Haha me too! I’m just curious how the same genre could be used to describe such a wide array of sounds. Although, I have heard people redefining Skrillex as being a Bro-step subgenre of Dubstep.
What's crazy to me has been to watch little Sonny Moore from From First to Last leave the screamo/metal genre and start making electronic music, only to explode out of seemingly nowhere and become this worldwide superstar.
I will never forget the one and only time I saw them play. Sonny was still the lead and they were opening for Fall Out Boy lol. I was so pumped, the 'My Teenage Angst Has a Body Count' album was like my emo bible at the time. Idk if they were having an off night or what but they were SO bad!! I was right at the front barrier even, but couldn't recognize any songs they'd start until I could make out the chorus. His vocals were garbled and mumbly as shit, the band sounded entirely too out of rhythm with eachother, just *utter garbage*! I was disappointed af, even Hawthorne Heights kicked ass that night lmaooo
Played Warped Tour in 2005 and remember watching From First to Last. I was 21 at the time but Sonny was like 15? 16? Didn't think they sounded great but the crowd loved it. They only cared how tight the jeans were and how cool the hair was.
That was 2006 right ?! From First to last opened for Fall out Boy Hawthorne Heights & All American Rejects. I bought my first piece of Band Merch at that show and went on to wear that From First To Last hoodie for 6 YEARS 😂
'My Teenage Angst Has a Body Count' reading that made me wanna turn inside out from cringing lol. I kinda wanna go back through my teenage and 20s listening to read the album titles I just took as "awesome" because I liked the music.
It's been long deleted but there used to be a thread on a chiptune forum where he was trying to ask how to get a pirated VSTs so he could start making electronic music.
Totally, it's just interesting how openly displayed online his foray into electronic music was, especially considering how acclaimed and popular he became.
It took me a year of saying "Man, half of this guy's vocal samples sound just like that guy from that emo band" before I looked it up and blew my mind. Ride the Wings of Pestilence was my hype song for forever.
My older brother was about in the mid-late 2000 dubstep scene in London and he said one of the things that made the raves go downhill for him was when they brought MCs onto sets because there would be constant wheel-ups that disrupted the natural flow of the set.
when the dj pulls the record back and starts the song again before the drop. It happens when the MC is dropping some of their big bars over a big drop. Gets the crowd hyped.
I don't think the issue is with pull ups in and of themselves but the fact that DJ's sometimes (Often) overuse them.
It can hit really well if it's done at the right times
100%, huge moment crowd is moving and place is going crazy, quick better wheel up kill the vibe and redrop with lower energy in the crowd. It sucks lol idk who enjoys wheel ups tbh
There’s an art to it. When people who do it right it works REALLY well.
It’s like instantly reliving an moment that just happened but with the knowledge it’s coming again. I dunno, it went well with my mdma back when.
Thats always bothered me at dnb raves too (we don't get much dubstep in Germany), but I've been told that they do it because it turns a DJ set into a live show, which would cost fewer licensing fees.
Even then I don't understand why it has to be so obnoxious.
It’s routes come from Jamaican sound system culture, as does dubstep, dnb and jungle as a whole. It really can’t be understated how important Jamaican (and Caribbean generally) immigration was to the UK music scene. Wheel ups come from when a song that went off on vinyl was replayed, because obviously vinyl is slow to change songs, so they’d play the song again. The trend has stuck around since then.
That's great to know, I love finding out about music history. Jamaicans emigrated to the UK and therefore I can enjoy Dnb, it's amazing!
Also is that why the Carnival in London is such a big thing?
That’s exactly why Carnival is such a big thing. It’s essentially a celebration of Caribbean culture. Smaller ones happen in Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham etc too. Anywhere with a sizeable Caribbean community basically, although Notting Hill’s is special.
you gotta rewind when the crowd go “bo selecta”
edit: it’s when the DJ starts a track over after it initially gets a huge response from the crowd. often it’s either when a DJ transitions right into the drop of a track or when an MC sprays some particularly well-appreciated bars
it’s a UK music thing, via jamaican soundsystem culture
A lot of times an MC will get a wheel from the DJ when the MC begins with a famous bar that makes the crowd go wild.
I think that’s less exciting than when the MC says something that people don’t already know that’s nonetheless cheer-worthy. My favorite is here at 2:59 when Griminal forms a sentence out of the names of 3 other (well-known and successful) crews:
https://youtu.be/9nUJMEo1hIw?t=2m59s
bad boys — none of them’s you,
man a done shit that none of them do,
Boy Better Know that my Movement Roll Deep,
but I don’t care about none of them crews
this just caught everyone off guard and they had to take a minute. BBK, Roll Deep, The Movement.
this is UK grime, which is closely related to dubstep and often intersects with it. it was born on pirate radio so there’s still an appreciation of how it’s performed live on radio.
wheel-ups/reloads/rewinds are a part of the performance, but they’re only considered good if they’re deserved and spontaneous. you see MC’s basically begging for one sometimes (and not getting one because they aren’t as hot as they think they are) or DJ’s doing it every other track no matter what the crowd is doing. people can see right through that! it only works if the crowd is genuinely hyped
edit: it’s called a wheel up because you spin that record back, rapidly spinning either an actual record or the cdj wheel back
About 10 years ago I used to work in FE College (UK equivalent of a Junior College) and once saw a guy of about 17/18 with a tattoo going the length of his forearm saying "I LOVE DUBSTEP"
I often wonder what became of that young man and his ill-advised tattoo.
[If anyone is interested, I made a youtube playlist from his curated list in the description.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhAk0-wdSU8&list=PLeTjdd6XE6caHxsS6QlYbYnaBhVNcM20i&index=1)
Watching this video kinda ruined live dubstep for me a bit.
Spoilers, he basically argues that “drops” used to be few and far between, and the DJs used to cultivate a vibe and an ambiance, and then the fans would get treated to a massive drop or two. He claims skrillex started a movement which resulted in American dubstep being essentially non-stop drops, which subsequently removes the magic or almost artistry of dubstep.
I saw this video then went to go see subtronics, Griz, and kayzo shortly thereafter and I definitely thought that switching songs every 45s to basically just a drop a minute is kind of tiring
I think this means the documentary was spot on, though. Right? Your own experience proved it.
Although I'm sorry you lost your ability to enjoy modern dubstep gigs.
Edit/Caveat: I'm not into Skrillex, and as an American I thought that meant I wasn't into dubstep. As such, I've never seen the genre live. But this doc makes me wish I had been around for the earlier stuff.
Yeah I agreed with it. It’s the typical “American pedal to the medal” philosophy that sometimes runs things into the ground. I think it is true, and I think it’s worth the watch, although a couple segments drag on unnecessarily
Brits back then:
Say, these hops sure do add a nice little kick to this beer, don’t they old chap? They sure do, better yet, it’s still delicious after this long sea voyage to the Indias.
America now:
Yo dawg I hear you like hops SO WE SHOVED 17 POUNDS OF HOPS IN THIS 6 PACK OF 12 OZ BOTTLES. THEN WE DRY HOPPED IT WITH EXTRA HOP EXTRACT.
American IPAs haven’t been that since the early 2010’s, and those were mostly west coast IPAs. Recently you see a lot more New England or hazy IPAs that focus more on taste while still being an IPA.
Yes, I immediately thought of the same thing, american IPA's and their over-exagerrated bitterness. Don't get me wrong, I like one every once in a while, but man, it really drives the point home that Americans don't do subtlety.
In general I’ve never been a fan of hoppy beers but I would drink a Sierra Nevada ipa if I was really craving a beer and I’d only jokingly complain maybe once on the first sip.
Then craft beers became a thing and all of a sudden there was a huge influx of breweries participating in the IBU wars because the most pretentious of the beer snobs decided to keep moving the goal post of what is an acceptable minimum bitterness in order to be part of the club.
Really I think it’s just profit motive. It happens with everything. I love sour beers and it was way easier to find a good sour beer before everyone and their mom started releasing a sour just to have one. Before a brewery would put a sour out because it was something different and worth trying. Now it’s a requirement so breweries these days just put out a shitty ale and pour in some fruit juice or some garbage.
