Dubstep

[Threnody]

The forum will be back, almost certainly...Maybe with a long enough break for people to disperse elsewhere but I think it is unlikely that anyone will be gone for long if/when it reopens and then the same things happen again...

Maybe dubstep is a victim of the unity it strived to achieve, the whole '140bpm with bass' ethos that it started with...I remember more than one huge thread from there which discussed 'how can we avoid going to same way as dnb?'. The majority seemed to think it was all about not splitting up the scene into different sub-genres (which can of course get stupid). It is a tough question with pros and cons at each side...I guess the biggest pro would be that people into 'conflicting' styles would have the space to breathe away from hearing music they considered not hype enough/too blatant/cheesy etc... This would still mean that people could listen to it all and a DJ or night could play across the board if they wished.... Of course this could still all come under a collective dubstep banner. For example my mum may refer to drum and bass, as in she may tell her friend 'Gordon likes drum and bass' however she probably wouldn't bother to say 'Gordon likes drum and bass but only really drumfunk or stuff on reinforced records' (i like more than that in reality!)...It is just a collective name which people are likely to understand. And why bother explaining any further as on the whole people don't really care what you really like anyway.

Keeping everything together does promote a certain sense of claustrophobia and doesn't help anyone distance themselves from stuff they don't like (which is often quite a lot!) and therefore turf wars start around what people thimk things should sound like etc... It really is the job of DJs/Producers/clubs to play whatever they are feeling and leave the general public to either like it or leave it.

 

[elgato]

Doesn't everything?

haha yes indeed.

But regarding your point about it being 'founded on ideas of the individual', my argument here is that the rights of the community have been totally superseded /ignored by the rights of a few individuals who have unilaterally decided that their rights/opinions are paramount.

i guess my point is less about individual rights vs community rights, more about rights in general; even community rights are founded on the idea that a community (and its constituents) deserve something, and have a right to it. this is an opposition that i can’t pretend to have developed into any kind of governance structure, but my instinct (and thus why i’m not entirely comfortable with property rights framing the debate) is that no-one really has a 'moral' right to anything, other than in a straightforwardly organisational / perfunctory sense; i guess fundamentally i associate the word ‘property’ with its ‘moral’ grounding in theory, which i don’t think stands up at all. so i would prefer to try to find a new language to describe the way that people’s powers might be limited for greater good in relation to communally (or rather non-individually) generated value (i.e. everything), or trying to create spaces where new ways of understanding communal organisation might develop

if that makes any sense (i know its confused and contradictory in places)

still under this understanding one can reasonably question how appropriate such an exercise of power is over something generated communally in this manner (or, to follow my train of thought, otherwise)

 

[Blackdown]

What actually worries me more is the tendancy for anyone who's into 'deeper' stuff to construct boundaries of good taste that rule out wobbles, halfstep beats and generally silly fun stuff or viscerally exciting stuff as being 'the enemy' and only allow tastefully garagey slickness, which for my money gets almost as boring.

tastefullness, music lacking in rudeness is a worry, but i refuse to reverse argue myself into a situation where wobble isnt anything but a total betrayal of everything that made dubstep good, both in the early (el-b, HP, Zed) and the mid (dmz, loe, 9, benga, skream, hatch...) eras.

i'm not interested in music that's exclusively "deep," not least because i find really hard grime pretty deep (not to mention pretty hype too). but i do think theres other ways dubstep can go rather than either a) wobble or b) polite/tame/tech.

the garage thing i'm not so concerned about right now. there's so few producers using that influence anymore it still sounds fresh in any set. that's the thing about wobble, it's not that it's just wrong sonically (which is my pov that other people may not feel so strongly about) but it's so dominant, especially in clubs, that it threatens all other forms of the genre. this is a far bigger issue for the future of dubstep than whether a few pads are going to make things get a bit too "deep."

