dubstep

Night, right. I was thinking about, and probably will ultimately include Emotions by Benga, since it's the only track of his that I've heard that I can stand (and do quite like at that).

Dude already knows about joy orbison, so I opted to leave out the mngo.

Thanks, though!

I also want to represent many of the facets of what dubstep has morphed into, but really don't know my way around funky house, and whatever else, which is something I might as well learn about anyways.

UK funky didn't emerge from dubstep so don't worry. Your second disc is a decent overview of "what dubstep has morphed into" assuming you're trying to repress the existence of the Caspa/Rusko/Distance/Coki etc end of the scene.

If I was gonna add stuff to your comp (which looks good) I'd add:

1) Some early stuff like Horsepower Productions, Zed Bias, DJ Abstract, Artwork etc

2) Some Mala, e.g. "Left Leg Out", "Change", "Forgive" etc.

3) Maybe something more "classic dubstep" sounding but still musical if yr friend likes that kinda thing, e.g. Hotflush label circa 2007 like Vaccine's "Breathless".

maybe some Distance (Tuning) and some Vex'd (Crusher Dub) on the first cd. and some MRK-1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZ8_EGCrSQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAgsnmUdfM

and some moving ninja on the second, ankoku butoh perhaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrLiV7ho1f0

My faves of the genre tend to feature vocals and a roots-y vibe:

Jkamata + 2000f - "You Don't Know What Love Is"
LV feat. Dandelion - "CCTV"
Uncle Sam - "Round The World Girls" (Tes La Rok VIP Mix)

Also, while many purists despise it, you could put a token jump-up track like "Where's My Money?" by Caspa.

caspa has some good ones like louder and terminator.

Thanks for the recommendations.

I think it's only proper to have some pre 2005 stuff. like horsepower, hatcha, dj abstract, but this is foreign territory to me, I don't know if there are one or two particularly essential tracks...

tbh, for me at least, a lot of that stuff, like the first dubstep allstars comp, and a lot of whats on the roots of dubstep comp, barring a few tracks, its pretty boring. really going nowhere insipid almost chilled out vibey stuff. the 'dread' isnt really that present. stuff like horsepowers golden nugget is classic obv but thats a little bit later. good for mixing id think, to slide into a set, but not that interesting on its own. i know its meant to be more vibey than hit you in the head type music, but it didnt really do that either from where im standing. the stuff guys like skream and benga did early on was much better.

yeah, I agree. I think there's too much value put into the "golden age" of dubstep by many.

yeah its dreary stuff. doesnt work really as uk garage or as dubstep, its just transitional stuff. all those soft wafting dubby chords are pretty snooze inducing.

Why did it take so long for dubstep to get the energy boost it needed to start becoming more accessible to people who weren't interested in "meditating on bass-weight" and just wanted a new beat to step to? It took up to maybe 3-4 years from its inception to become a proper dance phenomenon.

I remember about 2006 inviting a dubstep DJ to open one of my club nights and feeling that the slow drifting sounds were sucking all the energy out of the half-empty room. Nowadays when I invite people from Stink Like Sock to play, they headline the night and it's full of kids going bonkers.

Scenes have always taken time to build and go overground - dubstep and grime are the most obvious examples - it's just the microscope is on them from the very start now and if they're not massive within months its viewed as a failure.

Haha yeah, the first dubstep set I ever saw was sandwiched between DnB and techno at an eclectic warehouse rave and utterly cleared the dancefloor in about thirty seconds. I myself thought it was terribly dull. That must've been 05 or 06.

xpost

There was more dubstep at Glastonbury than there was house or techno, it was kind of annoying.

xpost are you talking about the wobble type stuff? cos old dubsteppers dont like that do they? i like some of it, but a lot is really samey. but then the older dready/oppressive/stiff/dead stuff was bloody samey too. just depends on what same you like. thing is though the early stuff like skream, benga, and even early digital mystikz was pretty dancey. they just ended up getting much much slower during dubstep's 'golden age'.

wobble as in the mid range end which is the most popular type, obv.

