Discovering Dubstep
NEIRAD enilno edition
Ever so slowly, a music phenomenon is gaining momentum on the fringes of the Darien mainstream: Dubstep. This techno genre is forcing itself onto the iPods and playlists of students. Not everyone is happy about it.
The invasion of Dubstep has been hard to trace. I’ve heard the term dropped for about three months, always in the most random places, at the most unexpected times, and under the least consistent circumstances. Once mentioned in a car, twice in the library there, thrice at a swim meet.
As time goes on, the frequency of these isolated events is undeniably picking up. The genre is garnering some mild popularity among the senior crowd. Stockton McMullen enjoys Dubstep for its, “mad beats, good vibe, and positive flow,” and Carter Courter likes how Dubstep artists, “make bad songs better with their remixes.” But while some welcome Dubstep as the bro’est addition to the halls since Timberland Boots and flannel, others bemoan its very existence. As junior Jack Bair said, “I’m allergic to Dubstep.”
The only problem is that no one who I’ve heard use the word Dubstep can actually explain what it is (or even where they’ve heard about it...a bad sign!). All I could initially gather was that it was a form of underground electronic music. Big whoop, the range of different styles implied in that nebulous statement hardly fits between here and Mars. So what is it? What makes Dubstep any different from the European club junk that Americans have rejected for years?
The first real real nugget of wisdom I gleaned came from Darien expat and current Lawrenceville junior Steven Grune. He claims Dubstep is huge in the Mid-Atlantic region, and was surprised to find out that the genre is still up-and-coming in Darien. As Grune put it, while wearing both flannel and Tims: “Dude, its the wobble.”
Ahh, yes, the wobble. Even though this may not mean anything out of context, listen to 90 seconds of “Bass Head” by Bassnectar and you’ll know what Grune means.
Dubstep has a couple notable traits that differentiate it from other electronic genres such as House and Trance. The first big difference is a heavy reliance on fat, atomic, buzz-saw, wobbly bass synths. Dubstep artists like to unleash these violent laser-beams of untamed bass fuzz rampantly throughout their works, both as mind-melting lead parts and soul-rocking foundations for other sections. Either way, beware.
This is the wobble, and its growl sounds like something out of a time warp from some dystopian version of 3010. It sways all over the track like it just doesn’t care, roaring and crushing and dominating. Prepare to die. In the mood for some self mutilation? I refer you to about 1:05 of Jakwob’s “Starry Eyed” remix.
You say -- so what – techno artists have been heavy on the lower Hz frequencies since digital recording was invented in the early 80s. Why should I care now? Well, it’s a little matter of what Dubstep artists do with their wobble.
Next hallmark trait of Dubstep: a whacked out feel for time and tempo that vaporizes whatever mush is left of your mind. You know you’re listening to Dubstep when your left foot is tapping two beats per cycle and your right foot is tapping three. It’s triplet paradise if I’ve ever visited one.
I’ll elaborate. Techno music is all-too-often boring because of its formulaic rhythmic theory: I’ll just whack a bass drum every beat–a style called four on the floor because of its four accents in every four-beat measure–and everyone in the club will dance like they’ve never been so stoked in their lives. Boa-ring! This strategy gets real dull, real fast. There’s only room in a measure for these four smacks. This leaves no space for any sort of rhythmic variation, which in music is a recipe for snoozarific disaster.
In Dubstep, DJs take the percussive emphasis off of half of those worn-out beats. Accents fall on only two beats per measure of four, forcing the listener to feel the music in relatively slower, headnodic cut-time.
Suddenly, miraculously, a ton of space is carved out of the music’s flow. All of these empty off-beats join forces with the extra space on the accented beats and form wild fallow ground for savage rhythmic cultivation. Dub artists often fill this space with violent eruptions of wobble, using just about any rhythm two fists could pound out. Shamelessly brazen triplets are a favorite trick, providing contrast to the typical square feel of techno music. These triplets tend to take their sweet time until drag into blatant arrhythmia; that’s to say, they drag so long that they devolve into off-kilter crashes that don’t even fit into the spectrum of divisible beats for a given tempo, landing whenever they get to it.
