Tuesday, April 6, 2010

My Ears are Tired

Right now I'm a bit rinsed out on the noise-step, battle droid diarrhea. I'm going to rightfully catch a lot of heat for this. I know I was pretty enthusuastic about the experimental aggro nature of producers pushing the dubstep sound to the outer limits of it's breaking point, and I still support that. However, I feel like Dubstep is going thru it's '98 tech-step phase, and is danger of drowning in a glut of derivative homogenized noise-step.


It makes perfect sense, of course, that Dubstep would go through some of the same growing pains as Drum N Bass. As speed garage took over in popularity in '98 DNB took a dark underground turn with Bad Company leading the charge with "The Nine", followed by Dom&Roland, Ram Trilogy, Ed Rush & Optical and all the rest. That was the year I actually really got into full-on into DNB, mostly because of the tech-step tear-outs actually. I'm sure Dubstep will go through a similar swelling of the ranks as all this metal noise-step attracts new recruits. In that respects it's not a bad thing that there more people involved. The real danger lies further down the road. I think if you examine how close DNB really came to be being snuffed out and losing it's soul to the darkness, when girls fled the scene in droves, and the macho-nerd take-over began, you'll see how much it really hurt DNB. Arguably, it took nearly 5 years to recover from '98 techstep. Quite frankly i don't want to see Dubstep go through the same mistakes as DNB, although it most likely will. It's like warning your little brother not to drink too much too fast even though you know he just will not listen to you and end up puking anyways. I'm just not going to let it get on my shoes, or mop it up.


Dubstep is growing and mutating so exponentially fast, that newcomer producers are being influenced by the current flavor of the month, and just churning out tunes with the same sound palette, same wobbled change-ups every 8 bars, and same noise sputtering, and halting special effects and edits. It's regurgitation of 3rd generation imitations. What was once the unique sound of Excision, Datsik, Claw, NumberNin6 and Borgore, is literally the same sound of 40 other producers. Don't get me wrong I don't have a problem with originators, just the hordes imitators (even though Borgore would like to take claim for ruining dubstep). While this cycle of monkey-see monkey-do production has been happening since the inception of dubstep (and dance music for that matter), with the help of the internet and websites like Soundcloud, it has never been so fast and widespread. As this sound becomes more prevalent you can expect some of the same things that happened to DNB during it's dark years: Homogenized sound, more aggro dance, girls leaving the club, elitist snobbery, and a resentment of OG Dubstep producers and DJs against newcomers. All I can do at this point is sort of climb on the backlash band wagon and say my piece on this here blog. I'm late to party on this. I didn't give a rats ass when everyone was slagging wobble on Dubstep Forum. Nor did I bat an eye-lash at the derisive "Brostep" label, which I actually thought was really funny. But now it's time to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of my fellow dubstep crumudgeons, and yell at all you noisey-producers "Get Off My Lawn!!!". And stop smoking crack while you are at it. My ears are freaking tired and need quite the rest after only a half of a night at WMC (it was about all I could stomach). So please, deep, heavy, dubby and groovy DJs and producers, send me your stuff to blog up...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

TOTALLY agree with this. I see friends copy pasting the same sound all over social networking sites and ranting about how 'filthy' and 'dirty' this is. I get tired of it. I remember when I used to get slated when I started listening to dubstep many moons ago. Now it seems all the generic clubs want to kick out jump up dubstep for the masses, which sadly involves Wobbles and drops every so bars like you said. Tis why I keep going back to the old stuff and experimenting with other genres (I listen to quite a few genres of Music and have a variation of Electronica)

Dubstep is movies Insanely fast. I just hope It doesnt crash on itself.

Jcrash said...

Thanks man. yeah, "filthy" or "dirty" as a description is the sure fire way to get me to ignore a tune. Help spread the word if you can, proper Bassweight is still appreciated in these parts.