 

[gremino]

also music doesn't have to be deep, it can be fun too, and startlingly brilliant. the polarisation between two production production styles, ie one a bit more complicated and subtle, one about bashing out noisy aggro business already close down all the other choices too.

I made a thread in DSF about this kind of black and whiteness (it was also about dance music in general), but it didn't got any proper discussion going on. Dunno then if it was because I wasn't able to express my thoughs good enough...

What actually worries me more is the tendancy for anyone who's into 'deeper' stuff to construct boundaries of good taste that rule out wobbles, halfstep beats and generally silly fun stuff or viscerally exciting stuff as being 'the enemy' and only allow tastefully garagey slickness, which for my money gets almost as boring.

Too much tastefulness can be a very big restriction. I think it's always good to have even a slight cheesyness in music This techno stuff seems to suffer a bit of this tastefulness.

It also feels that in tunes with very good mixdowns, drums doesn't hit hard properly. You know, in kind of gritty way like in DMZ-releases. Though this raises a question: Are these tunes perfectly mixed at the end of the day? Or, is it just a matter of taste, that there isn't any certain standard for a good mixdown?

 

[Shonx]

i'm not interested in music that's exclusively "deep," not least because i find really hard grime pretty deep (not to mention pretty hype too). but i do think theres other ways dubstep can go rather than either a) wobble or b) polite/tame/tech.

I found loads of the more 2 steppy end of tunes a bit "miss the point entirely". Seemed to me with that it was like garage with all the little hardcore elements removed, overproduced to take out all the rough edges. It's kind of nice seeing funky adding these elements back at the moment.

 

[Sick Boy]

If people don't want dubstep to go the way of drum and bass, it simply has to discipline itself to practice what every other subculture/sound/family/social group/community etc. must in order to stay unified: tolerance.

The death of all musical genres is that a subculture, once rushed into a more mainstream or commercial venue, begins to define itself against itself by its own specific components.

It shouldn't be about wobble vs. deep, not least because, as someone mentioned, you tend to miss out all the innovations that happen in between. It's about going to one place and experiencing the sound as a whole, dancing to what you like, and tolerating what you don't, so long as everything gets equally represented.

Or you can do what I do when something comes on I don't particularly like -- I use the valuable time to have a cigarette.

 

[urbanite]

On the whole I'm personally quite surprised and sad to see it go that way. At the very least as someone who is outside of UK, I've lost a great informational resource. Discussion and community spirit are all nice and dandy, but in the end I'm very skeptical about whether these discussions actually produce any value. Clearly as a forum grows it will attract a bunch of newcomers (such as myself), who are interested in leaving a mark on the scene or just want to have a finger on the pulse so to speak, which creates additional noise. But just shutting out the noise and the newcomers instead of trying to reason and live with it is a bit too harsh.

The thing is I've seen this happen with a different Forum before and yeah it has become a bit of trashy place I'm personally not interested in anymore, mostly because it has been overtaken by overzealous 15 year olds who love starting flaming wars (much worse than the quality of some of the dsf threads) out of nothing, but it has been having a positive effect as much as a negative one. Some of the 15 year olds get turned onto listening to some great music when an old 2-6 year old thread makes a come back to the top, and the forward thinking guys tend to share the knowledge and not be exclusive about their knowledge. There's a certain form of stewardship without trying to force things down people's throats and letting them make their own choices, as long as the person in question is acting in accordance with some basic principles of etiquette within a public forum.

I don't know also about the whole idea that a certain desired effect can be achieved through shutting down the forum and then reopening it a bit later. Surely every person can choose what they like for themselves, but if repeatedly they find themselves redirected to some great material they might in the end take heed and learn to understand, but without this willingness to wait and build while overcoming any rough patches I don't see any scene surviving for very long. The community just kind of goes back to being a lone soldier's game again. Every man has to fend for themselves.

I think a much stronger thing to have done would be to just keep on going and explaining to the newcomers what dubstep is / supposed to be... Do another dubstepforum awards night and try to convey through it the understanding the Stewards have of what dubstep is or supposed to be in their view. Clearly it wouldn't create much of a bang and most likely would be prone to criticism, but it would've been a much stronger thing to do.

