petergunn

plywood violin
http://www.zshare.net/audio/53917681e37d1f12/

pharrells been listening to some dubstep...

so is dubstep forum losing it's mind over this?

i mean, the amount of ZOMG TIMBALAND STEALS DUBSTEP!!! threads i've seen about tracks that, uh, just sounded like timbaland tracks always cracked me up...

that, said, yo, HE IS JACKING SOME DUBSTEP, for sure... kinda cool, to see what Pharrell's version of dubstep is... sorta half Loafah/Matty G hip hop bizness and half restrained wobble... it would be nice to hear a full on caspa/rusko distorted wobble remix of this...
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Appleblim flippin wrecked fwd last night. The stuff he was playing all seems to have gone up in tempo and had this amazing insistent minimal vibe to it. Real prime-time dancefloor set. Missed all of Spyro unfortunately, was jokes seeing Loefah twice in 3 days at the same club!
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
Appleblim flippin wrecked fwd last night. The stuff he was playing all seems to have gone up in tempo and had this amazing insistent minimal vibe to it. Real prime-time dancefloor set. Missed all of Spyro unfortunately, was jokes seeing Loefah twice in 3 days at the same club!

lots of blim's stuff has been vering towards just minimal/techno now, was there any urban/edge/bass/woomp to it or was it mostly driving/linear?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Pinch and Pev's latest bits are great, but to me they seem to have almost sublimated the dubstep influence in a way - the sub-bass is submerged beneath/in the kicks... Wish I'd gone to FWD, would like to have seen Silkie too. Oh well, The End this Friday.

re. the techno/dubstep thing, more and more recently I've started thinking that I should just let go of the idea of dubstep as a unified movement/scene. Obviously it would be great to pack as much variety as possible into nights/sets but I'm not sure if that's the way it IS going to go. I mean, when I got into dubstep most of the people into it seemed to be 'on the same page' so to speak - there were tunes and producers that people disagreed over, but there seemed to be a general consensus at least over what producers were/should have been shooting for. Whereas now I think people want all sorts of things from dubstep, some of which seem mutually incompatible, at least if they want lots of it. A lot of people into dubstep want to go to a night and just be hit with the FILFIEST basslines all night - and that isn't a night I want to go to, really.

Balance would be ideal but it seems to me to be lacking... but I don't feel pessimistic about this at all, I think there's so many producers working within dubstep/fringe genres that are going to be putting out amazing stuff this year (Joker, Starkey, Pinch, Peverelist, Silkie, Quest, RSD... the list goes on), and I'm sure I'll go to plenty of great dubstep nights, hopefully starting Friday (you know, where all the OLD stuff will be played lol). It's also obviously a good thing that FWD has become less of a dubstep-only night, great to see some grime/funky/house DJs getting a look in again (and even some DNB DJs... I wonder if D-Bridge will play DNB at that Martyn album launch?)

Of course there's an argument to say that dividing the music will mean that everything becomes too self-referential and removed from what it stands supposedly apart from (i.e. wobble becomes too wobbly, if it hasn't already, ''deep'' stuff becomes too removed from the dancefloor/fun)... but then again, perhaps such divisions could result in some interesting music that wouldn't be made with due deference to roots?

It gets a bit exhausting having a set of expectations set up for dubstep that not that many people (other than on forums) seem to have... I think I should concentrate on the bits I do like.

Sort of on the subject, was listening to Shackleton's remix of 'Minimoonstar' the other night while off my tits and my mind started dissolving a little bit.
 

mms

sometimes
It gets a bit exhausting having a set of expectations set up for dubstep that not that many people (other than on forums) seem to have... I think I should concentrate on the bits I do like.


yeah, to be honest there were always bits of post garage stuff that i didn't really like that much, then some people like vexed, who i didn't really get into that much beyond one single but who got loads better, but then you had all that breakstep stuff that was pretty much the precursor to the wobbly stuff in mood and tone, that was wayback too.
i've got a good feeling that 2009 is going to be a year when alot of dubstep artists have got over the battle of where they actually stand, and won't pander to the less subtle aspects of the music that alot of people like as it is now.
last year there was loads of good music and alot of shit, good new artists and run of the mill ones, thats how it always is.
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
resident adviser have just made us label of the month, they're a mag that specialise in house and techno - http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=1006

rams put together a mix for it which doesnt sound techno-y, which you can download up there.