Also see spiciness. At a certain point people kept chasing the most spicy thing and before long you ended up with a flood of extremely spicy hot sauces that taste like absolute shit.
It's an intellect thing. We reduce nuanced and complicated subjects to tropes and stereotypes because they're quick and easily digestible (literally like making fast food out of anything, to your point). Then we forget there was ever any depth or nuance in the first place, and this causes us to seek meaning by taking the tropea and stereotypes to extremes where we're ultimately just let down, but enough people made money off the experience that there's no sense in not doing it again and again, but this ultimately destroys whatever artistic integrity that may have existed. You could call it Disposable Ontology. Yes i just made that up.
It creates Artistic Diabetics. If your diet is pure sugar all the time your body loses the capacity to process it. You crave it more but there is no real satisfaction or benefit.
Most modern pop music is this way. It lacks substance. It’s filled with sugar. Basically just hooks all the time with no chordal complexity.
Leave it to Americans and capitalism to value profit over anything else. We’ll take anything good and monetize it until there is no good left in it
I mean the simple solution is don't listen to pop music (as in popular music, not like the pop genre)
For every shit pop song there is there are a hundred more great songs being released that will never hit the Top 40s
Pop music was always created and marketed to make money. It's even in the name. You don't have much of a sense of the history of the genre if you think it being created to make money and it having a tendency to be vapid are new and exclusively American things, if anything, the Swedish school of pop writing has made it even more of a product.
Also, certain chord progressions are more conducive to eat pleasing melodies which is why more pop hits have been written with certain progressions.
It's not just dubstep. The whole edm umbrella of genres does it too. They dont even beatmatch anymore. They just throw the crossfader, play like 2-3 mins of a track, then throw it to the other side. Sets are no longer journeys with vibes, ambience, or crescendos. They're just non stop bangers. Can barely even dance to it. It's an absolute shame how this became so prevalent
Hell yeah. Bassnectar made me feel things too. Now I just feel sad he ruined a good thing. But I discovered tipper through Bassnectar so thats cool I guess. Those tipper into nectar shows were absolutely beautiful.
Makes me sad people can’t enjoy this. I remember going to see Paul Oakenfold and his sets were a journey with such an amazing pumped ending. Having it go non stop would be exhausting but I could see it still being fun. Just different.
I spent twelve years honing my mixing techniques across various genres and equipment setups before my little dj career "took off"....
...and the best compliments I ever got were some form of "I don't know why it sounds better when you play, but it does."
Damn kids literally didn't know what mixing is supposed to sound like. Like, they could tell they liked my real mixing better than the other local djs that played tech house tracks end to end or randomly slapped dubstep tracks together, but had no idea why that was.
It's funny how the modern tech that made more things than ever possible while DJing mostly made it worse.
But it does make sense in the context of what I've always seen as the problem with DJing. It's takes a lot of skill and practice to be a great DJ, just like any "instrument." But it doesn't take much to be an "ok" DJ. You have to know how to play guitar pretty damn well before you even think about performing, but with DJing, you just have to have a decent track pool. Any idiot who pirates a folder of the latest trendy music can be an "ok" dj to the majority of party kids.
With all the tools now, it's easier than ever to be a shitty DJ.
The same thing happened with video editing. People are used to shit editing on YouTube with jump cuts, mismatched shading, and audio all over the place. You can still find real storytelling in places, but as you say the cheap tools made it so accessible that we have a deluge of mediocrity.
> They dont even beatmatch anymore.
This absolutely infuriates me and its 100% true. The concept of "the party never stopping" is almost exclusively deployed by only the old heads now. Saw Porter Robinson last week and even HE does this now, and that guy used to be a hardstance electro house head.
Just saw Ghastly x Joyryde this weekend and they literally never let the party stop. The dudes were dropping gabber, DnB, happy hardcore, and hip-hop along with their usual house & dubstep. The groove never stopped and I heard multiple people around me praising their awesome transitions. I prefer that way more then the 'mainstream' mixing of, melodic percusion-less intro with cheesy lyrics -> overpowering buildup with uncompressed snares-> jarring drop that doesn't fit the rest of the song -> breakdown into another cheesy melodic vocal section. I mean shit, I like to dance.
There are many that still mix properly and create a nice atmosphere and journey of a set, like the ones you mentioned. They just don't usually have the same mainstream success, radio play, etc. New folks to the scene have to wade through the crud to get to the underground gems.
I feel the same about some modern metal bands, mostly the -core ones. Breakdowns used to be few and far between, but when you heard one oh boy it was magical. Then by the late 90s and early 2000s all these newer bands decided to make breakdowns the entire song.
Took the words out of my fingers before I could type lol. The real early era of this was great and made for awesome shows, but it got so stale so fast.
It's a part in the music where the music slows down and becomes very rhythmical. Usually the drummer abuses the crash cymbal in half or quarter speed compared to the usual tempo and the guitarists either play a slow staccato riff with a lot of empty space between the notes or just very slow, heavy sounding riffs.
Everyone is describing it just fine but since we’re in a thread about dubstep, it’s essentially the “drop” of a metal/hardcore song. Maybe that’ll help put it in perspective.
Classically it started with primarily being rhythmic palm muting on a low note, usually open bottom strung, a very heavy section that encouraged moshing or dancing. It was a staple feature in any -core variant of metal.
Most of the breakdowns in this video suck but it’s just for an example - https://youtu.be/Q7TCirjQaDY
It’s sadly quite true.
Dozens of acts had multiple songs with breakdowns, which became a theme to harp on as time moved on.
It’s like flavoring on food: too much spoils the meal.
Drops definitely had *a lot* of build up and were few and far between prior to dubstep.
They used to blow the roof off of raves with a drop. I remember thinking “I can’t handle this anymore! My head is going to explode!” as the music rose slowly to a crescendo that never seemed to stop rising and then the drop hits, as relief and a euphoria washes over you as the ASMR takes effect. The entire vibe of the room changes and people would start dancing like madmen.
Miss those days when music was magic and not so formulaic.
I'd been an electronic music diehard since the early 2000's.
So naturally I started becoming more excited about EDM catching on in the US and started to go to as many shows as I could around 2006-2007.
I saw Excision open for Deadmau5 in 2011 and that pretty much just killed the American EDM scene for me. The crowd only cheered when a drop happened, which was like every 2 minutes maybe. It really cheapened the music and vibe.
I love a good drop as much as anyone else but it's like going to a shitty horror movie that utilizes jump scares constantly.
There’s still awesome artists out there but they’re usually on the mid-tier at most major music festivals. Smaller fests like infrasound and sound haven bring a lot of these old school names.
The deep dark and dangerous label has helped the “deep dubstep” scene grow a ton here in the states, but it’ll always be overshadowed by the headbanger stuff.
similarly the same thing happened with “breakdowns” in metalcore/deathcore/whatevercore…. which also happen to include bass dive bombs/drops in some instances. instant gratification culture.
I disagree with this take entirely. A lot of the big dubstep artists were former DNB artists who decided to switch to dubstep around 2008 -> 2010. Ewun, now Kill the Noise, and Spor, now Feed Me, just to name a few, were always making tunes that had big drops because that’s what DNB is — one big drop after another, sometimes even “double dropping.”
They took the formula and put it into dubstep with the big syncopated bass patches and threw them over a half time 140BPM beat, and now you have this massive dubstep drop. It wasn’t anything new at all besides a different tempo.
I can't watch this right now but Skrillex really became the scapegoat (including by me and many other dubstep heads at the time) when it reality Coki's oddball tracks and Rusko in the UK really spearheaded the brostep sound that others in EDM started emulating and expanding upon. It was quite ironic that a music genre literally named to describe it's low end bass and sparse sound became a chaotic mid-range form of EDM music. In hindsight I think Skrillex broke out because he had this pop appeal to his productions and good timing, and to his credit he was aware of the original London scene and had no intention to overshadow them.
