Grievous Angel: Billy Preston Dub / We Want Miles

Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
miles9.jpg


There's been a bit of discussion about broken beat and jazz influences in substep recently, which is a coincidence for me, cos that's the sort of stuff I've been doing.

I was thinking about how Kode9 talks about dubstep being focused on having massive sub-bass with anything you want on top, and I wanted to apply that to a dubstep track that heavily sampled Miles Davis in deep space mode. This tune therefore has oodles of round subs, but with a rhythm that's not exactly a regular dubstep beat - it's got a lot more strange swing. It's built around Miles' Billy Preston tune, which was originally on the Get Up With It LP, though I took the version on Bill Laswell's Panthalassa remix album. It's here: http://www.grievousangel.net/Audio/GrievousAngelBillyPrestonDub.mp3. This has been played on Selector Dub-U's radio show.

I then did We Want Miles, a more straight forward dubstep tune which cuts the Miles samples down to breathless ghosts. I think it's probably a better tune, other people don't. It's here: http://www.grievousangel.net/Audio/GrievousAngelWeWantMiles.mp3.

Let me know what you think.
 
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M

mms

sometimes
yeah i liked the first one, needs to build a bit more, more breakdowns and could do with a bit of dirt and bit of tension. the echoes you used which reverberate quite far are great though and the sample sounds good.
 
E

eleventhvolume

Active member
Being a longtime fan of Miles and a latecomer to Dubstep (only warmed to it in recent months), I'm really interested by your experiment 2stepfan. I think your reduction of MD to wraith is the more successful of the two tracks . What I really love is the texture, interactional complexity/information overload and the full-frontal assault of his 70s music. In my, admittedly limited, experience Dubstep is reductive, in the sense of focusing upon essentials and looking for relatively subtle variations upon themes (bass pressure, syncopation, armoured tempos). Miles was at the heart of events unfolding in real-time, whereas in your Billy Preston dub he's flavouring, not the driving force. On the other hand, the We Want Miles piece is stylistically closer to where Miles was at the time of his recording and his ethereal dissolution seems to fit wonderfully. There's something eery/uncanny that fits with the hauntedness of Dubstep - I've heard people claim that they'd recognise Miles if he only played one note and there's something of that feeling in your track. Anyway, hope that's of some interest.
 
Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
Odd glitch there.

http://www.grievousangel.net/Audio/BillyPrestonDub320.mp3

EleventhVolume - yes I see just what you mean about the fit of a wraith-like Miles sample with the hauntedness of dubstep, and how it uses the recognition factor of a Miles note within its reductionism.

You make an interesting point about Miles being flavouring in the track in which he is, well, much more present. Billy Preston Dub has great swathes of time-synced Miles which are very high up in the mix; We Want Miles in contrast takes most of the same sequences of music but cuts them down to single notes, often sampled repeatedly, or short snatches. Maybe less is more!

Most people prefer Billy Preston, judging by the Dubstep forum, and I think I do too, mainly because I think I should have put more variation into the WWM bassline. But WWM has a cleaner, better mix!
 
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