it's a funny one but i think that where house/techno influences in dubstep are concerned, peoples pre-conceptions colour what they actually hear. we seem to do well out of it but i can only think of one tune we've put out that fits that tag, deviant off pangaea's first 12. peverelist gets held up as one of the guys that instigated a crossover sometimes, but if you listen to them his tunes sound like they have as much to do with jungle as they do 4x4 music.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Big up for that feature Ben, looks interesting.

You're right about the preconceptions thing - as much as I'm getting more and more into techno and house, I still do associate techno in particular with a sense of... chin-strokery, boffinism and nerditude, to put it nonsensically. I think this is because I haven't really been to many techno nights, I don't hear things in their pilled-up context, and so all I see is multicoloured limited vinyl pressings etc. And I think that all these ideas (along with 'Energy Flash' and its dancefloor vs. 'sophisticated' rhetoric) have somewhat ruined my enjoyment of some very good records over the last year.

Also I think what you're talking about with regards to Hessle ties in with our little discussion about Shed/Dettmann et al. bringing a sort of garagey swing into techno. Also I suppose the minimalist sort of aesthetic of tunes like 'Grimey' and the 'Put You Down' RMX ties in with minimal techno.

Despite all my reservations I think there's some amazing stuff being made on this borderline between techno and dubstep - the Dettmann RA podcast and Scuba XLR8R mix have both wowed me in the last few months. Sure the stuff in these mixes is sacrificing certain great bits of dubstep, but isn't every kind of dubstep doing that nowadays?
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
lots of blim's stuff has been vering towards just minimal/techno now, was there any urban/edge/bass/woomp to it or was it mostly driving/linear?

Seemed pretty driving to me, not particular dubby either. Was pretty drunk but I remember mainly thinking about how quick it was. Funny but the two sets that have really grabbed me recently were LD at DMZ and Blim at FWD, both really driving and wonderful.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
Also I think what you're talking about with regards to Hessle ties in with our little discussion about Shed/Dettmann et al. bringing a sort of garagey swing into techno. Also I suppose the minimalist sort of aesthetic of tunes like 'Grimey' and the 'Put You Down' RMX ties in with minimal techno
i dunno, i find dettman dull. i didn't listen to his RA podcast, but with the berghain mix, it's like once he's done with pummeling the 4x4 harder and harder for the first few records it goes nowhere. picks up at the end with the shed and radio slave tracks, but i didn't find much swing in it to be honest. maybe i just need to listen to it more.
 

ThinKing

Well-known member
so no love for kutz round here then or have i missed a thread?

i'd imagine those whites you bought were from SOTU - most likely TPs or very limited whites. SOTU (Soul Jazz's record shop) often sell upfront whites of their forthcoming releases, as they did with the recent Cotti/Chef plates.
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
resident adviser have just made us label of the month, they're a mag that specialise in house and techno - http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=1006

rams put together a mix for it which doesnt sound techno-y, which you can download up there.

it's a funny one but i think that where house/techno influences in dubstep are concerned, peoples pre-conceptions colour what they actually hear. we seem to do well out of it but i can only think of one tune we've put out that fits that tag, deviant off pangaea's first 12. peverelist gets held up as one of the guys that instigated a crossover sometimes, but if you listen to them his tunes sound like they have as much to do with jungle as they do 4x4 music.

I thought this quote was particularly encouraging: "I'm not really interested in trying to categorise ourselves off into some little sub-corner."

