stelfox said:well, i'm not really in any position to, am i?!
but it does rather astound me that people can be so openly, knuckleheadedly dismissive of the very things that were absolutely at the core of 2step, which is, in turn, at the core of dubstep, especially vocal reminders of its roots in soul and r&b as much as reggae.
it's very much a white boys' club now, emphasis on both words.
i'm sort of with tim here. the reason i loved el-b so much was his ability to blend these elements with a much darker d&b-style aesthetic, same as early horsepower stuff. i didn't see these producers as reacting against 2step, but taking it somewhere else.
going deeper but still maintaining a line to the surface, if you like.
now dubstep owes much more, in terms of its audience and its aesthetic, to idm and techno.
and that's not necessarily slagging it off, either, but it does make it a lot less exciting for me, given all the other stuff i like.
this argument would be polemic if it was true, perhaps the references to reggae are more london/metropolitan rather than skin colour orientated,
which in turn has become a little bit unimaginative after countless tracks of what seem like re-versions of reggae songs,
but then again i don't really see any audience and aesthetic closer to idm and techno because it doesn't contain r and b and soul elements.....(when has idm or techno really been 'close' to reggae any more than r and b or soul?'
but in relation to the 'audience', i've never seen you at dmz and not very often at fwd..so you can't really back your arguement up there.
so who's the audience for grime as well , largely it's more of a mix crowd like dubstep but just a more fashionable eastend 'indieish ' crowd rather than a dance/reggae crowd. The idea of singalong anthems is a powerful in indie and grime, dubstep and grime cross at energy/production and back again to reggae.
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