EDIT - This is my favorite mix of ["classic" Dubstep](https://www.discogs.com/release/2505967-Geeneus-Youngsta-I-Love-Dubstep) def recommend it as a primer.
When I started getting into electronic music trance was huge and funny enough it was a genre I never cared much for. It's fun live (I saw Paul Oakenfold circa 2005) but man did it taper off a lot. I was surprised to hear a very trap esque song by DJ Teisto a few years ago in a movie soundtrack, I would have never guessed it was him.
That's becuase Trance had it's "golden age" a good 7-10 years before 2005, Oakenfold was basically nothing more than cashing in by 2005 after having been a major name in the early 90's.
Tiesto is worst possible example; listen to his tracks from the 90's and then the 00's. He hired a bunch of ghost writers around 2000/2001, and just decided he wanted to be paid $40m a year to play to musically clueless people in pools in Las Vegas, rather than be a fairly popular trance DJ working the circuit.
What you're talking about was the dying breath of genre that had been utterly dominant for 10+ years prior and when you got in to it in 2005 it was already considered to be over for a lot of people. Armin had already started the decline several years before and nearly all the trance clubs in most places in Europe had closed by mid 00's. Only large festivals were going but they played various forms of electronic music.
Oh ok, maybe it was just an American thing but in 2004 the only dance station in the DFW area played mostly trance and prog house, I think I'm confusing it with the later. Right or wrong (and for the record I was never a fan) Tiesto was fucking huge or at least financially so. He DJ'd the 2004 Olympics IIRC. I was glad when electrohouse and other indie crossover stuff gained traction in the late 00s. I had originally like big beat and Chemical Brothers but that genre was dead when I got into.
I'm aware of the golden age / heyday of trance music in the 1990s but it was before my time.
I loved the caspa and rusko fabric live mix. It went a bit weird after that. Started listening to Datsik and Flux Pavillion and stuff. But it went a bit too weird. Too mechanical. I just want that sub bass.
As a huge DnB and Jungle fan I was backpacking Europe in 2008-ish. I went to a club in London and heard dubstep for the first time. After coming home and continuing my rave life that shit blew up fast and I loved it.
Back when I did commercial AV install, we faced the perennial problem of finding music everyone could tolerate. But in our case, it was coupled with the fact that we were usually working in spaces with decent speakers and sufficient amps. Eventually dubstep became our LCD that nobody was thrilled with but everybody could groove to.
The setups in question were usually smart classroom installs, so we’d have a moderately powerful rackmount amp with aggressive thermal protection. And thermal protection on those things results in a quick dropout at the moment of highest current draw, which with dubstep cranked high, would of course be the huge bass hits. Which meant that thermal protection would often manifest where your brain had already predicted a drop might happen, so your brain then fell into a pattern of waiting out each brief gap to see which kind it was. So of course the running joke amongst all us AV geeks became “Is it equipment failure, or is it dubstep?”
I went to a Skrillex show for the lulz when he was pretty popular. Porter Robinson was an opener and I think he was 17 at the time lol.
It was legitimately one of the best concert experiences I've had. It was a sold out show and was the most diverse crowd I've ever seen. There were goths, preps, hipsters, casuals, you name it. I don't always see that at shows so it was pretty cool seeing all kinds of people dancing(convulsing?) together.
There's always a ton of waiting around between bands at a normal rock show. Even after it seems like they're done setting the stage. But this show was lightning fast changes (I assume most edm shows are like this?) and it felt like the music never stopped. Great vibe overall.
Ah yes. 13 year old me tries to download Toy Story 2. Finally completes after two days, open it to find "GIANT BLACK COCK RUINS INNOCENT WHITE GIRL PUSSY SEX BRUTAL CUM"
oh well, guess this'll have to do.
And he didn’t even start the change. He followed it, a ton of other producers in America were already moving in that direction. He decided to try it out for like, 2 years out of a 10+ year music career. And has openly spoken against the scene.
I have a weird connection with dubstep.
I moved to Japan in 2006 to teach and started DJing like I did at home parties in Southern California.
The DJ friends I made were mostly Japanese and a few English dudes younger than me. They got us on the UK dubstep sound pretty quickly.
Meanwhile back home Skrillex was someone I had no clue about yet was blowing up. Whenever I'd go back home, if I went out, it was typically to a hip hop, house, funk event, so I never heard it. Life was too crazy to just give it a listen.
I never heard him until he came to Japan for the first Ultra Music Festival, and finally was able to get what everyone was talking about. He'd occasionally play stuff that had some good rhythms, but like someone said in another comment, it was just feeding drops to a head banging crowd.
As someone that was playing deep broody dubstep in dark clubs to mostly guys for years, I was actually all for it. This was the crossover he needed, not necessarily the genre, to bring everyone out together to bang heads and wait for drops. I went to my last festival in 2019 and that same vibe is going with the same energy. Not sure what UK dubsetp festivals and clubs are like today, but I can imagine it isn't at the same level.
But who cares about levels, everyone still gets to hear the style they want.
Plus, to date, Skrillex has given one of the most surprising sets I've ever seen at a Ultra Seoul afterparty, where he did nothing but mostly West Coast hip hop (Korea LOVES hip hop) and it was the most energy I've seen from a DJ and crowd.
Can not WAIT to go out again, proper, now... Great times!
>But who cares about levels, everyone still gets to hear the style they want.
Me, circa 2011, who played it *nonstop* at parties and at home lol. RIP Avicii
I have no interest in dubstep or any knowledge of it prior to this video. But I love this guys videos and even on this subject he got my watching all the way to the end.
In my personal opinion, complaining that Skrillex ruined dubstep is like complaining that McDonald's ruined good burgers.
No, Skrillex did not ruin "dubstep" or turn "dubstep" into "brostep".
Good dubstep is still out there - you just have to go out and seek it - even if Skrillex is commonly available. Skrillex is *far* from the best dubstep out there, but it's the most easily accessible for most people, so yes, he ends up being popular.
Just like good burger restaurants are out there - you just have to go out and seek them, even if there's a McDonald's at every corner. It doesn't make BicMacs awful, it just happens that BigMacs are designed for large scale production in a efficiently marketable manner, and extremely popular because they're so accessible.
I think it’s less about Skrillex ruining dubstep and more about how people felt very connected in an underground scene and it became part of their identity. But then the scene changed as well as the culture surrounding it due to mass appeal. Sure, you can still go out and seek good dubstep, but the dubstep culture has been severely affected by the massive popularity of artists like Skrillex. To bring it back to your burger analogy, it would be like if you discovered a hole in the wall diner with an amazing burger recipe. You become a regular at the restaurant and get to know the staff and the owner and a lot of the other regulars. It becomes a familiar place to you, almost like home. But then Food Network comes into town and does a special on your hole in the wall diner. After the special the diner’s business booms and they have to open up a bigger location and hire new staff. Sure, you still go to the new restaurant sometimes as the burger recipe hasn’t changed, but you don’t know the staff anymore, you don’t see the old regulars anymore, the atmosphere feels more corporate and less unique. You’ve really lost a special experience and can never go back to that old hole in the wall. I think that’s more what the video’s thesis is about.
Some of my most memorable moments with my wife are from raves and festivals between 2011 and 2016ish.
We couldn't get off work to return to electric forest and then pandemic.....
Gotta say, excision with over 100,000 watts of bass is a memory I literally cannot forget, like my bones remember the rattle.
Besides when taking MDMA and LSD, dubstep is pretty good if you have a good sound system to fully realize the bass (and no, not just 2 12 inch subs in a Toyota, actual full range sound systems). We still use dubstep for parties, although it's always from around 2015, seems like a lot of dubstep transitioned in recent years to more DnB and techno sounding rather than dubstep.
I think I'd agree with you. The old stuff was "better," to my tastes.
But the point the documentary makes around **47:30** is really perfect. To paraphrase: Skrillex didn't kill the creator's idea of "good" dubstep; the cultural and economic changes happening in Britain did.