Wobble (the LFO-driven buzz-saw stuff like on the Caspa/Rusko Fabric mix, right?) got me listening again tbh, but yeah, it's become just as stale as drum'n'bass did when all the jump-up stuff was flooding in in the mid-late nineties. I was more referring to the incredibly slow, uncatchy drifting bass pads and quasi-arabic rhythms that I first heard on things like the Rephlex "Grime" comp and the early dubstep allstars comps. I just couldn't really get into that no matter how hard I tried. It all sounded way too slow and empty, unstructured almost with all the bass sounds like whales drifting past. It's why when the Caspa/Rusko came along and annoyed all the purists, I didn't really understand. Much more interested in decent rhythms and on-point bass, but there's a bit of a push-pull thing going on between wobble and bass-weight stuff. Too much of either tends to sound either boring or generic.

I won't profess to being an expert, just my views.

yeah, im in a similar boat. liked some of the 'golden age' stuff, but god a lot of it was deathly dull. though naturally you had some good tracks, the emptiness (purposeful or not) of that halfstep era overall was mind numbing. i liked the bass but it was just bass stripped of all its heat, like digidub/jungle for hippies who couldnt take the heaviness of jungle and liked the bass but only as long as everything was nice and comforting. the best stuff i think was what you had on the bingo beats 3 mix, or plasticman and mark one, or early digital mystikz tunes like chainba or b. the more industrial stuff that had something happening rhythmically. the fabric mix is classic really, but too much of what you get now is too formulaic/stupid. alot of what i hear benga and skream play now is just like big beat or stadium dubstep, really awful braindead shit for rock fans.

re: the nice and comforting thing, this has its place of course, and you can look at it as a negative or positive, but its not like even guys like loefah or mala would argue against, theyve all said as much thats what they were going for with their raves. which i mean is nice really, who wants aggro in a club, but the music seemed very self aware of that, to get rid of anything that might inspire a 'bad vibe'.

The first Dubstep Allstars mix is dull but that's not because there's no good early dubstep. First Horsepower Productions album, DJ Abstract's "Touch", the El-B singles on Ghost, stuff like Zed Bias's remix of "Hook & A Line" if it counts.... In general I agree with the argument that the "roots of dubstep" etc are overrated, and of course I prefer 2-step per se but EDB's comp is supposed to be about dubstep not 2-step.

Dubstep bored me silly until I saw Kode9 DJ in 2007, which showed me what it could all be. I agree that it seems the value placed on early stuff seems more of a longing for the past, at least given how much much more interesting I think stuff became as the decade moved on.

Ultimately, though, after some looking around I ended up putting in DJ Abstract's Touch and Horsepower's Classic Deluxe, which do sound pretty 2-steppy, I guess, which is fine by me. I personally had to bite my tongue a few times about certain inclusions; even midnight request line, which is at the beginning of the cd, I feel is there to sort of get it over with. But I'm a latecomer to the genre, and a casual fan at best, so take that as you will.

saying all that though, hatchas practise hours 2005 mix is worth seeking out.

If we're including people like Zed Bias and early El B, I must say I prefer Steve Gurley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB4dSRuDjQU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdccX4BJCqc

Well, if you're taking recommendations I'd flag that not everyone agrees with the statements above, especially since they're coming from several of the most dubstep-sceptic contributors to ILX lol ("the beginning was not as good as garage, the middle is dull and the end is only funny because it winds up people who liked the beginning and middle, now want to hear my advice on the best bits? oh hang on...")