Just when the musical output overall from the scene from my perspective seems to be evening out as to the ratio of wobble/other styles, someone pulls the plug on a forum with 20'000 users a lot of whom are from abroad the UK because of a couple of messages? That's just sad.

I kinda just hope it turns out a completely different set of reasons that the forum went down than the whole wobble-invasion/unhappiness at the awards things.

 

[joe.dfx]

So what it basically comes down to is the dj's and the sets they choose to play. Thing is, no one can force them to play stuff that they aren't into. I mean I doubt Kode9 is gonna show up and drop cockney thug remixes and I doubt Rusko is gonna show up and play Sully beats. Which I guess would mean that promoters, in order to not be so singular, need to book a wide variety of acts to play at properly alotted time slots in order to give the audience a broader range of music to listen too. I mean I love the experimental stuff as much as anyone, but you can't expect the average club goer to want to hear deep, less "hype" stuff at peak hour, and at the same time I don't want to show up at a club at 10:30 and hear the most over the top wobble bangers.

There's a very delicate balance that needs to be reached and it's hard to reach given all the multidues of oppinions out there right now (and the less then clued up djs/promoters/punters/etc). I dunno. I'm just going to keep supporting the people I believe in and maybe that's really all you can do.

 

[Slim]

As predicted, someone who's jumped ship from DSF, but i've been lurking here for time, so i figured i'd join up properly.

I've always found the deep vs wobble thing to be ridiculous, a lot of tunes that get branded "deep" are often just really boring tunes with a samplepack bongo loop or some kind of jazzy sample space echoed to fuck, it's a kind of "cargo cult" deepness, like the islanders who built wooden airports expecting supply planes to land because they had a guy sitting in a tower with headphones on. "Deep" music is about structure and innovation, not simply using sounds associated with it.

And as for wobble, i don't find most of the so called big tracks to be particularly hype in the first place, it takes more than some godawful photocopier-fucking-a-bandsaw bassline to make something sound heavy and energetic.

it's just wrong sonically (which is my pov that other people may not feel so strongly about) "

Interesting that you say this though, Mr Blackdown, how do you find it "wrong"?

i've always found the earlier stuff like Red to be about as wobbly as you can get, it's a pretty damn cool sound to be honest, but it's all about the execution and not overdoing it in every tune.

 

[hucks]

I kinda just hope it turns out a completely different set of reasons that the forum went down than the whole wobble-invasion/unhappiness at the awards things.

I hope and expect this to be true.

 

[Slothrop]

tastefullness, music lacking in rudeness is a worry, but i refuse to reverse argue myself into a situation where wobble isnt anything but a total betrayal of everything that made dubstep good, both in the early (el-b, HP, Zed) and the mid (dmz, loe, 9, benga, skream, hatch...) eras.

i'm not interested in music that's exclusively "deep," not least because i find really hard grime pretty deep (not to mention pretty hype too). but i do think theres other ways dubstep can go rather than either a) wobble or b) polite/tame/tech.

the garage thing i'm not so concerned about right now. there's so few producers using that influence anymore it still sounds fresh in any set. that's the thing about wobble, it's not that it's just wrong sonically (which is my pov that other people may not feel so strongly about) but it's so dominant, especially in clubs, that it threatens all other forms of the genre. this is a far bigger issue for the future of dubstep than whether a few pads are going to make things get a bit too "deep."

Not sure I see that to be honest. Sure there are some DJs and producers who are infatuated with wobbles to the point that they're massively uninteresting, but I don't see how Ben UFO's style or Martyn's style or Peverelist's style is 'threatened' by the very existence of Unitz records, any more than dance music as a whole is 'threatened' by Donk...

