the genre known as dubstep - search and destroy

72 results found:

dj younsta - dubstep allstars volume 2 - features the massive neverland coming to vinyl on DMZ005 soon - also includes a variety of forthcoming hotness

DMZ004 - Coki - officer &

N-Type - Square Off

the new one from D1 (SOULJA008)

the utterly essential HYP003 - kode9's Kingstown

Benny Ill vs Dinesh & Mark One (VEHICLE5)

very old now but dub child's - voodoo tears it

plus many others - excellent period right now

check mr blackdown and mr dusk's keysound radio mix

And jed sent me Kingstown. Dusk and Blackdown's Keysound mix is REALLY good.

I guess....

We'd be remiss not to mention the Plasticman 1Extra mix as well (which I still haven't finished, but which is quite good so far.)

I've been accused of abandoning dubstep once grime came along and simply following the dictates of fashion. I'd someday like to write something long and torturous about the kernel of traumatic truth in this: the fact that changes in fashion of this type are sometimes the precise thing which opens up the space to stand back from a genre and perceive its limitations: by the end of 2002 you could make the retrospective argument that dubstep had been the "wrong" microstrand to watch, that "Pulse X" was what was important, but right through the preceding year it had felt like there was a properly dialectical tension b/w dubstep and proto-grime, that the next thing was going to emerge from the interstices between the former's dazzling fluidity and the latter's blocky rigidity.

And this is actually what happened, if you squint: the blocky rigidity simply intensified and mutated itself into something else which on the one hand worked according to entirely different rules and on the other rhythmically pre-empted anything that dubstep might bring to the table (you could say that "I Luv U" was the paradigmatic tune here but I think a better example might be J Sweet, Cameo and Gemma Fox's "Baby" - a pop-grime 8-bar beloved of Femme Fatale which nonetheless contains within it the same sort of razzle-dazzle snare action dealt by Horsepower, Bias or DJ Hatcha at their respective bests). And it really was as-against-this that dubstep began to strike me as somehow insufficient.

There's a sense in which grime actually "ate" dubstep - or at least the bits that I love, that I would insist housed the largest part of its potential - and all of dubstep's developments since then - whether it be mirroring grime or drifting towards broken beat or simply intensifying its "pure" strain in which rhythmic invention is increasingly downplayed in favour of other, less immediately tangible principles (see how dubstep increasingly transplants the "House is a feeling!" catch-cry as its own) - feel like attempts to distance itself from that traumatic experience of cannibalism. The fashionable switch from dubstep to grime was responding to something quite real that was going on in the music i think.

NB. This may be interpreted as a rant against post-02 dubstep but it's not meant in that spirit. There is a lot of stuff in the genre that I really like. Just wanted to give an example (from my own experience) of what might be behind a lot of people preferring grime to dubstep.

The Plasticman mix is good. Release an album, Plasticman!

xp

I think it's actually partly because I do like individual dubstep tracks so much that it really frustrates me that I don't like more of the genre, and it makes me harsher on it than I should be. Dubstep wears it's "I bring you the FUTURE! THE FUTURE! THE FUTURE!" inclinations on its sleeve, so it's easy for it to feel like it's underperforming. The obvious corrolary is techstep/neurofunk '97, where there's a handful of stuff that is among my favourite music ever, and most of the rest I could probably take or leave.

And in the spirit of forgiveness I should make a gratuitous shout-out to my favourite "mid-period" dubstep track, DJ Abstract's "Touch" - which is thoroughly awesome, but maybe I like it so much because it's almost a "proper" 2-step track. Female vocals! And gorgeously syncopated breakbeats, like a mutant hybrid of The Wideboys "Something's Got Me Started (Dub)" with the Zed Bias remix of 2 Banks of Four's "Hook and a Line". And squiggly keyboards!

Dubstep lovers, this week's Breezeblock was a dubstep special (programme is streamed for a week), with Mala (Digital Mystikz), Skream, Kode 9 and Space Ape, Vex'd, Hatcha, Loefah and Sgt. Pokes, and Distance.

Tracklisting here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/breezeblock/breezeblock_archive.shtml?20060110

vexd.blogspot.com

and their mix from 11th November at Adverse Camber is also worth a listen (but is very quiet)
http://spannered.org/mixes/vexd/vexd_nov11_2005.mp3

Really??? To me says "I am 1978! 1978! 1978!!!!"

and that's bad why? 8)

oh http://www.garagepressure.com/ has some podcasts available. it seems that grime has made it to australia.

i think this really means that the discourse is a self-sustaining thing which doesn't actually need the music input at all.

OK maybe that was hasty, though - i just listen to youngsta's mix and it's a lot more than that. veering dangerously close to tranquility bass at times, however.

pls message me if you'd like to part w/ a copy for a reasonable sum.

who's going to be mixing 3?

what's the dirt over at dissensus about these releases?

Burial on the Breezeblock

In session, Cinematic sounds from Burial a rising producer within the dubstep scene. Burial is a 26 year old from South London. This music is so far out, cool, fresh, haunting, eerie, atmospheric - INNOVATIVE and demands a listen.

