the genre known as dubstep - search and destroy

I recently saw Benga DJ and left after 30mins. Several major problems.

1. Annoying chucklefuck MC saying stupid shit like 'lets hear it for the Benga' over an over and over and over and over and over and over
2. Benga has exactly 1 trick. Perfectly beatmatched wobbles that come slamming in at the right time. Initially this was very cool, after realizing that was all he was going to play and all he was capable of doing, I walked out.
3. Did I mention the stupid MC and the complete lack of variation in Benga's track selection?
4. Fuck the wobble and fuck the peeps who think halfstep wobblers are awesome. This is the same thing that happened with Drum and Bass and if Dubstep 'dies' like DnB did, you can attribute its demise to people like Benga who go for lowest common denominator stuff and only play wobblers.

^^^ Agree with this but query whether/why you're surprised? Hasn't this been true of mainstream dubstep for about three years now? i.e.:

god are these guys actually going for the "drop" aesthetic? DID DRUM AND BASS TEACH YOU NOTHING??
― acid waffle house (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, January 30, 2007 4:44 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

I've heard some great stuff from Benga. I liked a bit of Diary of An Afro Warrior and expected him to play some uptempo tracks too. I wouldn't have gone if I knew he was going to stick to dropping wobblers the whole night.

This new Sully single is great, both sides - so pretty and groovy and eerie. Sully's stuff always makes me wonder why dubstep spent five years or so obstinately not going there, when it's so obviously a great sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVncwp1y3VQ&feature=related

ha...i hardly ever go to dubstep nights but i saw 2562 a few weeks ago and one of my overriding impressions was that lots of the dancing looked really awkward. but even that was kinda charming in a way, seeing ppl figure it out as they went along. not much experimental dancing going on at house/techno nights!

i think rather than 'cant dance to it' its more like 'dont enjoy dancing to it' -- dancing to this stuff feels like a chore imo

that sully track is amazing, and fits totally into the "post-dubstep" stuff i've been mentioning - it'd fit on the hyperdub comp with no problems

tim you say you're a "dubstep grinch" but i remain confused as to which kind of dubstep you're grinching about, or whether it's just the more nebulous idea of a dubstep club strawscene with strawboys not dancing well? not that there isn't an element of that, sadly, but it's...not something to get hung up on. the stuff i'm really excited about - ikonika, joker, guido, zomby, subeena, brackles, bok bok, shortstuff - can mostly only be called dubstep b/c it emerged out of it. dubstep itself is now that lairy macho caspa/rusko bullshit that feels like someone's vomiting in your face.

re: dancing, it's best to dance to when mixed up with other stuff - i've never been into a whole night of samey dubstep sounds and tempos.

^^yes totally this. the most fun i've had dancing to dubstep was when kode9 (lol) played here and even then it just got boring after a couple of hours of relentless half-time beats.

i just cant stand the bass melodies ... they're so ham-handed & riff-y ... & its like "oh i like dubstep that doesnt sound like that" except i feel like thats like liking rap except for the rapping or something

tim you say you're a "dubstep grinch" but i remain confused as to which kind of dubstep you're grinching about, or whether it's just the more nebulous idea of a dubstep club strawscene with strawboys not dancing well? not that there isn't an element of that, sadly, but it's...not something to get hung up on. the stuff i'm really excited about - ikonika, joker, guido, zomby, subeena, brackles, bok bok, shortstuff - can mostly only be called dubstep b/c it emerged out of it. dubstep itself is now that lairy macho caspa/rusko bullshit that feels like someone's vomiting in your face.

Well Lex you kinda answer your own question: "Why do you say you dislike dubstep when there are so many artists I wouldn't even describe as "dubstep" that are so great??"

Kinda crappy halfstep nights with bad dancing constitute both a "strawscene" and really-existing-dubstep - I have quite a few friends who are into a kind of venn diagram of dubstep, minimal, deep house, detroit techno, the-music-formerly-known-as-wonky and... let's call it "Fact Music" for the purposes of this conversation (Bok Bok, Cooly G, Joy Orbison, etc.).

All the actually-marketed-as-dubstep-nights I go to with this group sound like the strawscene, if you avoid them then good for you but that doesn't mean that this scene is fictional - anymore than repetitive aggro d&b becomes fictional if you obstinately listen to only Offshore or D:A:T Music style d&b.

And I think the attempt to draw some simple line between "post-dubstep" on the one hand and caspa/rusko on the other is a bit distorting. It ignores not only the whole Apple Pips/Hessle Audio/Tectonic/etc. end of the scene, but also the vast majority of what I'd call "proper dubstep", comprised of a huge number of artists that can be really good and interesting (mala, quest and silkie, for example, are all "proper dubstep", but also excellent), okay but inconsistent (skream, loefah, goth-trad to pick a random example) and outright bad to mediocre (benga, distance).