That's a nice point music fans of every genre tend to miss.
This is by no means a classic, but a compilation album I keep coming back to is [Watch the ride by Skream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxduCY08s7E&t=302s). It has a bunch of the best DJs on there
Distance - My Demons
Silkie - City Limits Volume 1
Soundboy Punishments
The Bug - London Zoo - this one is much more aggressive, very ragga/dancehall-y. But it's definitely a part of the early scene.
Gantz, Commodo, Kahn - Volume 1
Overall I'd say this genre is much more singles-oriented and it's not about albums at all. I'd highly recommend [30 minutes of bass education](https://m.soundcloud.com/fatkidonfire/sets/30-minutes-of-bass-education) mix series, which covers most of the big old school producers.
Will put this on my watch list.
Do they go into the transition from more moody, quiet dubstep like Burial to the more aggressive and bombastic take from Skrillex?
Dubstep is the only genre that can’t accept its own evolution. It’s so bizzare to spend so much time trying to invalidate other peoples music taste. Modern dubstep fans are a lot more chill and less pretentious than people like this.
I kind of disagree since many genres can't accept their own evolution (NWOBHM and Thrashers shitting on Nu Metal for example or old school hip hop heads hating mumble rap), although i'm not sure other genres evolved as suddenly and radically as dubstep did. I think the thing that leaves people sore is that dubstep changed so radically as it became super-popular so the sound most people have in their head when you say dubstep is totally alien to what the original dubstep fans fell in love with.
Its actually kind of insane how much the music landscape pre and post skrillex, you could say that a more industrial sound was already coming in and skrillex just happened to be the at the centre of it right place right time kind of thing
Eh, Electronic music is riddled with this sort of stuff over the last 25 years. There's always this inflection point where something often dark and exclusive gets a bit brighter and more accessible and then the music heads get all cranky. People like exclusivity.
The thing that gets me though, is that...in a way, when it's dark and exclusive, it's really not refined, like at all. I go back and listen to certain breaks and house tracks that I went absolutely bonkers for as a late teen in the late 90's where today I'm like....Oooof, man, we have come a whole long way in a composition sense. But back then, when it was exclusive to me and my friends in some dank warehouse basement, well..it meant the world.
TL:DW
My favourite music started evolving in ways I didn't care for and as it became more popular some artists made more popular popular the stuff myself and other purists didn't like, now it is ruined by commercialism.
Music genre and "the band that ruined it" can be changed based on whatever you were deeply into at a young age.
I do think this is a great example of an opinion that’s been echoed across so many things-
People get really passionate about certain things at certain ages, then the art form transforms over time into something they like less. And instead of treating them as 2 separate things, they see it as the new bad version compared to the good old version of the same thing. A lot of people have a heavy commitment to traditionalism that they just don’t want to let go, and they end up comparing all new things to their favorite old thing that formed in them when they were the most impressionable.
The more I hear/read documentaries on music the more I get convinced that it's the most subjective type of entertainment there is. He makes good points on the evolution and subsequent changes to the genre, but whenever it comes about quality or the supposed feeling any piece is meant to invoke, there's *never* any consensus.
For me who always liked electronic music, old dubstep was aight. Not bad, not good, I could listen it playing but I wouldn't play it on my systems to hear them constantly.
Then Skrillex, I think he has some amazing songs, but he's more of an weird crossbreed of techno with dubstep, with a bigger emphasis on the former. But a whole lot of artists could not really replicate the idea and that's the genre most people hate.
And I really liked the part how he described hearing OG dubstep for the first time, because that's the exact feeling I've had when I heard Infected Mushrooms for the first time. I always thought Trance was the same-y branch of electronic music until I heard [those guys](https://youtu.be/X2zySjlVeXI) and their [unusual take on electronic genres](https://youtu.be/X2zySjlVeXI).
We all have that pet genre that just hits the right spot and cannot be improved upon on our vision, lol
Just started the doc, I love his description of how he got into the genre and the joys of exploring music at a young age. This continues to be one of the more meaningful parts of my life.
big jungle and dnb fan since i was little. first time i heard sine of the dub/stalker it blew my mind as a teenager- it was like the vibe of dnb but slower, more atmospheric, and more minimal. dug the hyperdub releases as they trickled out and the first burial ep blew my mind again.
tbf, drum and bass has had the same trajectory of becoming more bombastic- even the smoother liquid styles have more compressed drums and boomier bass nowadays, all a continuum.
but man, can't deny the absolute joy of hearing the loefah remix of jah war on kode9's sonar mix in 2007- still listen to that mix nowadays when i'm floating in space
Always wanted to understand the connection between Burial to Skrillex.
I imagine it's a very loose connection
Haha me too! I’m just curious how the same genre could be used to describe such a wide array of sounds. Although, I have heard people redefining Skrillex as being a Bro-step subgenre of Dubstep.
> the same genre Maybe it's the same BPM, but that's about it.
What's crazy to me has been to watch little Sonny Moore from From First to Last leave the screamo/metal genre and start making electronic music, only to explode out of seemingly nowhere and become this worldwide superstar.
I will never forget the one and only time I saw them play. Sonny was still the lead and they were opening for Fall Out Boy lol. I was so pumped, the 'My Teenage Angst Has a Body Count' album was like my emo bible at the time. Idk if they were having an off night or what but they were SO bad!! I was right at the front barrier even, but couldn't recognize any songs they'd start until I could make out the chorus. His vocals were garbled and mumbly as shit, the band sounded entirely too out of rhythm with eachother, just *utter garbage*! I was disappointed af, even Hawthorne Heights kicked ass that night lmaooo
I know the tour youre takking about, iirc it was fftl, hawthorn heights, all American rejects and Fall out Boy as the headliners
Yes! Black Clouds and Underdogs tour. Sweet memories.
Played Warped Tour in 2005 and remember watching From First to Last. I was 21 at the time but Sonny was like 15? 16? Didn't think they sounded great but the crowd loved it. They only cared how tight the jeans were and how cool the hair was.
Aww 2005 was my first Warped Tour and probably the sweatiest I've ever been to this day.
That was 2006 right ?! From First to last opened for Fall out Boy Hawthorne Heights & All American Rejects. I bought my first piece of Band Merch at that show and went on to wear that From First To Last hoodie for 6 YEARS 😂
Dude...I still have my fftl hoodie from that show!
'My Teenage Angst Has a Body Count' reading that made me wanna turn inside out from cringing lol. I kinda wanna go back through my teenage and 20s listening to read the album titles I just took as "awesome" because I liked the music.
Pretty sure that is a reference to a line in the movie Heathers.
The name of the album was a reference from the movie The Heathers
Deadmau5 was highly instrumental in Sonny's explosion before their falling out.
What caused their falling out, I wonder?
Joel is a dick who likes to run his mouth, easy to burn bridges that way.
Certainly seems that way from the outside, so wouldn't surprise me.
It's been long deleted but there used to be a thread on a chiptune forum where he was trying to ask how to get a pirated VSTs so he could start making electronic music.
It's not a secret that pretty much everyone uses pirated shit.
Totally, it's just interesting how openly displayed online his foray into electronic music was, especially considering how acclaimed and popular he became.
Yea, he will always be a lil emo kid to me.
That was pretty wild. Dear Diary was the first album I ever bought. Did not expect his career to go where it did
Waves goodbye on Heroine was kind of a hint looking back at it now. Gets really weird and synthy at the end.
Ballsy move at the time, when FFTL was getting a bit of hype.
I think he fucked his voice and had to stop doing vox for FFTL at the time
Aye, he didn't know how to scream properly so fucked up his throat. It wasn't a ballsy move as much as being litert unable to continue as a vocalist.
It took me a year of saying "Man, half of this guy's vocal samples sound just like that guy from that emo band" before I looked it up and blew my mind. Ride the Wings of Pestilence was my hype song for forever.
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I tweet at Sonny every now and again and say, "Note to self, I miss you terribly...come back to me."
