philblackpool

gamelanstep
Preparing to get torn to shreds here...

Maybe not in all circles, but certainly here & in many other places, I think 'golden era' dubstep is a massive sacred cow, although whether it will stay that way remains to be seen (been here before with drum n bass etc). I feel I can just about get away with saying this, because when I lived down Essex way, I was one of the people who used to go & badger Uptown about El-B white labels 2001ish, so I'm not remotely averse to pre-wobbler stuff. I absolutely loved Ghost stuff at the time & really liked a lot of Zed Bias, used to listen to new stuff on Dubplate.net or whatever it was called (Artwork "Red", Horsepower etc) but started to think it was diminishing returns even then. And I was just starting to think about a FWD visit early 2003...when suddenly I moved up north.

I eagerly kept half an eye on it from then on, but I have to say I didn't find myself being drawn in much again until the end of 2007 (admittedly partly cos there was nowhere to hear the stuff on big speakers). Thats not to say I don't have one or two things on MP3 that I love (Slimzee, Geeneus & Riko at FWD 5th Birthday comes to mind, as does "Request Line" of course), but I always felt a bit too much fuss was made about its diversity & forward-thinking nature, when all that usually amounted to was using some pseudo-ethnic keyboard sound or a few 'Jah Rastafari' samples.

I'm probably with Mr Finney on this one, who was saying somewhere else on here that he thinks its better now, more genuinely varied. I think the wobblers have their place, the half-step stuff is still in there, you get full-on reggae-&-RnB-based tunes, some crossover with Funky & 2Step, the minimal, technoy stuff, the weird gruff offshoots like The Bug & Mordant Music, the Rustie end of wonky. Maybe its just cos I'm paying attention now & have caught up a bit, but I'm rally enjoying dubstep now, like I did 2000-2003, & for me 2004-6 was largely for the specialists!!

Ducks pretty quickly...:p:eek:
 

zhao

there are no accidents
what inspired your "gamelanstep" tagline philblackpool???

i axe because that's a part of what i'm attempting to make and i don't know anyone else working in this area. would be nice to find others...
 

philblackpool

gamelanstep
Ha...that was actually my tiny joke about what I mentioned above re: dubstep...putting any random 'ethnic' keyboard sound on things & claiming it to be revolutionary....hey, I'd LOVE to hear some stuff where it works though! Gamelan is obviously pretty ace when its done right....really like all that wacked-out contemporary classical stuff using em...
 

luka

Well-known member
everyone i know think dubstep is joke music so im not sure if it counts as a sacred cow. the old stuff is cornier than the new stuff. for the record i found el-b, horsepower whatever incredibly dull as well. they killed 2-step.
 

philblackpool

gamelanstep
I think that was why I never quite got to FWD before I moved...There was El-B - the guy who started the whole thing to my mind - saying he was shocked to see no-one dancing & was doing a full-on about face & going back to 4x4. And he ruled at that too...that El-Tuff 2-3 Bass /Deep Deep Love record thats mentioned elsewhere on here was fantastic...

I never thought Horsepower were as good as everyone else seemed to think they were, but I'll stand up for Ghost stuff all the way...they did so many over a short space of time that the quality wasn't 100% consistent, but I'm all for them paying the bills when you got stuff like "South West", El-Breaks 2 & Breakbeat Science/Cuba as well.

Maybe 2 Step is becoming a sacred cow now then? Ha. I was pretty well into it at the time, but jeez, there was some pretty cheesy stuff made in its name :)
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Think Horsepower are/were a bit oversold, but this is killer:


On a tangent, since you mentioned Ghost, does anyone know if the archives from the Hyperdub site (back when it was a proper site rather than, as seems to be now, just a page for the label) are out there anywhere on the net. Some fantastic early 2000s historical stuff on there, and of course great mixes...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Would never argue that it was! Great tune. Prefer primetime 2-step to Horsepower, just that particular tune stuck with me, and I loved that 2001-2 era so much for the variety on offer (personally i kind of lost touch 2004-5, and I would've thought that, given that starting point, something like Burial would've happened to dubstep far more quickly than it actually did). Still think, to echo Phil's comments that 2009 is very similar....so many different threads and dsitinctive producers around.

(Man, that Jaheim is phenomenal! I'm off to the 2-step thread to youtube myself into oblivion)
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I remember dubstep being a kind of techno off-shoot of Zeb Bias circa 01-02, which depressed me then. How it got from that to the current sound is beyond me. It seemed to bypass grime completely, to it's detriment. And I wasn't even a big fan of grime. In fact, I still mourn the death of 2-Step. Funky house is not making up for it.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Dude, she's a lesbian.

What? Nay sir... Are you getting her confused with Latifah?

Then again, she puts Da Brat on her tunes of her own free will...

Meh, still, her songs don't reflect that, so even if SHE HERSELF is, she doesn't portray that. Not like any rapper would.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
What? Nay sir... Are you getting her confused with Latifah?

Then again, she puts Da Brat on her tunes of her own free will...

Meh, still, her songs don't reflect that, so even if SHE HERSELF is, she doesn't portray that. Not like any rapper would.

Isn't that the joke with Missy though? That she was portraying herself as a total sex god with an arse like a blender who was always fucking men hung like elephants, and actually she was just having it off with Tweet
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Isn't that the joke with Missy though? That she was portraying herself as a total sex god with an arse like a blender who was always fucking men hung like elephants, and actually she was just having it off with Tweet

Ooof. Who knows. I don't want to concede that admitted possibility because I had a massive crush on Tweet; plus I rate her as one of my top 10 "R&B Girls who get underestimated because of dumb-ass-hood-people".
 
Top