with the horrible Zinc stuff in my mind. Which isn't necessarily very fair of me.

 

[Blackdown]

Menta's "Sounds of Da Future" was an amazing record yeah (but again the Darqwan remix wasn't much cop). So was "Ramp"! I liked this little moment in garage a lot - dark but still very sexy. "Ramp" was almost muscular rhythmically, but not in a boring breakstep kinda way, much more like the best booming dancehall - e.g. Lenky's Dreamweaver Riddim. I'd put "Nocturnal" in the same category. And Exemen's "Far East".

One thing I find notable about dubstep is the absolute devotion to the notion of bass as exclusively physical presha, these one-note glowering beasts which I'm sure sound awesome at Forward or DMZ or any of the other "you have to have been there to understand" clubs. This never really happened in jungle did it - even though bass was used in the same way (i.e. to cause your chest to implode) it was always very melodic, jumping all over the place, kinda hooky really. It's the absence of that, and moreover the commitment to this idea of claustrophic plateaus, which makes dubstep seem so much like techno - "proper" techno rather than IDM.

2-step vs dubstep... It's not just about the presence of R&B or soul or house in the former, I don't think... Maybe the most succinct way to put it is that dubstep draws a lot from dub (of both the OG Jamaican variety and the Basic Channel variety) but very little from modern dancehall, the presence of MCs notwithstanding.

both Ramp and it's blueprint Red were awesome tunes, and i agree with the dancehall comparison. They were also to become the blueprint on which Benga and Skream built the 2003-4 era material on.

it's also a good spot about the one-note b-lines, there's a lot of this about, especially from D1 and Youngsta sets. Surley however, this bass plateaus is the opposite of techno - ie no rhythmic release? to me it's more like the smothering bass-hole you might experience at jah shaka ie classic dub, which fits with your last point on dub v dancehall's influence in dubstep.

i like modern dancehall like i like grime, and overt dub retroism seems regressive to me. i asked The Bug when he thought sub bass had ceased to be part of dancehall. this is the issue for any dancehall/dubstep integration right now - how to combine the percussion.

finally on the point of one-note basslines, this is definitely not the dominant force it was. sucessive anthems have been much more hooky/wobbly/jump up b-line orientated. DMZ 'ancient memories (skream remix)' and Coki's 'Stuck for example. Several of Coki's tunes are just warping b-line variations right now. so at least there's some diversity in the bass department recently.


ps i always imagined 'Fridays at the Limit' to be the ultimate Gutterbreaks breakbeat garage tune. bleeps and breaks!

 

[bassnation]

Oris Jay - classic for "Biggin' Up The Massive" and especially "Brand Nu Flava" (what a stealth bomb of a toon!)

also "trippin" - beautiful combination of a female rnb vocal with the darkest of basslines. wicked tune.

 

[echevarian]

Two dubs to keep an eye out for,


Summer Dreams by the Digital Mystikz

and

Harpoon by Scuba.


I think that you may be pleasantly surprised, (or incredibly turned off).


Lounge dubstep almost.

 

[Tim F]

The dubstep/techno comparison is I guess not particularly literal in sonic terms - I guess i meant that dubstep tunes often feel "caught", trapped in a moment, the way that techno often does.. this is both for better and for worse, depending on one's mood. The basslines are a big part of that.

"finally on the point of one-note basslines, this is definitely not the dominant force it was. sucessive anthems have been much more hooky/wobbly/jump up b-line orientated. DMZ 'ancient memories (skream remix)' and Coki's 'Stuck for example. Several of Coki's tunes are just warping b-line variations right now. so at least there's some diversity in the bass department recently."

This would be interesting to hear! Although (and this is purely hypothetical as I haven't heard the tracks) there is a danger perhaps in going too far in the opposite direction, where the hooky bassline becomes the only focus in the track (see breakstep basically). To my mind there's a bit of a delicate balancing act to be struck where the bassline is its own melodic beast but is not "the melody" as such.

In some ways, for all their crossover, breakstep and dubstep approach the whole question of arrangement heirarchies in a totally opposite manner: breakstep is/was very much about a succession of dominant features - ultra-obvious hook, ultra-big bassline etc, all arriving sequentially to steal the show... whereas in dubstep every component is held in check - melody, rhythm, bassline are all held back from dominating over everything else - hence what dominates is atmosphere (or "atmosphere" in inverted commas on the tracks that don't work). I suspect the reason that I disliked breaky dubstep so much is buried somewhere in that dichotomy.

Actually what I reckon would be great would be dubstep tracks with basslines like Back 2 Basics' "Horns For '94". Maybe they already exist? I guess 2-step tracks like "Neighbourhood" or "Madness In The Streets" already mined this territory quite extensively...

 

[stelfox]

the thing with breakbeat garage was that it worked really, really well for a comparatively short while because it was part of a scene that was very much in flux and full of contrasting textures.

in those days you'd hear a m-dubs next to wookie, next to el-b, next to horsepower, next to todd edwards-style twitchiness next to zed bias - all totally different to one another.

as all these styles of production were so disparate it allowed djs to bowl *real* curveballs like 138 trek and dooms night, which when you think about it really didn't belong, but just worked.

the breakbeat stuff was especially piquant, but only in the context of this mix, incidentally i think the best i've ever heard it used was on one of steve's (hopefully not lost) hyperdub streams - it totally lifted the whole set, giving a real rowdy, intense spike to the mix, just like it did in clubs.

it worked best like seasoning, not as a stand-alone genre. so i guess what put the garage into breakbeat garage was the the way it was played. without the interactions with other styles of garage it was just regular old breakbeat and as such not that attractive (to me anyway).


what's got quite a bit less interesting about the scene at large these days, be it grime or dubstep, is that there's not such a feeling of everything being up for grabs, thown into the mix, rubbing up against one another and being ripe for this kind of cross-fertilisation. i know certain tracks do cross over from scene to scene (request line being the big recent example), but it's not quite the same and that's what makes me think of 1999-2001 as a genuine golden musical period.