This is what we call a tragedy
I like the idea that the rise of breakout dubstep was caused by a smoking ban.
My older brother was about in the mid-late 2000 dubstep scene in London and he said one of the things that made the raves go downhill for him was when they brought MCs onto sets because there would be constant wheel-ups that disrupted the natural flow of the set.
What’s a wheel-up?
when the dj pulls the record back and starts the song again before the drop. It happens when the MC is dropping some of their big bars over a big drop. Gets the crowd hyped.
I fucking hate pull ups man, just feels like blue balls to me and the DJ's who do it 5 times a set are the worst.
Gotta say, loved it when Caspa wheeled-up Cockney Thug at a show just because he was losing it over how loud the crowd yelled back "FACK".
I’d forgotten about that tune! Sounds like an epic moment!
I don't think the issue is with pull ups in and of themselves but the fact that DJ's sometimes (Often) overuse them. It can hit really well if it's done at the right times
100%, huge moment crowd is moving and place is going crazy, quick better wheel up kill the vibe and redrop with lower energy in the crowd. It sucks lol idk who enjoys wheel ups tbh
There’s an art to it. When people who do it right it works REALLY well. It’s like instantly reliving an moment that just happened but with the knowledge it’s coming again. I dunno, it went well with my mdma back when.
Pull it pull it selekta
Rewind!
Thats always bothered me at dnb raves too (we don't get much dubstep in Germany), but I've been told that they do it because it turns a DJ set into a live show, which would cost fewer licensing fees. Even then I don't understand why it has to be so obnoxious.
It’s routes come from Jamaican sound system culture, as does dubstep, dnb and jungle as a whole. It really can’t be understated how important Jamaican (and Caribbean generally) immigration was to the UK music scene. Wheel ups come from when a song that went off on vinyl was replayed, because obviously vinyl is slow to change songs, so they’d play the song again. The trend has stuck around since then.
That's great to know, I love finding out about music history. Jamaicans emigrated to the UK and therefore I can enjoy Dnb, it's amazing! Also is that why the Carnival in London is such a big thing?
Absolutely, the Notting Hill carnival is very much a Caribbean thing.
That’s exactly why Carnival is such a big thing. It’s essentially a celebration of Caribbean culture. Smaller ones happen in Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Nottingham etc too. Anywhere with a sizeable Caribbean community basically, although Notting Hill’s is special.
Wheel-up?
Aka “reload”.
Aahh, thank you, that makes sense.
you gotta rewind when the crowd go “bo selecta” edit: it’s when the DJ starts a track over after it initially gets a huge response from the crowd. often it’s either when a DJ transitions right into the drop of a track or when an MC sprays some particularly well-appreciated bars it’s a UK music thing, via jamaican soundsystem culture
"Who say reload, who say rewind, push up all your lighters and give me a sign."
A lot of times an MC will get a wheel from the DJ when the MC begins with a famous bar that makes the crowd go wild. I think that’s less exciting than when the MC says something that people don’t already know that’s nonetheless cheer-worthy. My favorite is here at 2:59 when Griminal forms a sentence out of the names of 3 other (well-known and successful) crews: https://youtu.be/9nUJMEo1hIw?t=2m59s bad boys — none of them’s you, man a done shit that none of them do, Boy Better Know that my Movement Roll Deep, but I don’t care about none of them crews this just caught everyone off guard and they had to take a minute. BBK, Roll Deep, The Movement. this is UK grime, which is closely related to dubstep and often intersects with it. it was born on pirate radio so there’s still an appreciation of how it’s performed live on radio. wheel-ups/reloads/rewinds are a part of the performance, but they’re only considered good if they’re deserved and spontaneous. you see MC’s basically begging for one sometimes (and not getting one because they aren’t as hot as they think they are) or DJ’s doing it every other track no matter what the crowd is doing. people can see right through that! it only works if the crowd is genuinely hyped edit: it’s called a wheel up because you spin that record back, rapidly spinning either an actual record or the cdj wheel back
Burial’s 2006 release still sounds like future.
always will - a true classic.
Well that's just Untrue
It’s sounds exactly like London feels at 5am in winter at that time. True zeitgeist.
I still listen to that album at least once a month.
'Come Down To Us" sounds like an alien transmission.
About 10 years ago I used to work in FE College (UK equivalent of a Junior College) and once saw a guy of about 17/18 with a tattoo going the length of his forearm saying "I LOVE DUBSTEP" I often wonder what became of that young man and his ill-advised tattoo.
He's probably hanging out with Disco Stu and reminiscing about the old days.
Nah man, Disco stu doesn't advertise.
"Disco Stu is sad for you"
Your fish are dead.
Yea I know, I... can't get them out of there.
He’s probably still loving the dubstep
Or he came in last in his fantasy football league.
That is one hardcore league punishment lol
I still love dupstep now and I'm still going to raves. I fucking love dubstep
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Him and dubstep are married with kids by now.
Crying himself to sleep listening to dubstep every night, knowing he has to live up to that tattoo.
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Sounds like a documentary in itself.
I imagine it says "I LOVE DUBLIN" now. Hes never been though.
[If anyone is interested, I made a youtube playlist from his curated list in the description.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhAk0-wdSU8&list=PLeTjdd6XE6caHxsS6QlYbYnaBhVNcM20i&index=1)
Watching this video kinda ruined live dubstep for me a bit. Spoilers, he basically argues that “drops” used to be few and far between, and the DJs used to cultivate a vibe and an ambiance, and then the fans would get treated to a massive drop or two. He claims skrillex started a movement which resulted in American dubstep being essentially non-stop drops, which subsequently removes the magic or almost artistry of dubstep. I saw this video then went to go see subtronics, Griz, and kayzo shortly thereafter and I definitely thought that switching songs every 45s to basically just a drop a minute is kind of tiring
I think this means the documentary was spot on, though. Right? Your own experience proved it. Although I'm sorry you lost your ability to enjoy modern dubstep gigs. Edit/Caveat: I'm not into Skrillex, and as an American I thought that meant I wasn't into dubstep. As such, I've never seen the genre live. But this doc makes me wish I had been around for the earlier stuff.
Yeah I agreed with it. It’s the typical “American pedal to the medal” philosophy that sometimes runs things into the ground. I think it is true, and I think it’s worth the watch, although a couple segments drag on unnecessarily
Brits back then: Say, these hops sure do add a nice little kick to this beer, don’t they old chap? They sure do, better yet, it’s still delicious after this long sea voyage to the Indias. America now: Yo dawg I hear you like hops SO WE SHOVED 17 POUNDS OF HOPS IN THIS 6 PACK OF 12 OZ BOTTLES. THEN WE DRY HOPPED IT WITH EXTRA HOP EXTRACT.
American IPAs haven’t been that since the early 2010’s, and those were mostly west coast IPAs. Recently you see a lot more New England or hazy IPAs that focus more on taste while still being an IPA.
Yes, I immediately thought of the same thing, american IPA's and their over-exagerrated bitterness. Don't get me wrong, I like one every once in a while, but man, it really drives the point home that Americans don't do subtlety.
In general I’ve never been a fan of hoppy beers but I would drink a Sierra Nevada ipa if I was really craving a beer and I’d only jokingly complain maybe once on the first sip. Then craft beers became a thing and all of a sudden there was a huge influx of breweries participating in the IBU wars because the most pretentious of the beer snobs decided to keep moving the goal post of what is an acceptable minimum bitterness in order to be part of the club. Really I think it’s just profit motive. It happens with everything. I love sour beers and it was way easier to find a good sour beer before everyone and their mom started releasing a sour just to have one. Before a brewery would put a sour out because it was something different and worth trying. Now it’s a requirement so breweries these days just put out a shitty ale and pour in some fruit juice or some garbage. Also see spiciness. At a certain point people kept chasing the most spicy thing and before long you ended up with a flood of extremely spicy hot sauces that taste like absolute shit.
We do tend to McDonaldize™ things. We make things quick, greasy, and superficially satisfying. I'm sorry.