Dubstep artists, good ones at least, frame these triplet sections with even more tempo experimentation. Often, a single song will switch from ballad time to straight-eighth time to wobbling cut time and back...and forth and back and forth, then back again with two or so types layered on top of each other. The aforementioned artist Bassnectar does this very well, pretentiously calling the style “omni-tempo maximalism.” Deadmau5 (the 5 pronounced as an s...get the title now?), another talented Dubstep DJ, also is another authority in this field. Check out his version of “Raise Your Weapon” for a good example of the multi-tempo style.
This is Dubstep. It is relatively complex; it is relatively intelligent; it is actually legit (a pleasant surprise as far as I’m concerned, with the record our teenage fads have for being legit). So why don’t some people like it? Why was it so hard to find a single person willing to give me a positive quote?
One inherent danger of the sudden popularization of a new, unregulated cultural force is that just about anything will label itself as part of the trend to catch the wave’s momentum of cool. One tune on a Dubstep playlist I was sifting through was so blatantly out of place–a second-rate trance anthem–that it left me wondering what kind of authority had labeled it as Dubstep. Similarly, putting Dubstep into Youtube will lead you to a lot of things that are only hardly Dubstep, or not quite Dubstep at all.
Lesson: be skeptical of anything labeled Dubstep, because it may be something less interesting. It might just be some sort of junky poser track, tainting your opinion of the genre with its own unrelated flaws. Beware of this spam, as there is a lot of it. Beware especially of “Dubstep remixes” of popular songs. This is a sure sign of someone merely trying to look cool, and not trying to craft cutting-edge art. Listen between the lines for some of the genre’s characteristics, figure out if it’s real Dubstep or not, and then judge.
Another complaint I heard a lot was that Dubstep is easy to make. Sophomore James Baker explained this viewpoint to me: “all it takes to make Dubstep is a computer with Garage Band.” Various anonymous sources repeated this message to a great degree.
I completely disagree. Yes, there is some worthless, unoriginal music under the umbrella of Dubstep, some second rate mixes and the like, but so it goes for all genres. For the most part, however, making real Dubstep requires a sizable amount of musical skill and knowledge, both mental and technical. By and large, these kinds of recordings are intricately and deliberately crafted with challenging-to-program-and-operate software instruments. To lay out one of these mixes requires a kind of mastery of electronic recording that goes way beyond your basic Garage Band cut-and-pasting.
Then on the music theory side of things, you actually must have a degree of intellectual musical comprehension under your belt to craft one of these songs. Using fancy polyrhythm, layering harmonies and chords, intelligently integrating samples and effects–you need to know your stuff to do this. To break the rules, you have to have them down first. Guys like Deadmau5 definitely do. The amount of musical savvy and creativity in one of his works is tenfold greater than that of anything on the charts, tenfold greater than anything Bruno Mars has ever touched.
Still others complain that all Dubstep sounds the same. As much as I’d like to refute that claim, that’s more a question of personal taste and not for me to decide. Go ahead, like Dubstep or hate it, but knowing that it’s not a joke through and through, as some seem to think, at least give it an honest chance. Yes, it can get repetitive after a while, and no, some of its more far-out experimental stuff may not be for everybody. But there’s nothing wrong with a good tribal jam every once in a while, and for all you athletes out there like me, these songs go well before a race or meet or game.
So give it a listen. Here’s a list of tunes I can vouch for, all pulled off a Playlist from a certain flannel-wearing water polo player’s iPod:
Final Countdown Live Mix - Pretty Lights
Dorfexboss (Bassnectar Remix) - Bassnectar
Bass Head - Bassnectar
Fix You (Datsik Remix) - Coldplay
Starry Eyed (Jakwob Remix) - Ellie Goulding
Kids (Datsik Remix) - MGMT
Cracks (Flux Pavilion Remix) - Freestylers
Wonderman - Tinie Tempah ft Ellie Goulding
Raise Your Weapon - Deadmau5
Monster (Camo and Krooked remix) - Proffessor Green
Faxing Berlin (Grifta Dubstep Remix) - Deadmau5.
More by Deadmau5: Soma, For Lack of a Better Name, Some Chords
More by Bassnectar: Teleport Massive, Pleasure the Bassnympho
Good luck, and enjoy the wobble (if you can handle it)!