It's convenient to pretend that caspa/rusko invented halfstep wobblers but in truth they're merely the most egregious practitioners.

But anyway I called myself a dubstep grinch because I don't like enough of the scene as a whole to expect people to take my recommendations seriously. If I wrote a review of a dubstep album or comp for Pitchfork I'd almost certainly get accused of being sneering and arrogant in my assumption that I'd identified the only dubstep worth liking (in fact that is precisely the "fanmail" I got for my review of the first Burial album!).

X-post to Deej

Dancing to Mala, its like Theo seriously. Effortless movement. So natural.

Dancing is my life, its all I do outside work and music.

But I hear you when it comes to the metal influenced end. It is totally riff based headbanger music, which is totally my past. I lived in Milwaukee for 2 years, metal everywhere. Hard to escape it really.

I'm willing to acknowledge that this could be a permanent bias for me, I'm really a lot like Chuck.

Still trying to make metal and disco work together, suspect it'll never happen.

Loefah is kind of hard to pin down Tim.

Its like: crap, obviously early work, GODLIKE GENIUS, silence, AWESOME BUT NOT GODLIKE, silence.

Some of those early dubs in 2005, man they were dark. Particularly the Crackbong remix.

Its like echo chamber electro, truly Antarctic cold.

I think you pretty much got the scene nailed though, other than forgetting Untold's label Hemlock.

The scene just isn't up to your standards, I respect that. Its increasingly not up to mine.

Its all about the Locked On to DMZ's Metalheadz. Haven't found that yet, we're close though now.

It ignores not only the whole Apple Pips/Hessle Audio/Tectonic/etc. end of the scene

it totally includes this end! untold, ramadanman etc.

I think it's more that dubstep's Big Serious Face is so ripe for mockery that's it's amusing to watch people getting annoyed because Big Serious Indie Website isn't treating it with the expected degree of reverence.

otm. esp when its kode 9 and hyperdub. you would almost expect a site like p4k to laud this and ignore other straighter dubstep as this is more home listenable, more left of centre, etc etc, so its funny that they havent. though im now wondering if theyre going to start raving about the wobble guys. i do like dubstep but for a long time it did take itself far too seriously. not even the artists, just the actual music. i do like various tracks but theres quite a few old ones that still sound wanky. the new ones just sound repetitive and samey but at least theres a bit of energy to it. (if not bass, the main thing that was great about dubstep)

i guess my position is that i've always been vaguely into dubstep, but it's only the post-dubstep stuff which makes me really enthusiastic about it as a scene

tim have you heard subeena yet? "boksd" and "solidify" in partic.

What exactly is dubsteps Big Serious Face? Would you prefer that it if dubstep had a smug, ironic little shoreditch twat like prancehall writing about it as opposed to someone not ravaged by raging cynicism like Blackdown?

Re: Tim F - for someone so judgemental, he really does have one of the most insipid, bland tastes in music - quite surprising really given the tunes he uses to wield the axe, I get all excited expecting his examples, in either funky or dubstep to live up to his sweeping critiques, but relentlessly I'm left underwhelmed by the sheer tepidness of where he finds 'vibe' located. But then again, its probably one of his counter-intuitive poptimist inversions to take bland, tepid and insipid as essential for maintaining the vibe of a scene.

You do realise this is a message board and you can address people directly?

isnt that what i just did?

2 examples

that sully track - vapid and tasteless to say the most
the silkie track - wobble with jazz ?? and ??

ok now sing that post like you do here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L1eiT6liX4

Just if anyone wants to lend an ear, here's the culmination of my early forays in dubstep: http://soundcloud.com/doglatin/my-own-dubstep2

x post

sorry, i meant to say 'tasteful' in relation to that Sully track.

xp. Dog latin you don't even like dubstep. Why would anyone listen to that?

Is it as good as your sitcom script?

ok i listened - badly produced cod-reggae step. Bravo.

What exactly is dubsteps Big Serious Face? Would you prefer that it if dubstep had a smug, ironic little shoreditch twat like prancehall writing about it as opposed to someone not ravaged by raging cynicism like Blackdown?

Re: Tim F - for someone so judgemental, he really does have one of the most insipid, bland tastes in music - quite surprising really given the tunes he uses to wield the axe, I get all excited expecting his examples, in either funky or dubstep to live up to his sweeping critiques, but relentlessly I'm left underwhelmed by the sheer tepidness of where he finds 'vibe' located. But then again, its probably one of his counter-intuitive poptimist inversions to take bland, tepid and insipid as essential for maintaining the vibe of a scene.

OMG dubcock!