 

[borderpolice]

the thing with breakbeat garage was that it worked really, really well for a comparatively short while...

1996 --> 2001 that's quite a time.

what didn't work i think was the crossover to (producers) outside of london (with the exception of russia, where 2step garage is popular, but that does not feed back to the london scene, partly because of russian lyrics).

 

[stelfox]

i dunno, some of the gash collective stuff from germany was pretty good actually. never even thought of russian 2step. is it still being made?

 

[stelfox]

*GUSH* COLLECTIVE!!! haha, calling dr freud!

 

[Tim F]

For me, the best breakbeat garage tracks were the big crossover hits that <i>sounded</i> like they were trying to be 2-step anyway, e.g.:

KMA - Kaotic Madness
Doom's Night (Timo Mass Remix)
Jump & Shout (Stanton Warriors Remix)
Zed Bias - Ring the Alarm/Jigga Up
Wookie - Scrappy
M-Dubs - For Real

Those above tracks I almost don't really think of as being "breakbeat garage", for all that they use breakbeats - they were too syncopated and sexy, even "138 Trek" with it's clattery rhythm.

Whereas all those "proper" breakbeat garage tunes like "Kinda Funky" or "Buddha Finger"... well they were sometimes okay but I always thought they were likely to be the weakest moment of any garage set. The idea of only playing that kinda stuff all night was totally beyond me. God I got so fucking sick of "Kinda Funky"!!!! That stuff was so much bigger with DJs over in Australia than any actual 2-step.

 

[stelfox]

ring the alarm is still a total classic. i'll occasionally drop that in a ragga set now and it still works.
but tim, do you really see dooms night as a garage track at all when listened to in isolation? i really don't.
as we all know it broke into garageland about a year after its original release and more or less entirely by accident.

 

[Blackdown]

what's got quite a bit less interesting about the scene at large these days, be it grime or dubstep, is that there's not such a feeling of everything being up for grabs, thown into the mix, rubbing up against one another and being ripe for this kind of cross-fertilisation. i know certain tracks do cross over from scene to scene (request line being the big recent example), but it's not quite the same and that's what makes me think of 1999-2001 as a genuine golden musical period.

this has been a fairly contentious topic over the last few years on the dubstep forum, one i dont wildly wish to revive, the difference between throwing all styles together - as a producer and as a dj - versus sticking to one style and watching it evolve. within dubstep i'm more interested in the latter, primarily because i both now understand more the power producers have to change from within and because like tim, i never want to hear caustic zincy breaks like 'kinda funky' ever again.

further to that i'm enjoying the consensus on what good times 1999-01 was musically, but perhaps people like tim and dave could appreciate that to current dubstep producers, as strong as that time was, it seems like a mistake to now go back and re-hash any old 2step tune.

 

[bassnation]

ring the alarm is still a total classic. i'll occasionally drop that in a ragga set now and it still works.
but tim, do you really see dooms night as a garage track at all when listened to in isolation? i really don't.
as we all know it broke into garageland about a year after its original release and more or less entirely by accident.

it crossed over every dance scene. the cheesiest house floors were rocking it too. i wonder whether that could happen now, it seems highly unlikely doesn't it?

 

[matt b]

ring the alarm is still a total classic. i'll occasionally drop that in a ragga set now and it still works.

really? wow.

just reminded me of a poor jungle re-rub

 

[matt b]

it crossed over every dance scene. the cheesiest house floors were rocking it too. i wonder whether that could happen now, it seems highly unlikely doesn't it?

well, request line has been dropped by all sorts- villabos, peterson etc etc

 

[stelfox]

this has been a fairly contentious topic over the last few years on the dubstep forum, one i dont wildly wish to revive, the difference between throwing all styles together - as a producer and as a dj - versus sticking to one style and watching it evolve. i'm more interested in the latter, primarily because i both now understand more the power producers have to change from within and because like tim, i never want to hear caustic zincy breaks like 'kinda funky' ever again.

further to that i'm enjoying the consensus on what good times 1999-01 was musically, but perhaps people like tim and dave could appreciate that to current dubstep producers, as strong as that time was, it seems like a mistake to now go back and re-hash any old 2step tune.

oh don't get me wrong martin, i'm not advocating any kind of revivalism and am not saying that the scene should even aim for that much variety again, even if it were brand new styles of music - mainly because it's very unlikely to happen. what made this period so great was that it was totally organic and exciting and there was a real sense that anything could happen because the music was really feeling its way along, not knowing quite what was around the corner and learning to be what its now become. my main point being that i think i enjoyed the journey more than the final destination(s).

 

[bassnation]

well, request line has been dropped by all sorts- villabos, peterson etc etc

yeah, good point! i wonder how it goes down on e'd up dancefloors. that bubbly colourful thing would work quite well i'd imagine.