autonomicforthepeople said:
Sorry, I should have explained myself. Rhythmically, the clip you posted has a very relaxed quality to it that I'd associate with Tortoise or Ganger, etc., instead of the forward-leaning jitteriness of 2step/early-dubstep. The drummer, for example, seems quite laid back when a lot of the song's energy should be coming from very tight closed-hat play. The audio in the clip is also around 118-120 BPM rather than in the mid-130s like the original, so it doesn't have the same fast/slow tension.
I'm curious, how do audiences respond? Do they generally know the tracks you cover? I think my first impression was: "cool, people are taking an interest and experimenting." But I've also seen a lot of audiences enjoy the opportunity to conusme "urban"/electronic music at an ironic distance via rock instrumentation rather than engaging it direnctly (e.g. when indie bands "cover" old hip hop). It can become a form of mockery. I'm not doubting your sincerity, but I'm curious how you see these dynamics playing out when you perform.
ah yes. bpm. when steve, our drummer, dips in to a dubsteppy beat, he has a hard time keeping it up at 138bpm or so. the beat is not a natural beat for a human, so he's still wrapping his head around it and takes it slower to get in all the intricacies. he's ever pushing towards that magical bpm.
in general, very few people know we are playing a dubstep track. for instance the crowd at that show from which that video came, I think a lot of those peops were in to other genres, or more in to jambands.
we have played in front of dubstep heads local to boston, as well as Joe Nice. they seem to appreciate our covering of a few dubstep tracks.
we do cover a lot of edm genres though and we cover other edm artists' materials in our sets. the funniest moment happened when this DJ ran up to me as I was operating the visuals and samples and he excitedly displayed a record from his bin of with the track we were covering... Rulers of the Deep by the Buick Project. I think more than anything he was a bit blown away that we were doing that. Most DJs don't expect to hear what they are spinning coming out of a live band's instruments.
There is definitely a cross-over potential between the jamband scene and the DJ circuit for a live edm band such as Psylab. Our intentions are definitely one of introducing people to new genres of music and keeping peoples minds open. A genre purist mayb have a hard time listening to a DJ spin the wrong genre of music for their taste, but are much more open to listening to it if live musicians are doing it.