As a counterweight I'd say: it's not an 'or' decision between UK garage and early dubstep, that both had a variety of highlights, that Dubstep Allstars 1 remains an amazing CD - quite the opposite of the reviews above and if you like it also look for [disclaimer alert] the Roots of El-B and Roots of Dubstep compilations, the Horsepower and two Zed Bias LPs (Maddslinky (about to be re-issued) and Phuturistix - that Hook and a Line remix was an irrelevant afterthought), some of Hatcha's free promo CDs like this one http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/2009/11/happy-birthday-i-am-5.html, that the Bingo Beats 3 CD was mostly early instrumental grime and breakstep, that rather than being "classic" that Caspa/Rusko's Fabric CD was just as generic as all the wobble clones that followed it and that of the mid era I'd recommend DMZ releases 1 to about 12.

but how could it have been generic if they were basically bringing something pretty fresh to dubstep? its not like that sound had already saturated itself and become pointlessly formulaic by that point had it? if you dont like it, fine, but to say it was generic at that early stage of wobble/mid range, is a bit premature.

there was tons of that stuff around at the time, it was generic already: perhaps it was just the first time you'd heard it but it'd been rampant in N Type sets etc for at least a year before. it's probably a function of the fact that it has one general pattern (halfstep drums - drop - large dynamic range change then LFO mid-range bassline) so there wasnt a lot of room to play with...

i dunno, the fabric album is still a great mix. i know people were tired of jump up dubstep stuff pretty early on, but generic is an odd criticism to level at dubstep imo, just cos a lot of the mid period stuff which was basically 'eerie fx intro, heavy bass entrance, moody synth layering, back to heavy bass entrance' could be pretty generic itself. i know what youre saying about being more limited/shallow, but genericism is only a weak point if you hate that stuff to begin with.

i liked the idea of dubstep from the beginning, but didn't actually start loving & connecting to actual tracks until a year or two ago (when to my ears it started embracing hip-hop/r&b sounds, different moods, songiness, etc.). if that makes me a dilettante then i'm totally cool w that.

Early stuff... I've really really really been digging the Skream track 'Afeks' on Southside Dubstars: http://www.chemical-records.co.uk/sc/servlet/Info?Track=SSDUB007 from way back, but it just got a repress... its got such a killer bump to it. Just bassline, the odd fruity loops bleep, voice sample and an insane bumpy beat that just gets under your skin and makes you move like any good dance music does... I guess it fits insaide that strange area that Martin chats about and links to with the Hatcha mix cd where garage is twisting into dubstep, so the beats have a flex to them and they channel it thru that dark spaced out energy still. So much of my fave dubstep/wot-u-call-it? new and old has that rhythmic flex to it that trys to ballance that bumpy dance floor energy with something a little bit more spaced out.

Forthcoming Skream album is basically a "dubstep...the story so far". there's a bit of everything in there, which is nice because i guess he was its first superstar exponent.

i don't know if i can even bring myself to listen to it. skream is like the personification of the musical peripeteia a lot of mainstream dubstep has undergone. Seeing him in a sparsely attended show in a cramped cellar in 2006 was my road to Damascus moment with dubstep, and seeing him play a set of shit d'n'b, quasi-gabba, & la roux remixes to a stowed club last year was a real nadir for me.

like not even a nadir of dubstep. just awful.

well, this will happen with acts who make it big unfortunately.

did people read the mixmag dubstep special? i found it a bit... lacking somewhat. for all of dubstep's innovation and splintering over the last few years, i'm itching for someone to come along and REALLY stir stuff up.

jim - judging by what i've read of your opinions on dubstep, you won't like the new skream. it's very assorted, kinda commercial, not for ass purists AT ALL.

(ummm... that was supposed to say "bass purists", apologies)

I know, I mean I've not heard it but Skream has been really hit and miss for ages for me. Hearing him pull up his Le Roux remix at a DMZ in Leeds about 4 times was so bad it was unture, but then he releases stuff like Minimalistix or the old bits that recently came on Keysound and its alright. I dig lots of early Skream but now I know one in every ten Skream tunes are gonna be worth a listen now. Its kind of a shame but he's still doing his thing and dropping stuff for the heads every now and again, I'd rather it was him doing it and going 'mainstream' than some shite like Doorly or Jackwob. Even Rusko really falls short, Skream is way ahead on his own let alone with the Magnetic Man project with Benga and Artwork, which is signed to some kind of major and has some sort of poppy/dance single in the works by the sounds of things.