Also I'm not sure whether you're talking about Wobble the subgenre or wobble the sound - I thought you were all over Pinch's One Blood One Source, for instance, which has an LFO modulating a filter cutoff, but does something distinctly different with it...

 

[gremino]

Slim, Yeah I also think that there's alot of faux-deep tunes out...

About the genre names and such: If I'd had to organize a dubstep night, I wouldn't do just dubstep night, but also add "heavily dubstep incluenced stuff" in the flyer. This way dj's wouldn't have any pressure to play 150/125/100bpm tunes with heavy dubstep vibes in them for example. Crossover stuff. Though there really isn't this stuff still, but this kind of approach would encourage producers to make stuff out of 140bpm tempo range. And why not call it dubstep right away although it would be at a different tempo?

 

[Blackdown]

Interesting that you say this though, Mr Blackdown, how do you find it "wrong"?

i've always found the earlier stuff like Red to be about as wobbly as you can get, it's a pretty damn cool sound to be honest, but it's all about the execution and not overdoing it in every tune.

"wobble" is obviously a simplification. i love Red, i love Ancient Memories remix or Learn, I love Pinch's One Blood, I use LFO on my basslines sometimes, it's not about the synth function per se, it's about certain frequencies which are totally wrong to me personally: distorted, mid range noisy synths which i hate.

this is a personal thing, i accept some people dont feel like this about those sounds, but i do maintain that the bigger issue is that the majority of people who come to dubstep now think that's all there is or can be.

i mean, i had a very well established producer try and tell me in the nicest possible way during a Ntype set, that Burial "wasn't really dubstep." the man makes UKG inspired dark garage, if he's not dubstep i dont know what is.

 

[Blackdown]

I found loads of the more 2 steppy end of tunes a bit "miss the point entirely". Seemed to me with that it was like garage with all the little hardcore elements removed, overproduced to take out all the rough edges. It's kind of nice seeing funky adding these elements back at the moment.

well, i think you'll probably need to name which ones. i find Burial's "Raver," Grievous' "Lady Dub remix" or Sully's "Trackside" pretty rude and ruff. Whereas some of Martyn's stuff is pretty clean (tho i do also like it personally).

 

[Shonx]

well, i think you'll probably need to name which ones. i find Burial's "Raver," Grievous' "Lady Dub remix" or Sully's "Trackside" pretty rude and ruff. Whereas some of Martyn's stuff is pretty clean (tho i do also like it personally).

Nah, we can forgive Burial most things, but overproduced he aint. Yeah I respect Martyn's stuff, but I find it a bit too smooth to really get into - still prefer TRG's original of Broken Hearts. It's just that for all it's smoothness a load of old 2 step had the swing but sounded a lot more jagged, loads of stabs and tuned percussion, which seemed to get left out of a lot of the second generation

 

[Logos]

For me Martyn (and 2562) are about another kind of rudeness entirely...not really 2-step but the dirty twin cities house vibe, Theo Parrish and the rest.

 

[datura]

For me Martyn (and 2562) are about another kind of rudeness entirely...not really 2-step but the dirty twin cities house vibe, Theo Parrish and the rest.

I think Martyn's stuff has a lot of soul, but a lot of the 2562 is almost too well produced and clean, almost metallic cold. I found the album surprisingly hard going when I quite liked the 12s.

 

[mms]

The confusion this has created is probably the best thing to feel rather than working out which side you're on, confusion is the point where things will unravel.
Also it's good to see some mystery back !
dubstep at it's most exciting was always mysterious.
those are my 2 pounds.

 

[Logos]

Thats something I've heard other people say...all I will say is that his remix of Basin dub sounded very fat and warm at Berghain last Friday! I probably agree about the 12s...his remixes are particularly good, especially the Vancouver and Pattie Blingh ones.

 

[Ory]

Martyn is technosoul. I don't know what it is that makes some people think Detroit style stuff is "clean." To me it's rough as fuck.

I'd agree that a lot of 2562's tunes are more on the clinical Berlin end of it all though.