Bigup :)

PS Pev's a badman, you can't chuck him in the techno box because he's still prepared to rewire/remove/mutate/leave out pretty much any element of a track.
 

childrentalking

Well-known member
yeah, confused about the dettmann/swing thing. he's a decent producer, but his beats are quite rigid. not so keen on him as a dj, at least at home, anyway.
 

mms

sometimes
Seemed pretty driving to me, not particular dubby either. Was pretty drunk but I remember mainly thinking about how quick it was. Funny but the two sets that have really grabbed me recently were LD at DMZ and Blim at FWD, both really driving and wonderful.

dubby techno was always gonna be an obvious development for dubstep same as mid range 2 step drum and bass wobbly bits, it's a very literal take on the dub element as the step element is for the wobble posse. Shame really, 90% of dubby technos a massively cliched area, borne out of basic channel maurizio etc, who left the sound a while ago and copied to death, There are so many other choices and ways to go, just in the area of how you bring the dub out of the dubstep let alone anywhere else.
 
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Badga Tek

Flushing MCs down the loo
i've got a good feeling that 2009 is going to be a year when alot of dubstep artists have got over the battle of where they actually stand, and won't pander to the less subtle aspects of the music that alot of people like as it is now.
last year there was loads of good music and alot of shit, good new artists and run of the mill ones, thats how it always is.

I get the impression that a lot of producers and DJs have, indeed, got over this battle. Personally, as someone who started 'following' dubstep at the end of 05 and as a bedroom DJ, rather than a producer or 'proper' DJ, I've lost interest in battling to maintain this idea that dubstep is still a big unified scene. I think Corpsey nailed it, lots of people who listen to the music are looking for different things from it. I think producers and DJs can be freer and, hopefully, it will result in even better music being made and better sets.

As for Pev, I agree he often gets slightly unfairly marked out as a posterboy of the dubstep/techno hybrid when he is much more than that. I see him as an incredibly diverse producer and am really excited to see what he comes up with next.

Also, on the subject of dubstep/techno hybrid can journalists please come up with a slightly more interesting narrative than starting every article on the subject by gushing over Villalobos? This isn't aimed so much at that RA article because I thought that led on nicely to talking about Ramadanman and the reference to him dropping Blimey and Put You Down RMX was actually quite relevant. But, inevitably, every piece on dubstep/techno seems to hold up RV's remix of 'Blood On My Hands' as both the Holy Grail and great initiator of this fusion. I can see a certain symbolism in the production of that remix but its far from his best work IMO and I seem to remember at the time that tracks like Vansan/You Bring Me Down, The Grind and Magnetic City seemed to do far more to usher the advent of this fresh hybrid than that remix.
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
...yeah, especially since tracks like "Basic G" were doing techy dubstep years before. I guess it's all about entry points and permissions to stray from their godfathers for techno fans tho.
 

tom lea

Well-known member
i don't think it's necessarily that. people recognise that it was already happening with tracks like 'vansan' - villalobos working with shackleton simply drew a more explicit link between techno and dubstep than anything that had come before.
 

elgato

I just dont know
yeh Horsepower and Arthur Smith were doing it in a major way a long way back, not just in terms of techy vibes but bringing that really intense tracky hypnosis into garage tunes, or indeed uk garage vibes into techno with Grain
 
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Badga Tek

Flushing MCs down the loo
...yeah, especially since tracks like "Basic G" were doing techy dubstep years before. I guess it's all about entry points and permissions to stray from their godfathers for techno fans tho.

Yeah I guess you're right about entry points. I was aware that there had always been some degree of techno influence upon dubstep since its development out of dark garage. Obviously though my first clear realisation about an overt techno influence on dubstep was Vansan et al in the first few months of 2007.

All that aside, I'd still love to see a different angle on dubstep/techno in articles :p
 

gremino

Moster Sirphine
To be honest, it's only a healthy thing that dubstep scene is splitting. Let the producers just make different styles bloom in their full beaty, instead of trying some forced unity. I think that "we make very different styles, but are still the same thing, same scene", affects producers to make tracks in certain limited frame at the end of the day.

Functional wobblers and experimental tracks from the edges are both dubstep, but really the completely different things. If some want the first one, and others the second, let them just separate and focus on their own thing, and that way creating new vital genres and scenes. Just let the different sub-scenes/styles bloom in their own, because to be honest, it doesn't ever matter if it isn't dubstep anymore, as long as it's dubstep influenced.
 
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