If you owned a private venue, could you still smoke in there?
Very good piece. Itās interesting to know how controlled things were back then e.g. the J Da Flex banning from DMZ and the reactions to Fabriclive 37.
Not legally
yeah iāve posted this somewhere before but that schism with the breakstep heads, pinch said they tried running their night same venue and it flopped and noone went, i really thought b4 there was more overlap between the 2, like distance was definitely a dmz head and big in the breakbeat stuff
they glossed over deapoh pretty quick, nice to see kode9 say how important he was
The breakstep stuff was pretty sick tbh, shame it didnāt get a lot of love
I do wonder why they were all so averse to doing the Fabric mix. Didnāt like being a bit of an after thought when the French guys flopped it?
Mmm, thought it was only indoor public areas
yeah itās interesting how they wanted to do their own thing then by 2007 when dubstep was getting some hype they started making (imo) pretty shit dubstep
similarly to the āproto-dubstepā stuff already discussed in another thread - breakstep imho sounds mostly wack today. aged pretty poorly, even some of the good records sound very dated.
Guess Iām just a sucker for that dated sound
Brilliant read, brings back memories of hearing these tracks. Interesting to hear the politics of it all too
Yea pokes seemed to just be like this guy who set up barefiles
couldnāt help but laugh at the fact the only mention of this forum is in spite due to the fact vinyl rips were posted here back in the day
Soundsystems are everything, so key was the involvement with these venues with sick in-house rigs (Plastic People, Mass etc) or the ridic external hires (that Void rig pinch mentions or Iration etc)
Struggle to think of many clubs in London with genuinely weighty in-house sound now, especially small ones.
I like how they addressed some issues head on (particularly pokes, heās a very thoughtful dude), but i really wish they would have been more head on about this one:
always found it annoying when they bring up drama or issues and then leave it really open ended. like, you donāt gotta go into serious detail - the way they talked about malaās āwhadda we likeā or barefiles was solid i thought - but either donāt bring things like that up or at least give a legit conclusion, donāt give a bait-y cliffhanger lol
i mean obviously theyāre free to do what they want i just wanna hear the conclusion of the storyā¦
1 BigUp
I loved this article, I discovered dubstep back in 2007, at the crest of the wave, but I discovered all the dark stuff first, only to discover that in the US no one was playing that type of dubstep, and it was all bro-shit. The thing is, thereās a reason it didnāt work in the US, and the article didnāt really go into that. I wish there was more of a discussion as to why dubstep sounds a particular way in the US as opposed to other parts of the world (and not necessarily in a good way).
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Thoughts
1 BigUp
Itās not an anthology and itās not an encyclopaedic āmapā of everything that happened. Pev, Shackleton, Hessle guys, Oneman werenāt involved, either (and they arenāt being little bitches about it).
should do an oral history of brostep and invite caspa just to take the piss lol.
also is he even relevant anymore? i mean he yeah was big with dub police n all that but does anyone remember his tunes now? also didnāt he hop on dungeon a few years ago?
itās not their story to tell. iād say that starting up dramas with different people is a lot more bait than just vaguely mentioning something. this way it gives an idea about what went on, and not be a bitch about it.
if scuba started talking shit on different guys this place would be blowing up about what a dickhead he is for doing it.
Bro, Cockney Violin and For The Kids are certified classics. He may not have done a lot of note since, but for those tunes, heās immortal. However how relevant is he to the article? Not much imho, He took Dubstep (for better or worse) a different way and I donāt think was really there for the creation point, though leaving out Storming is a par).
Agree with you on not mentioning peopleās names in drama, itās just not worth it. Itās nice to know that that stuff went on, but I donāt need to know the exact details, this aināt Heat magazine.
I actually remember the Breakstep night that was tried to run at 3rd Bass, didnāt go, though was hyped for that line up still. There was quite a lot of in fighting back then, I remember a couple of better known producers starting their own regular nights and complaining about DMZ just having a stranglehold on the sound. And to be honest, they did. I think DMZ coulda brought some real interesting sounds through, Breakstep was far from Brostep for quite some time, and with a little guidance and curation (and recognition), it coulda blossomed. Instead, fucking HEROES like Toasty and SLT MOB didnāt get anywhere near the hype they should have got.
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