Why they call it 'Dubstep'?

nomos

Administrator
haha, brilliant! i made a "shoestep" category for it in itunes. now i just need to neck a couple of codeines and i'm set for the evening ;)
 

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
I feel like dubstep and shoegaze are natural partners in that they both evoke feelings of cavernous space and mystery. Of course dubstep does so by its minimalism, and shoegaze by the opposite.
 
if k9 was so instrumental in naming the sound why didn't he go with hyperdub ???

and how did the storming hotflush sound become intertwined ???

was it just cos at 138-140 bpm you could halfstep it and mix it in quite well ???
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
autonomicforthepeople said:
haha, brilliant! i made a "shoestep" category for it in itunes. now i just need to neck a couple of codeines and i'm set for the evening ;)

That's brilliant. We need more of this. Paul, hope you don't mind, I've been spreading your term around and encouraging people to take an interest in shoestep. This what people should be making instead of that grindie nonsense... makes much more sense.

An aside, someone on Statik's myspace said that they should call it grop (as in grime + pop) as that fits babyshambles/kaiserchiefs et al better.
 

tate

Brown Sugar
Blackdown said:
producers get very angry when pseud journos/bloggers try and pin a name on them. i've always tried to stay out of making names up.

I've found that the same tends to be true of producers associated with so-called 'edits' or 'choppage' style jungle, they really don't like being labelled as such. 'Drumfunk' seems to be less problematic, though that may be because Paradox himself uses the term.
 
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Logos

Ghosts of my life
Yeah at the time (2001) I always thought it was a reference to dub as in the b-side to a vocal record (which shows uk garage's linage from us house/garage - which of course owes the idea of a dub from disco and ultimately 'dub' anyway). The countervailing strand - i.e. reggae influence as in big JA samples and the musical elements apeing dub and roots - is something that has got more prominent as things have moved on.

But I never thought it was the main reason the term came into common usage - if you claim that I think you're being anachronistic.

P.S I remember an article in Muzik crica 2000 which described M-Dubs, Stanton Warriors etc as 'weird garage'.
 
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Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Tate said:
I've found that the same tends to be true of producers associated with so-called 'edits' or 'choppage' style jungle, they really don't like being labelled as such. 'Drumfunk' seems to be less problematic, though that may be because Paradox himself uses the term.

I did a few interviews with producers on that scene and a lot of them seem to hate the word 'drumfunk'. In the end I couldn't find any term that they agreed on.
 

SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
this shoestep tune is nice, please make a longer edit. I'd be happy if you just loop back out of the breakdown. If you don't, I might draw for the audio editor and loop it myself. Reminds me a bit of TV on the Radio, I wish Statik would holler at them instead of the strokes or whoever it is he's fucking with now. I think a couple of their tunes are the right tempo as well.
 

Inca March

Down from Machu Picchu
garage dubs

some of you will remember that 'garage dubs' comp bringing together the more dub/reggae/ragga garage/2step tunes...when did it come out? 2001? 2002? anyone know who was behind it?
 

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
SIZZLE said:
this shoestep tune is nice, please make a longer edit. I'd be happy if you just loop back out of the breakdown. If you don't, I might draw for the audio editor and loop it myself. Reminds me a bit of TV on the Radio, I wish Statik would holler at them instead of the strokes or whoever it is he's fucking with now. I think a couple of their tunes are the right tempo as well.

Due (implausibly) to public demand, here is a full version: http://www.dubstepforum.com/tunes/ned__shoestep.mp3
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
Stelfox! it's official, you're absolved of any responsibility for coining the name 'dubstep' - after all these years i just had an admission from Ammunition that they coined it in their press release to XLR8R for the feature you were involved with.
 

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
Tate said:
Martin's always excellent month in dubstep/grime column went up today at pfork. A tantalizing and informative read indeed. (what happened to jess btw)

I read that article, and feel like a voyuer, watching this thing called "dubstep" evolve from behind a glass wall. But as far as naming it, i think the following passage is very interesting:

As the Velvet Room sessions took garage in a more concerted, darker direction, its mix of dark 2step ("nu dark swing"), breakbeat garage, and proto-grime (also then known as "8bar" or "east beat") was for a while collectively referred to as "The Forward>> sound." At this time all parts of the dark garage spectrum influenced each other. Current dubstep purist Youngsta played mostly 8bar, and Wookie's "Storm" and majestic "Far East" were Forward>> anthems. Slaughter Mob played Ghost dubs. Oris Jay evolved from his 2step roots to produce breakier hits like "Confused" and "Said the Spider". And that doesn't even cover Lanslide, Jay Da Flex, and Zed Bias' broken beat/dubstep fusions.

It seems in the beginning, everyone had their own name (is this parallel to names such as 'sublow' and 'eski' in grime?) that then got lumped into one name. If the term 'dubstep' does start to mean more of a 'halfstep' thing, then why not continue to call it "The Forward Sound"?

Isnt that how Garage got its name in the first place? From Paradise Garage?
 
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