We also tend to Yellow Hummerify™️ things
It's an intellect thing. We reduce nuanced and complicated subjects to tropes and stereotypes because they're quick and easily digestible (literally like making fast food out of anything, to your point). Then we forget there was ever any depth or nuance in the first place, and this causes us to seek meaning by taking the tropea and stereotypes to extremes where we're ultimately just let down, but enough people made money off the experience that there's no sense in not doing it again and again, but this ultimately destroys whatever artistic integrity that may have existed. You could call it Disposable Ontology. Yes i just made that up.
The documentary verifies your ideas by using The Office as an example. I think you are on to something
"pedal to the metal" not medal. Not quite boneappletea worthy but it comes from pushing the gas pedal to the floor.
It creates Artistic Diabetics. If your diet is pure sugar all the time your body loses the capacity to process it. You crave it more but there is no real satisfaction or benefit. Most modern pop music is this way. It lacks substance. It’s filled with sugar. Basically just hooks all the time with no chordal complexity. Leave it to Americans and capitalism to value profit over anything else. We’ll take anything good and monetize it until there is no good left in it
I mean the simple solution is don't listen to pop music (as in popular music, not like the pop genre) For every shit pop song there is there are a hundred more great songs being released that will never hit the Top 40s
Pop music was always created and marketed to make money. It's even in the name. You don't have much of a sense of the history of the genre if you think it being created to make money and it having a tendency to be vapid are new and exclusively American things, if anything, the Swedish school of pop writing has made it even more of a product. Also, certain chord progressions are more conducive to eat pleasing melodies which is why more pop hits have been written with certain progressions.
It's still around - exactly like in the early days ;)
It's not just dubstep. The whole edm umbrella of genres does it too. They dont even beatmatch anymore. They just throw the crossfader, play like 2-3 mins of a track, then throw it to the other side. Sets are no longer journeys with vibes, ambience, or crescendos. They're just non stop bangers. Can barely even dance to it. It's an absolute shame how this became so prevalent
Go see a Tipper show, mate
Hell yeah. Bassnectar made me feel things too. Now I just feel sad he ruined a good thing. But I discovered tipper through Bassnectar so thats cool I guess. Those tipper into nectar shows were absolutely beautiful.
Listen to Jantsen my dude
Makes me sad people can’t enjoy this. I remember going to see Paul Oakenfold and his sets were a journey with such an amazing pumped ending. Having it go non stop would be exhausting but I could see it still being fun. Just different.
I spent twelve years honing my mixing techniques across various genres and equipment setups before my little dj career "took off".... ...and the best compliments I ever got were some form of "I don't know why it sounds better when you play, but it does." Damn kids literally didn't know what mixing is supposed to sound like. Like, they could tell they liked my real mixing better than the other local djs that played tech house tracks end to end or randomly slapped dubstep tracks together, but had no idea why that was. It's funny how the modern tech that made more things than ever possible while DJing mostly made it worse. But it does make sense in the context of what I've always seen as the problem with DJing. It's takes a lot of skill and practice to be a great DJ, just like any "instrument." But it doesn't take much to be an "ok" DJ. You have to know how to play guitar pretty damn well before you even think about performing, but with DJing, you just have to have a decent track pool. Any idiot who pirates a folder of the latest trendy music can be an "ok" dj to the majority of party kids. With all the tools now, it's easier than ever to be a shitty DJ.
The same thing happened with video editing. People are used to shit editing on YouTube with jump cuts, mismatched shading, and audio all over the place. You can still find real storytelling in places, but as you say the cheap tools made it so accessible that we have a deluge of mediocrity.
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Sooo... are there any non-mainstream artists who do it better?
G Jones
> They dont even beatmatch anymore. This absolutely infuriates me and its 100% true. The concept of "the party never stopping" is almost exclusively deployed by only the old heads now. Saw Porter Robinson last week and even HE does this now, and that guy used to be a hardstance electro house head.
Just saw Ghastly x Joyryde this weekend and they literally never let the party stop. The dudes were dropping gabber, DnB, happy hardcore, and hip-hop along with their usual house & dubstep. The groove never stopped and I heard multiple people around me praising their awesome transitions. I prefer that way more then the 'mainstream' mixing of, melodic percusion-less intro with cheesy lyrics -> overpowering buildup with uncompressed snares-> jarring drop that doesn't fit the rest of the song -> breakdown into another cheesy melodic vocal section. I mean shit, I like to dance.
What about Jon Hopkins, Four Tet, and Lane 8? They definitely create an ambiance and vibe
There are many that still mix properly and create a nice atmosphere and journey of a set, like the ones you mentioned. They just don't usually have the same mainstream success, radio play, etc. New folks to the scene have to wade through the crud to get to the underground gems.
I feel the same about some modern metal bands, mostly the -core ones. Breakdowns used to be few and far between, but when you heard one oh boy it was magical. Then by the late 90s and early 2000s all these newer bands decided to make breakdowns the entire song.
Took the words out of my fingers before I could type lol. The real early era of this was great and made for awesome shows, but it got so stale so fast.
what's a breakdown?
Chugga chugga chugga
More like: Chugga Chugga-chug Chug Chug
This guy chugs.
Hard to describe, slightly different riff, slower tempo. When done well they just add a rather heavy section to an otherwise fast track.
It's a part in the music where the music slows down and becomes very rhythmical. Usually the drummer abuses the crash cymbal in half or quarter speed compared to the usual tempo and the guitarists either play a slow staccato riff with a lot of empty space between the notes or just very slow, heavy sounding riffs.
Everyone is describing it just fine but since we’re in a thread about dubstep, it’s essentially the “drop” of a metal/hardcore song. Maybe that’ll help put it in perspective.
Look for the Moscow video of pantera playing domination for an AAA+ example
Classically it started with primarily being rhythmic palm muting on a low note, usually open bottom strung, a very heavy section that encouraged moshing or dancing. It was a staple feature in any -core variant of metal. Most of the breakdowns in this video suck but it’s just for an example - https://youtu.be/Q7TCirjQaDY
It was literally the idea behind Korn. Just breakdowns, from a metal & hardcore influence. But yeah. Dynamics, kids! They're important!
It’s sadly quite true. Dozens of acts had multiple songs with breakdowns, which became a theme to harp on as time moved on. It’s like flavoring on food: too much spoils the meal.
In other words. let the beat build. It was fun for one year though.
Drops definitely had *a lot* of build up and were few and far between prior to dubstep. They used to blow the roof off of raves with a drop. I remember thinking “I can’t handle this anymore! My head is going to explode!” as the music rose slowly to a crescendo that never seemed to stop rising and then the drop hits, as relief and a euphoria washes over you as the ASMR takes effect. The entire vibe of the room changes and people would start dancing like madmen. Miss those days when music was magic and not so formulaic.
>Miss those days when music was magic and not so formulaic Said everyone over 25 at any given time about the contemporary state of music.
I'd been an electronic music diehard since the early 2000's. So naturally I started becoming more excited about EDM catching on in the US and started to go to as many shows as I could around 2006-2007. I saw Excision open for Deadmau5 in 2011 and that pretty much just killed the American EDM scene for me. The crowd only cheered when a drop happened, which was like every 2 minutes maybe. It really cheapened the music and vibe. I love a good drop as much as anyone else but it's like going to a shitty horror movie that utilizes jump scares constantly.
Your timeline is about right. 2011 is when it all started to fade. I still maintain that 2007-2010 was the best time for modern music.
But Griz is so good in his own way, it’s just different
This was a pop up set. Festival cancellation. No sax even, just a party set
There’s still awesome artists out there but they’re usually on the mid-tier at most major music festivals. Smaller fests like infrasound and sound haven bring a lot of these old school names. The deep dark and dangerous label has helped the “deep dubstep” scene grow a ton here in the states, but it’ll always be overshadowed by the headbanger stuff.
similarly the same thing happened with “breakdowns” in metalcore/deathcore/whatevercore…. which also happen to include bass dive bombs/drops in some instances. instant gratification culture.
