Random dubstep-related thoughts

that’d be a strange time to come out of hiding
how about 10am during morning tea?

yeah that works

so the revival rolls out around the world tomorrow morning
cool

Can we make it lunchtime?
I’ve got a meeting with my financial advisor in the morning and I won’t be ready for 10am…

yes, that would suit
after I’ve finished applying for the dole.

The dubstep revival starts here.

Take a nostalgic trip back in time to 2006 and onwards with over 14gb of unreleased and rare tracks from a website forum called dubstepforum. The website users, often referring to themselves as “ninjas” would make “DubStep” music in their bedrooms or their friends bedrooms and then upload it to the forum for their fellow ninjas to listen to, critique or download.

DubStep was a popular music genre that was characterised by it’s heavy basslines (often called “weights”) and it’s’ sparse beats and high-hats and percussion. It was slower than a similar genre called drum & bass, or “Jungle Music”, typically around 140 bpm (which is a secret “industry” term those in the scene use to describe how fast a track is in Beats By The Minute),

Men in their twenties would often gather in medium sized dark rooms to smoke a marajuana “spliff” (or “J”) and watch another man “mixcing” DubStep, while they would nod at each other and appreciate the “Weights”.
As Dubstep became popular in the mainstream, even women would go to dubstep nights out and could be seen having as great a time as the men!

If you want to hear DubStep from the early days of the “scene” then start here with this archive.

Also You can enjoy the usually seamless blending of tunes in mp3 format (a popular digital music format in the early 2000s) known within the scene as a “mix"
A good mix” to start with is this one courtesy of @khybot that uses a lot of the tunes from the dubstep froum acrchive mentioned above. Hear it by clicking here

2 Likes

haha, nostalgia =/= revival. they are almost opposites

and dubstep isn’t ‘revived’ at the moment, there are 5 dubstep records coming out per month instead of 2 and no one can buy them. A huge increase for sure but the whole scene is being propped up by a few dubplates at the moment. There is good dubstep coming out but its so just artificially limited it feels like a video game trying to ‘collect’ the releases.

We all remember when there would be whole threads on a single get darker episode trying to id the tracks. Now its just, yeah, this record is coming out at 6pm gmt, you better fuck off.

Scene is dry af these days

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It was a shameless plug / pisstake but yeah, it’s an odd scene these days.
I remember when people would be scrambling over each other on the old dsf to get to a 192 version of some track a guy made in his bedroom. It was really exciting times. I still love dubstep, I just don’t feel the palpable excitement that used to surround it.

D&B went stale around the early 2000s, but managed to bounce back in a huge way. Hoping dubstep can do the same.

1 BigUp

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t that aware back in the day. But I’d definitely say that is on a bit of a come up atm. The whole situation with records and mala starting a monopoly etc etc is dead, but this is probably the most excited about dubstep I’ve been since I started going to nights

1 BigUp

This, so much!

totally agree revival isn’t nostalgia
but it can involve a new appreciation as well as new stuff
so it could involve remixes of early tunnage
which I haven’t heard done very often lately.
It would be interesting to see what up & comers did with some of the noughtie proppa,
like what influences they would bring to bare.
As to lyrics, perhaps dubstep has something new to say now days,
I could even imagine the words being joyous, angry or prophetic,
having evolved beyond the darkstep reaction to UKG commercial success.

I still think dubstep, apart from a few well known tracks with females,
never got the vocals it deserved.
Vocal samples sometimes evoked the dread/dystopian aspect
but nobody ever nailed an appropriate lyric and vocal sound
(including the toasty boy thing which can too easily lead to riddim).
I often thought that Peter Tosh could’ve done it with his Armageddon voice
but also think that more of a trip hop approach could’ve worked.

I believe that the Innermind tendency to minimal-yet-changing
constitutes a progression for dubstep
by avoiding dungeon slog & focusing on basslines.

1 BigUp

Uncle Jonno
Breakstep version of Midnight Request Line.

in ninja dubs
I spoke too soon.

1 BigUp

Cheers for the citation.

I did a second mix now. All about that bass weight.

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from the documentary “the decline of western civilization part IV: the dubstep years” :dudebro:

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proppa dubstep has finally made it in the States
they’re celebrating emalkay day today!
but this news may be a


:wink_og:
1 BigUp

did anyone grab this https://artikalmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-offering-dhyana

throwback

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he’s out here next week
(maybe on his honeymoon)
but I can’t be sure where he’s playing without being on fb
so I might go to Void 11th birthday a little later instead.


Assuming you’re on about distance lol

1 BigUp

yeah but note the TBA for Sydney
the only two venues I currently trust for ds
are the Civic Hotel (a basement but an 7.5/10 sound system),
The Lair (big back room, 9/10 sound system)
and the Agincourt Hotel (basement, 8/10 sound system but not used much now days).
Gentrification & noise complaints have forced everything out of the Cross & Oxford St.
and the Marrickvile/St. Peters warehouses are dodgy.