Can you tell the difference between...

[dubmugga]

...a producer who evolved with the music after garage died and a producer who may be a recent convert from d'n'b/breakz, yet are both making "dubstep" ???

ie...tunes that come from the garage strain or the breakbeat strain of mutant electronica headz, if both tunes are half steppas ???

dunno if that came out right, hope you get the drift...

to me it seems if you have production skills and just pick up from the here and now you missed out on the roots of the music but given dubsteps recent origins it is possible to trace back your influences

however if you were garage head and stayed true and underground then picked up your production skills you tend to have a more balanced outlook on the genre and consequently your tunes have more...

uh, whats the word i'm lookin for here...integrity, relevence ???

* puts on asbestos suit and waits*

[r33lc4sh]

bla bla bla

[pete_bubonic]

I reckon at a guess, Loefah would be a jungle immigrant, his beats are just dums and bass in their rawest form.

Search and Destroy, N-Type and Distance as well?


Wasn't a huge follower of the garage scene, but perhaps Skream? And obviously the grime producers...

producers like SLT are harder to pin in my ears, because you can hear both elements in thier music. But Vicious and Dangerous sound like really good dnb emcees (or at least how dnb emcees should sound), so i'll go with Jungle.

As for having the skills but coming into the scene right now, yeah they would be missing a lot, but I don't think it would adversely affect the music, if anythign perhaps it would enhance it.

I mean look at Atki2, man absolutely kills it, but he came from the breakcore/idm (perhaps the mashup jungle as well) scene.

[protocolx]

erm.. yeah... i can tell..

the main point here being.. i was a garage listener.. say 97-2000/01.. then really stopped following the scene.. too much violence attitude etc.etc..

anyways i moved to dnb.. and started producin dnb.. also some grime.. bout 2 years ago i move too london.. started hearing more abstract soundin grime i suppose u could call it.. dont think it had a tag at this stage.. anyways bout 9 months ago i found out bout the whole croydon techno term, and also, forward.. then dubstep..

i heard people like vexd etc.. i noticed the productionz are just tighter than garage or grime...

bassically my point is being a dnb producer, standards are extremly high.. the emphasis is on fukin TIGHT BREAKS AND SUB.. generally production techiques are better more involved,, therefore some 1 moving to dubstep from dnb. imo will make better trax...

sum 1 moving from garage grime,, will not have no where near as much detail in their sounds.. not that this is a good or bad thing....

[slengleteng]

interesting one,

but i think, people from outside London, don't really realise how all pervasive Garage was during its height.

I used to go Raving much more to Drum and Bass and i have lots of drum and bass records, but i think thats mainly because i used to like doing beans, which was why i used to go Drum and bass raving instead of Garage.

but i still used to listen to Garage all the time, it was literally all over the radio from about 98 onwards and your only choice in the day.

all the little dances that people used to do at college or whatever were always garage, and maybe some old skool.

my first introduction to mixing was also with Garage, because thats just what most people used to mix.

i reckon it was even bigger than Jungle. but Im just going from how popular Jungle was at school, because i was to young to go raving when it was at its peak.

[subframe]

bla bla bla

[geoff]

I'd say producers who have come from a drum'n'bass background tend to have technically has very high production standards. But that in itself doesnt mean shit. Uk garage and grime came with an inventiveness that made drum'n'bass sound formulaic and dull. You can hear this in producers now that have come from these different backgrounds.

[logos]

Don't forget there was a much earlier wave of cross-pollination than just post-97 dnb heads getting into dubstep. There was the whole London garage culture that jungle ravers, producers, and lower-ranking DJs migrated too after jungle/dnb started to lose the big sample elements, the ragga samples etc in 96/97. I'd put money on most 2-steppers and now dubsteppers have a jungle element in their past, even if it was listening to pirates or raving.

But I SERIOUSLY doubt you can tell recent dnb migrants to dubstep. Who did you have in mind? AFAIK Loefah etc never released drum and bass (though for all I know could have made it in their spare time). I don't think your analysis holds up.