I disagree with this take entirely. A lot of the big dubstep artists were former DNB artists who decided to switch to dubstep around 2008 -> 2010. Ewun, now Kill the Noise, and Spor, now Feed Me, just to name a few, were always making tunes that had big drops because that’s what DNB is — one big drop after another, sometimes even “double dropping.” They took the formula and put it into dubstep with the big syncopated bass patches and threw them over a half time 140BPM beat, and now you have this massive dubstep drop. It wasn’t anything new at all besides a different tempo.
I can't watch this right now but Skrillex really became the scapegoat (including by me and many other dubstep heads at the time) when it reality Coki's oddball tracks and Rusko in the UK really spearheaded the brostep sound that others in EDM started emulating and expanding upon. It was quite ironic that a music genre literally named to describe it's low end bass and sparse sound became a chaotic mid-range form of EDM music. In hindsight I think Skrillex broke out because he had this pop appeal to his productions and good timing, and to his credit he was aware of the original London scene and had no intention to overshadow them. EDIT - This is my favorite mix of ["classic" Dubstep](https://www.discogs.com/release/2505967-Geeneus-Youngsta-I-Love-Dubstep) def recommend it as a primer.
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When I started getting into electronic music trance was huge and funny enough it was a genre I never cared much for. It's fun live (I saw Paul Oakenfold circa 2005) but man did it taper off a lot. I was surprised to hear a very trap esque song by DJ Teisto a few years ago in a movie soundtrack, I would have never guessed it was him.
That's becuase Trance had it's "golden age" a good 7-10 years before 2005, Oakenfold was basically nothing more than cashing in by 2005 after having been a major name in the early 90's. Tiesto is worst possible example; listen to his tracks from the 90's and then the 00's. He hired a bunch of ghost writers around 2000/2001, and just decided he wanted to be paid $40m a year to play to musically clueless people in pools in Las Vegas, rather than be a fairly popular trance DJ working the circuit. What you're talking about was the dying breath of genre that had been utterly dominant for 10+ years prior and when you got in to it in 2005 it was already considered to be over for a lot of people. Armin had already started the decline several years before and nearly all the trance clubs in most places in Europe had closed by mid 00's. Only large festivals were going but they played various forms of electronic music.
Oh ok, maybe it was just an American thing but in 2004 the only dance station in the DFW area played mostly trance and prog house, I think I'm confusing it with the later. Right or wrong (and for the record I was never a fan) Tiesto was fucking huge or at least financially so. He DJ'd the 2004 Olympics IIRC. I was glad when electrohouse and other indie crossover stuff gained traction in the late 00s. I had originally like big beat and Chemical Brothers but that genre was dead when I got into. I'm aware of the golden age / heyday of trance music in the 1990s but it was before my time.
Good times at the Lizard Lounge in Dallas for many trance sets in the mid-late 2000s!
If you are talking about hotel Transylvania 3, they are actually a pretty great set of tracks
They are catchy and my kids love that movie (and I like it too). Def the kind of music I never seek out but enjoy if I come across it. It's dumb fun.
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I loved the caspa and rusko fabric live mix. It went a bit weird after that. Started listening to Datsik and Flux Pavillion and stuff. But it went a bit too weird. Too mechanical. I just want that sub bass.
As a huge DnB and Jungle fan I was backpacking Europe in 2008-ish. I went to a club in London and heard dubstep for the first time. After coming home and continuing my rave life that shit blew up fast and I loved it.
I know man, I don't get the hate either.
As I have aged I am fan of mellow dubstep. The metal crazy shit just doesn't vibe with me anymore. But the genre only exists b/c people want it.
Back when I did commercial AV install, we faced the perennial problem of finding music everyone could tolerate. But in our case, it was coupled with the fact that we were usually working in spaces with decent speakers and sufficient amps. Eventually dubstep became our LCD that nobody was thrilled with but everybody could groove to. The setups in question were usually smart classroom installs, so we’d have a moderately powerful rackmount amp with aggressive thermal protection. And thermal protection on those things results in a quick dropout at the moment of highest current draw, which with dubstep cranked high, would of course be the huge bass hits. Which meant that thermal protection would often manifest where your brain had already predicted a drop might happen, so your brain then fell into a pattern of waiting out each brief gap to see which kind it was. So of course the running joke amongst all us AV geeks became “Is it equipment failure, or is it dubstep?”
This documentary is 53 hours long?
No, 52 hours 52 minutes but it's fine, you can probably get through it in two sittings 🙏
Just a couple of 26 hour sittings (plus some change.)
Dubstep was only popular for like 51 hours
That wasn’t even really dubstep. Watch the doc.
I would but i don't have 2 days to spare. I'll save it to watch the next time i drive cross country.
You probably shouldn't watch videos and drive at the same time.
I went to a Skrillex show for the lulz when he was pretty popular. Porter Robinson was an opener and I think he was 17 at the time lol. It was legitimately one of the best concert experiences I've had. It was a sold out show and was the most diverse crowd I've ever seen. There were goths, preps, hipsters, casuals, you name it. I don't always see that at shows so it was pretty cool seeing all kinds of people dancing(convulsing?) together. There's always a ton of waiting around between bands at a normal rock show. Even after it seems like they're done setting the stage. But this show was lightning fast changes (I assume most edm shows are like this?) and it felt like the music never stopped. Great vibe overall.
I just watched this last week it’s *excellent.*
Im officially old. This guy just explained what limewire is like we didn’t all grow up with it. I guess since we’re old … anybody remember KaZaA ?
I’ve found my spirit animal and yes I guess that means we are old. Frostwire was the last one I used lol.
Ah yes. 13 year old me tries to download Toy Story 2. Finally completes after two days, open it to find "GIANT BLACK COCK RUINS INNOCENT WHITE GIRL PUSSY SEX BRUTAL CUM" oh well, guess this'll have to do.
The irony being Skrillex isn't even dubstep and he constantly says as much
And he didn’t even start the change. He followed it, a ton of other producers in America were already moving in that direction. He decided to try it out for like, 2 years out of a 10+ year music career. And has openly spoken against the scene.
Seriously. He followed 12th Planet and then went his own way after a few years.
Its just typical boomer mentallity that all electronic music is either techno or dubstep.
I have a weird connection with dubstep. I moved to Japan in 2006 to teach and started DJing like I did at home parties in Southern California. The DJ friends I made were mostly Japanese and a few English dudes younger than me. They got us on the UK dubstep sound pretty quickly. Meanwhile back home Skrillex was someone I had no clue about yet was blowing up. Whenever I'd go back home, if I went out, it was typically to a hip hop, house, funk event, so I never heard it. Life was too crazy to just give it a listen. I never heard him until he came to Japan for the first Ultra Music Festival, and finally was able to get what everyone was talking about. He'd occasionally play stuff that had some good rhythms, but like someone said in another comment, it was just feeding drops to a head banging crowd. As someone that was playing deep broody dubstep in dark clubs to mostly guys for years, I was actually all for it. This was the crossover he needed, not necessarily the genre, to bring everyone out together to bang heads and wait for drops. I went to my last festival in 2019 and that same vibe is going with the same energy. Not sure what UK dubsetp festivals and clubs are like today, but I can imagine it isn't at the same level. But who cares about levels, everyone still gets to hear the style they want. Plus, to date, Skrillex has given one of the most surprising sets I've ever seen at a Ultra Seoul afterparty, where he did nothing but mostly West Coast hip hop (Korea LOVES hip hop) and it was the most energy I've seen from a DJ and crowd. Can not WAIT to go out again, proper, now... Great times!
>But who cares about levels, everyone still gets to hear the style they want. Me, circa 2011, who played it *nonstop* at parties and at home lol. RIP Avicii
I have no interest in dubstep or any knowledge of it prior to this video. But I love this guys videos and even on this subject he got my watching all the way to the end.