Tracklisting info: Radio 1 - Mary Anne Hobbs [Now on Listen Again]

Burial music reminds me of Coil, dub, Omni Trio, Massive Attack, Eno & Byrne, Tricky, artcore drum n bass and the dubby side of early prog house circa 1992 ala Leftfield.

Deep aquatic spacey, eerie, haunting, dreamy, drifting, spatial music.

Leading dubstep music critic/writer: Martin Clark interviews Burial on the blog Blackdown

Plus free MP3 samples

Burial “Burial” is out on Hyperdub in May. Album of the year anyone? asks Martin Clark

Hyperdub: Burial

BURIAL: BURIAL - HDBCD001
OUT MAY 15th 2006

This first album on Kode9’s Hyperdub label comes from the mysterious Burial. On this self-titled CD debut, Burial carves out a sound which sends the dormant slinky syncopations of uk garage, via radio interference, into a padded cell of cushioned, muffled bass, passing through the best of Pole’s Berlin crackle dub.

Burial explores a tangential, parallel dimension of the growing sound of dubstep. Burial’s parallel dimension sounds set in a near future South London underwater. You can never tell if the crackle is the burning static off pirate radio transmissions, or the tropical downpour of the submerged city outside the window. In their sometimes suffocating melancholy, most of these tracks seem to yearn for drowned lovers. The smouldering desire of ‘Distant Lights’ is cooled only by the percussive ice sharp slicing of blades and jets of hot air blowing from the bass. Listen also for a fleeting appearance from Hyperdub’s resident vocalist, the Spaceape unravelling his crypto-biography. In its loud quietness, Burial takes his kitchen crackle aesthetic neither from the digital glitch nor merely a nostalgia for vinyl’s materiality. Instead, as ‘Pirates’ suggests, Burial crackle mutates the tactile surplus value of pirate radio transmissions. Burial’s mix is haunted. Echoed voices breeze in and out, on road to another time. Pirate signal from other frequencies steams in. A tidal wave of noise submerging all but the crispest syncopations. The noise is not violent, but caressing, tickling, exciting the ends of your nerves. Seducing you in.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rp0p

repeat play for the 20th anniversary of Dubstep Wars episode of the Beezeblock

"20 years ago, Mary Anne Hobbs made a show called Dubstep Warz, originally broadcast on Radio 1, on January 10th 2006. She brought together a group of Artists from a very young South London scene, and in that moment, they changed the world of electronic music forever. Digital Mystikz, Skream, Kode 9 & The Spaceape, Vex’d, Hatcha & Crazy D, Loefah & Sgt. Pokes, and Distance. This the true sound of Dubstep, still so fresh and future-facing in 2026."

the Skream, Vex'd and Distance are as good as i remember them. makes me wonder if there was anything i missed back in the day.

Most of those Dubstep Allstars comps are solid gold from what I’ve heard.

number 2 was pretty much where i started. maybe the first vex'd lp, which isn't the traditional dubstep sound. and the dubstep show on FBI Radio in, of all places, australia (presenters were actually Moving Ninja)

Well looks like you’re yoinks ahead of me then lol. I don’t know if the style is quite “still so fresh in 2026” but there have definitely been some quality releases in recent times. (I haven’t been following closely enough to post regularly here though.)

my eldest got me the limited 2cd set that Tectonic Recordings released last year featuring new stuff.
it's all really f&cking good, but the appleblim track especially with the techno bleeps is very special.

https://tectonicrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/tectonic-sound

Really into that tectonic comp. Impressive to see a comp that long feeling both classic and fresh, and celebrating 20 years! I’d single out the Kahn and Neek track as my favourite.

I like that in the past few months I bought that comp and a repress of artwork’s Red. Feels like the circle of life is flowing.

saw this thread bumped and ended up listening to dubstep all-stars vol 6, which is somehow the only one in my library? I should rectify that

it's fun to skim through all the twists and turns here. dismissing the caspa and rusko direction right before that blew up, the commercialization of "dubstep" that sounded nothing like the original sound, etc.

I think a lot of the stuff that got dubbed (heh) dubstep in the early 2010s is probably just thought of as generically EDM now? rough times when "dubstep" seemed to mean "EDM with big drops" for a few years in the public ear

Skream got annoyed with me on Twitter at one point for saying trap was on the brostep spectrum roffle.

That Tectonic comp looks amazing

damn I was just thinking today how Silkie and sully are really the only dubstep I f/w. gotta check that out.

― blank, Thursday, 13 September 2012 04:53

And yeah interesting course of the thread here for sure. Is this Sully the same one who’s recently rampaged through the jungle scene?

the (digital copies of the) tectonic comp are half the price on boomkat that it is on bandcamp (and bandcamp seems to add 20% tax by default, which us Britishers aren't used to).

i also noticed there's a third tectonic plates comp i never got around to

and a fourth...

that said, i vaguely remember even the second one was moving away from what i liked about dubstep - the slow, dark, crow-dark, dubby bits - and was turning into something a bit more... fidgety.

listening now. and it's fine, but is it dubstep?

samples:
https://boomkat.com/products/tectonic-sound