Anyway open-goal zings aside:

the stuff i'm really excited about - ikonika, joker, guido, zomby, subeena, brackles, bok bok, shortstuff - can mostly only be called dubstep b/c it emerged out of it.

Yeah I really like all this stuff as well but more as swoony bedroom/headphone listening rather than anything I'd want to hear on a dancefloor. It sounds great but it still doesn't feel kinetic enough for me - tempo is the big sticking point for me here.

some of it's definitely kinetic enough but as i said upthread that's why the best nights are those that mix it up with garage, house, techno, funky etc - like night slugs

isnt that what i just did?

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding who you're referring to, but you appear to be addressing Tim in some kind of depersonalised fashion. Saying "he" rather than "you", or "his" rather than "your".

Anyway, back to dancing: 2562, Shed, and the Hessle Audio lot are DJs I've seen who work exceptionally well on the dancefloor - but they do mix it up a bit.

^^yeah one thing which is fairly crucial is that a lot of these artists' productions are bedroomy, heady "beat science" music, as djs the best of them have a real knack for cross-genre dancefloor-oriented sets (which are never, you know, ~eclectic~ or any such bullshit) (into which they smoothly drop in their own stuff...) - like, it's not just your average dubstep night when you hear everything from karizma to electrik red being dropped

It's a good job you stressed it wasn't ~eclectic~ otherwise I would have mistaken them for 2ManyDJs, I must admit.

xp. Dog latin you don't even like dubstep. Why would anyone listen to that?

― Pedro Paramore (jim), Friday, 30 October 2009 10:33 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Is it as good as your sitcom script?

― Pedro Paramore (jim), Friday, 30 October 2009 10:33 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok i listened - badly produced cod-reggae step. Bravo.

― Pedro Paramore (jim), Friday, 30 October 2009 10:35 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Wow, you really are a penis.

i mean,

1. you're wrong
2. are you still going on about that? give it a rest, that was nearly 5 years ago and it was the first draft of the first scene of something i was only messing about with anyway.
3. i never made allusions to these tracks having the power to blow your mind. let's hear you do something productive instead of these lazy semi-zings.

Check out my Dubstep name generator!

http://ohthehugemanatee.net/word-o-matic/762/

Tekster, Pinchack, Blackletic, Quar, Droidnappa, Seizuream....

Hd40000

Re: Tim F - for someone so judgemental, he really does have one of the most insipid, bland tastes in music - quite surprising really given the tunes he uses to wield the axe, I get all excited expecting his examples, in either funky or dubstep to live up to his sweeping critiques, but relentlessly I'm left underwhelmed by the sheer tepidness of where he finds 'vibe' located. But then again, its probably one of his counter-intuitive poptimist inversions to take bland, tepid and insipid as essential for maintaining the vibe of a scene.

Jon if you're gonna talk about me in omniscient narrator third person like that you need to get to work building some kind of consensus behind you first. Also it would help your argument to actually work out what "poptimist" means and when it makes sense to use it as a slur. Keep trying though!

LOL @ that Kode9 tweet. Simon's really tiresome these days. You don't like music anymore! We get it!

Unfortunately I agree with Jon in that I find that Silkie album Tim's been lauding to be for the most part on the drier side and a bit too same-y for its length. I had high hopes too. Is Deep Medi still doing a label comp? That would still be exciting.

Other than Caspa, Rusko and maybe Benga and Skream, I have no idea what "mainstream" dubstep even is anymore. It seems like all the "excitement" (in shops, on the web, blogs, etc) is being generated by stuff that if its not left-field still fills pretty marginal to whatever the scene is supposed to be these days (not that this stuff is bedroom music, but its still pretty abstract for floor-fillers). And it seems like that's been the case for a while. Maybe this is just my prejudices though.

Love the dubstep name generator. the name we've given ourselves are Ruxak & Shaedo.

oh i remember listening to that silkie album. it was ok in the same way that most techno albums are ok. ditto the martyn album, which is the other one that people have been overhyping this year.

martyn album way boring, like i really only need Vancouver and a couple of other tracks, and the vocal cuts on it... :/

martyn's finest moment this year is probably his fever ray remix.

i'd only trust a few of these producers on full lengths atm...joker and subeena excel at such a variety of sounds that they probably wouldn't go down the samey, safe route. and ikonika refines her sound in interesting ways almost every time out...

oh and GUIDO <3

I could see Cooly G doing a good album.

Here's hoping any Joker album gets a load of vocalists on it. I'd be happy for any of the others to release 100% instrumental records and I think vocals would actively get in the way on an Ikonika record.

Martyn's best moment(s) by far were the remixes of Efdemin, although one side was technically ambient, and the other was UK Funky Euro-style.

Didn't really feel the Fever Ray remix.

Best tracks on the album were 'Right Star', 'Elden St' and 'Far Away'.