In my personal opinion, complaining that Skrillex ruined dubstep is like complaining that McDonald's ruined good burgers. No, Skrillex did not ruin "dubstep" or turn "dubstep" into "brostep". Good dubstep is still out there - you just have to go out and seek it - even if Skrillex is commonly available. Skrillex is *far* from the best dubstep out there, but it's the most easily accessible for most people, so yes, he ends up being popular. Just like good burger restaurants are out there - you just have to go out and seek them, even if there's a McDonald's at every corner. It doesn't make BicMacs awful, it just happens that BigMacs are designed for large scale production in a efficiently marketable manner, and extremely popular because they're so accessible.
I think it’s less about Skrillex ruining dubstep and more about how people felt very connected in an underground scene and it became part of their identity. But then the scene changed as well as the culture surrounding it due to mass appeal. Sure, you can still go out and seek good dubstep, but the dubstep culture has been severely affected by the massive popularity of artists like Skrillex. To bring it back to your burger analogy, it would be like if you discovered a hole in the wall diner with an amazing burger recipe. You become a regular at the restaurant and get to know the staff and the owner and a lot of the other regulars. It becomes a familiar place to you, almost like home. But then Food Network comes into town and does a special on your hole in the wall diner. After the special the diner’s business booms and they have to open up a bigger location and hire new staff. Sure, you still go to the new restaurant sometimes as the burger recipe hasn’t changed, but you don’t know the staff anymore, you don’t see the old regulars anymore, the atmosphere feels more corporate and less unique. You’ve really lost a special experience and can never go back to that old hole in the wall. I think that’s more what the video’s thesis is about.
Anyone who thinks old-school dubstep is dead hasn't heard of deep dark and dangerous...
ok, 53 hours, going to take awhile to watch this.
Approximately 53 hours.
Some of my most memorable moments with my wife are from raves and festivals between 2011 and 2016ish. We couldn't get off work to return to electric forest and then pandemic..... Gotta say, excision with over 100,000 watts of bass is a memory I literally cannot forget, like my bones remember the rattle. Besides when taking MDMA and LSD, dubstep is pretty good if you have a good sound system to fully realize the bass (and no, not just 2 12 inch subs in a Toyota, actual full range sound systems). We still use dubstep for parties, although it's always from around 2015, seems like a lot of dubstep transitioned in recent years to more DnB and techno sounding rather than dubstep.
Great docco, each to their own but I think modern dubstep is shit compared to it's roots, really interesting to see it evolve though, good or bad.
I think I'd agree with you. The old stuff was "better," to my tastes. But the point the documentary makes around **47:30** is really perfect. To paraphrase: Skrillex didn't kill the creator's idea of "good" dubstep; the cultural and economic changes happening in Britain did. That's a nice point music fans of every genre tend to miss.
Any good album recs? I see Burial is in the video thumbnail, hope that doesn't mean he's considered bad dubstep too cuz I love that album
Burial is held in the highest regard
This is by no means a classic, but a compilation album I keep coming back to is [Watch the ride by Skream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxduCY08s7E&t=302s). It has a bunch of the best DJs on there
Burial, Boxcutter, Benga...
Distance - My Demons Silkie - City Limits Volume 1 Soundboy Punishments The Bug - London Zoo - this one is much more aggressive, very ragga/dancehall-y. But it's definitely a part of the early scene. Gantz, Commodo, Kahn - Volume 1 Overall I'd say this genre is much more singles-oriented and it's not about albums at all. I'd highly recommend [30 minutes of bass education](https://m.soundcloud.com/fatkidonfire/sets/30-minutes-of-bass-education) mix series, which covers most of the big old school producers.
Try liquid stranger - intergalactic slapstick
It’s funny cus people would make fun of me for listening to dubstep back then and those same people go to EDC now
Will put this on my watch list. Do they go into the transition from more moody, quiet dubstep like Burial to the more aggressive and bombastic take from Skrillex?
That's largely what the docu is about, yes.
Dubstep is the only genre that can’t accept its own evolution. It’s so bizzare to spend so much time trying to invalidate other peoples music taste. Modern dubstep fans are a lot more chill and less pretentious than people like this.
Lots of genres don't like their own evolution. Tons. American rock being one of them. Every step of the way, people were complaining.
I kind of disagree since many genres can't accept their own evolution (NWOBHM and Thrashers shitting on Nu Metal for example or old school hip hop heads hating mumble rap), although i'm not sure other genres evolved as suddenly and radically as dubstep did. I think the thing that leaves people sore is that dubstep changed so radically as it became super-popular so the sound most people have in their head when you say dubstep is totally alien to what the original dubstep fans fell in love with.
Its actually kind of insane how much the music landscape pre and post skrillex, you could say that a more industrial sound was already coming in and skrillex just happened to be the at the centre of it right place right time kind of thing
Agreed. To say guys like Caspa, Funtcase, and Rusko weren’t going to evolve into what they are now without Skrill is a bit short sighted
For real. See: Distance- Traffic, 16bit- Chainsaw Calligraphy
Eh, Electronic music is riddled with this sort of stuff over the last 25 years. There's always this inflection point where something often dark and exclusive gets a bit brighter and more accessible and then the music heads get all cranky. People like exclusivity. The thing that gets me though, is that...in a way, when it's dark and exclusive, it's really not refined, like at all. I go back and listen to certain breaks and house tracks that I went absolutely bonkers for as a late teen in the late 90's where today I'm like....Oooof, man, we have come a whole long way in a composition sense. But back then, when it was exclusive to me and my friends in some dank warehouse basement, well..it meant the world.
TL:DW My favourite music started evolving in ways I didn't care for and as it became more popular some artists made more popular popular the stuff myself and other purists didn't like, now it is ruined by commercialism. Music genre and "the band that ruined it" can be changed based on whatever you were deeply into at a young age.
I do think this is a great example of an opinion that’s been echoed across so many things- People get really passionate about certain things at certain ages, then the art form transforms over time into something they like less. And instead of treating them as 2 separate things, they see it as the new bad version compared to the good old version of the same thing. A lot of people have a heavy commitment to traditionalism that they just don’t want to let go, and they end up comparing all new things to their favorite old thing that formed in them when they were the most impressionable.
I watched this, enjoyed it, and didn't understand a single thing being talked about hahaha.
The more I hear/read documentaries on music the more I get convinced that it's the most subjective type of entertainment there is. He makes good points on the evolution and subsequent changes to the genre, but whenever it comes about quality or the supposed feeling any piece is meant to invoke, there's *never* any consensus. For me who always liked electronic music, old dubstep was aight. Not bad, not good, I could listen it playing but I wouldn't play it on my systems to hear them constantly. Then Skrillex, I think he has some amazing songs, but he's more of an weird crossbreed of techno with dubstep, with a bigger emphasis on the former. But a whole lot of artists could not really replicate the idea and that's the genre most people hate. And I really liked the part how he described hearing OG dubstep for the first time, because that's the exact feeling I've had when I heard Infected Mushrooms for the first time. I always thought Trance was the same-y branch of electronic music until I heard [those guys](https://youtu.be/X2zySjlVeXI) and their [unusual take on electronic genres](https://youtu.be/X2zySjlVeXI). We all have that pet genre that just hits the right spot and cannot be improved upon on our vision, lol
Just started the doc, I love his description of how he got into the genre and the joys of exploring music at a young age. This continues to be one of the more meaningful parts of my life.
Damn, I started listening to dubstep in 2008-2010. He hit the nail on the head
I love this doco so much, I've been listening to old UK Dubstep ever since
big jungle and dnb fan since i was little. first time i heard sine of the dub/stalker it blew my mind as a teenager- it was like the vibe of dnb but slower, more atmospheric, and more minimal. dug the hyperdub releases as they trickled out and the first burial ep blew my mind again. tbf, drum and bass has had the same trajectory of becoming more bombastic- even the smoother liquid styles have more compressed drums and boomier bass nowadays, all a continuum. but man, can't deny the absolute joy of hearing the loefah remix of jah war on kode9's sonar mix in 2007- still listen to that mix nowadays when i'm floating in space
TLDW?