Mala's album is out right now btw haha

i know nothing about mala - what's the score there?

apparently rusko is going to be doing stuff with big name pop acts soon - can't remember who it was, but the idea is o_O

the mala thing is all old stuff but apart from one track - the last one i think, its all really top quality. no city cycle unfortunately, but from the samples, i dont think theres a low point on there.

"did people read the mixmag dubstep special? i found it a bit... lacking somewhat. for all of dubstep's innovation and splintering over the last few years, i'm itching for someone to come along and REALLY stir stuff up."

yeah but that piece is just another cheerleading piece on dubstep.
for all the new stuffs interesting-ness, not much of it feels that essential really. its like some new eclecticism movement.

Skream is way ahead on his own let alone with the Magnetic Man project with Benga and Artwork, which is signed to some kind of major and has some sort of poppy/dance single in the works by the sounds of things.

It's out in a few weeks and is the fucking worst

Rusko's album already has like Gucci Mane on and the Dirty Projectors girl doing cute r'n'b-ish vox - it's not a classic by any stretch but I didn't hate it either and I think he'd potentially turn his hand to legit pop tunes a lot more successfully than that Magnetic Man garbage

isn't it Britney Spears he's working with?

Kindly guide me to more filthy acidic dubstep like Trolley Snatcha:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arWouqZf0kk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMX-mNe80vQ

i dont really have much of a clue about dubstep at the mo. all the wobble mid range stuff sounds fine to me but totally generic. no idea whos doing what. tempted to get that caspa mix cd he put out a while back (if you like trolley snatcha youd prob like that) and maybe the jakes one but thats about it. that first trolleysnatcha track would be better without the ska bits in between.

You're right titchy. You have no idea.

still though, more than you.

lol

"all the wobble mid range stuff sounds fine to me but totally generic. no idea whos doing what. tempted to get that caspa mix"

i rest my case.

you numpty. i mean i dont have all the tracklists, hence i dont know whose behind every single track i hear.

haha
no, it was the
"tempted to get that caspa mix"
that gave the game away

Glad to see that dance music noobians are being kept in check by people like Jon B. I mean, where are they all flocking from?

Guessing Jon B is a new account for that twat who got permabanned for making lynching jokes on the n-word thread, if any mods care enough to keep an eye on that

still get nostalgic for the old dubstep days from time to time, but don't listen to much nowadays. great memories though, skream playing in a basement to about 30 people in glasgow and DMZ second birthday, Exodus and DMZ at the West Indian Centre in Leeds all 2006/2007, i think), skream gave me the nickname "Hanson" - which he pronounced with a dropped H - because he thought i looked like Alan Hanson. halcyon days

after wondering about this since 2005, this morning, just now, The Death Of Mr Spock shuffled up from some Trojan comp and it's basically vex'd's Crusher Dub. i can now rest easy.

(um, Spock, Crusher... the clues were all there)

edition of 10, 8 left (I bought one yesterday) - man, this genre really is dead, isn't it :-(

https://variousproduction.bandcamp.com/album/foller

not according to my eldest who lives in london and been going to loads of dubstep nights in recent months.
like d-n-b, the nights are a mix of new names and original 140 legends.
sounds like the nights are very popular.
weirdly, i recently ordered the various productions remix album on cd.
that and their proper album still hit the spot.

I had that remix one in my car cd player forever, nice backup when I didn't feel like fiddling with my phone and bluetooth

just a shame they couldn't licence the adele/m.i.a remixes for the release as i never grabded any of their ltd vinyl releases.
also, just checked, i still have their Clash mixtape.
suspect that was actually the first thing i listened to that made me get the dubstep thing a little more.