Very interesting, big thanks for sharing.
In relation to that, and to the 'when FWD was empty' chat on the last page, I feel I have to say that I'm not all that comfortable with the narrative that's quite strong within dubstep, to the effect that things can only be good - or at least can only be at their best - when just a small, highly informed audience know about them. It's hard not to see this as elitist, at least in some sense of the word, and I also think it's potentially self-limiting.
Of course, I'm talking off the top of my head here, and it could well be that my view stems from ignorance of how the London/UK club scene works these days, having only got into regularly raving quite recently. It could just be that the structure of things means it's not possible to make innovative music that will reach any kind of a crowd, even at an underground/grassroots level. So if you think I'm way off here, please tell me so and try and say why. No trollo.
hmm, consider the dubstep data points if you will.
- 2000-2006 = small group of producers, no audience, sonic freedom, high quality % output.
- 2006-2008 = massive change in the number of producers and audience, sonic narrowing of the template for many of the producers and DJs, massive drop in quality % output.
don't get me wrong I SO didn't want it to turn out like that, but it did. I guess it's now well established it's quite hard to appeal to large crowds of friday night ravers and retain so many degrees of freedom. i always hoped it would be possible, but so many DJs suggest it mostly isnt (tho there are exceptions).
I would caveat all this with the fact that I think 2009 was wonderfully creative and I feel very inspired right now as a producer, DJ, blogger and label owner. but i think this is inspite of dubstep's massive success and sonic narrowing, not because of it.
the way i see the most creative, post-dubstep people out there right now, people like Untold in that interview, is that the noise of wobble dubstep is acting as a nice smoke screen to mask the creative signal, so
a long tail of people like Untold can appeal to the head of "dubstep" fans while making quite diverse, free music, the "bass scene" as that piece calls it.
This is certainly how we're building our sets now, connecting different tail producers, styles and bpm from within the geographically delocalised long tail, rather than playing south-london-centric dubstep and east-london-centric grime, as we perhaps were in 07. this relates to some of the questions of the piece about scenes and geography, and how i think this sound can move forward creatively without one geographical hub, as FWD/DMZ and Sidewinder were to dubstep and grime respectively. that's not to say the influence of locale is gone from the music we make and play, quite the opposite: its just that the themes ("rudeness!") that run through UK bass music have now been widely distributed and are being creatively mutated.
