the genre known as dubstep - search and destroy

right or wrong?

I think that's the one, I'll hook you up later today. It's all about the "Dub Plate remix".

It is!

Toasty "the Knowledge" (Hot Flush)
Search and Destroy "Food Chain" (Texture)
Slaughter Mob vs. Search and Destroy "Saddam" (Soul Ja)

Check out the Search and Destroy pirate radio shows if you are in London, a friend hooked me up with a CDR of Dj Prior's set on there and it's really heavy, super cool stuff.

ps: people seem to be calling the above records/scene "breaks" (yeah, dumb name, I know) rather than dubstep proper, but anyway to my ears it sounds like slowed down (to 120 bpm) jungle purged of its breakbeats but with those heavy heavy basslines, ecstatic/dark strings, and vocal/percussive tidbits getting tossed into ominous delays and reverbs. In other words, menacing and rad.

destroy:
horsepower productions, zed bias and any other lightweight wine bar shit.

I don't think I've ever been to a wine bar.

It's very Horsepower Productions also obv.

I have to disagree. The arrangement is much more whacked out whereas Horsepower is almost nu-jazzy - although maybe it's because I only listen to the dub (can't remember the a-side mix at all).

dubstep... money... don't make me laugh!

This is was the beginning of dark swing. As the Groove Chronicles' "1999" and El-B/Ghost's "2000" suggest, these predate the Pay As U Go /Musical Mob strains of dark garage that grime evolved out of in 2001.

February - Scientist, Youngsta, J Da Flex & mc Crazy D
March - Plasticman, Kode9, Wonder & mc Crazy D

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

Yeah I just got the double CD pack. Shall be listening to the remixes later. I've just heard the Deadbeat one thus far, but it's good.

this is actually a really good mala interview. maybe the best out of the ones ive read this year (much better/more specific than the one on factmag). i like him more after reading this.

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/little-white-earbuds-interviews-mala/

The new LV album's got a track called "Northern Line" which I'll never be able to get out my head when getting on the tube.

What you know about Kings Cross??

DESTROY IT ALL

The Hotflush compilation is quite good, the growing ubiquitous of clubnights playing lolstep in my area not so much

+ness

http://gotsars.com/images/384cdf0a024c703fa22778c7ed43f4c2.jpg

that is every kid in Hitchin

sans cat of course.

DESTROY: http://www.nme.com/news/korn/59480

probably the first dubstep song i ever liked. \o_o/

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/705/779544flvej5.gif

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/reviews/2012/silkie-and-quest-dubstep-allstars-vol.09.jpg

5/5

Can't wait to get this, even though I've heard the Quest tunes a billion times before and the last Silkie album underwhelmed me. These two together are straight fire.

Vahid did you ever hear their Uprooted live set from like 2008? One of my favourite sets ever.

<3<3<3 Silkie

yes and i liked it

it's going to sound corny but this is like the jacob's optical stairway of dubstep in places

they are synth wizards

Yeah Jacob's Optical Stairway are a good comparison.

I think also Bugz in the Attic at their best?

A POX of this vibe (across sub-genres) would be interesting.

i'm working on one but i think LHF would be up there too

sorta think LHF are too good-but-boring?

you heard this yet tim?

IT IS SO FUCKING GOOD

I just nabbed it today!

good, cause it's good

<3<3<3<3<3 this

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0RX5Nvd62k

Ruff ruff ruff
Beats beats beats

All Loefah DMZ tracks on his Bandcamp now.

So, the new Skrillex with Fred Again song actually sounds like dubstep for once.

Also revive to post one of my favorite dubstep tracks of all time:

Milanese - caramel cognac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0KTKlCQTjE

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