[dubmugga]

Ok gonna go out on a limb here and say in a general stereotypical overview that...

...if you listen to say skream, DMZ, slt mob, K9, loefah, plasticman, mark one, darqwan you can't hear much of a breakbeat influence and the beats are more steppy and fucked up with the bass doing not much really other than generating a warm fat subbby drone that might modulate by a semitone or 2

but if you listen to say boxcutter, toasty, S&D, vex'd even the newer guys like luke envoy and caspa you hear a lot of d'n'b/breakz sounds, the reece, the hoover, the "spacefart" and the beats tend to just roll in th background without much variation while the bass carries most of the melody...

it's like these guys had skills and adapted them to dubstep where as the former learnt their skills developing the original sound and have progressed from there

this isn't meant to be a slight on anyone but where do you think most of the new producers wil come from ??? I'm pickin d'n'b converts so expect a lot of cloning...

...that is to say half time beats of 138 bpm with big dubby basslines straight beats and harsh sounds and things could get a bit samey

i think it also depends on where you got you dub influence from which you integrate into your step, either straight from the source ie jamaican riddims or mutated in jungle form and adapted from early dubstep...

plenty of holes in there to fall through but I reckon something to think about or ignore

[intoccabile]

Interesting topic !

Do you think the dnb converts have a tendancy to make more " in your face " dubstep tunes than, say, the people who have been in the garage scene for time ( more compression ) ?

And also, the use of the reece ( and other key jungle / dnb sounds ) is something I've noticed in a lot of recent tunes and I was wondering if that was due to the number of dnb heads who are immigrating in the dubstep scene...?

[amen-ra]

There's definitely a difference.

I came up through the pirates, DnB- 94-97. Garage 95-El-B. Grime and Dubstep 2000?+ I dunno lost track of the dates. And I seem to relate more to peeps that have come up through that kind of root.

SLT were doin the garage ting way back when- probably from 95 onwards, eventually movin with the earliest dubstep- El-B etc. Slaughter were the first and one of the only crews playin dubstep on the radio for the longest time

I personally think the London pirate experience iz an entity in itself and those that catch the bug keep it very raw. Kode 9's sets are true PIRATE sets as far as Im concerned, hearin riddims u aint ever heard before- very mystical. That's a very personal opinion though coz since I was a yout the London pirate scene held a lot of wonder and awe for me, loved the rawness.

I wasnt suprised to hear Mala was on the garage ting back in the day- he's a pirate radio man through-and-through. U can hear the influence. Could be totally wrong abut that though, it's jus a hunch.

A lot of youts round the way moved in line with the pirates, like someone said, from 98 onwards it was pure garage on there, a lot of headz converted. To me that's jus the power of the pirates though

[amen-ra]

Sorry- I didnt even address the topic at hand!! I can tell when someone hasn't gone through the same musical journey as me (i.e. jungle- garage- dubstep and grime)

It all depends on how in-tune with you're journey you are/were though. Some people wont be able to tell the difference.

It's a mystical ting

[amen-ra]

It's more exciting when u get bres with no pre-conceptions though

[kion]

Could the Garage-strain of producers have a tendency to give the beats more of a swing than the dnb/breaks strain of producers (even on the half-steppish material)? Not a general rule of course - in fact it's probably bollox lol, but for the sake of forum bs talk, this influence could show through in some instances.

I come from the drum n bass side, and stuck with it through its metamorphosis from '92 darkside thru '94/95 junglism to '96 onwards technoidism and saw the music spiral back through style-sets up to '02 when I stopped buying the vinyl.

So my influences are affected by that , but I never got into the garage thing at the time - I got into breaks.

Does that make me any less aware or any less influenced by life experiences (raves, pirate radio, as well as general life shit), than say a producer who started on garage and was never exposed to jungle? It swings both ways, and both forms go towards seperately shaping a perspective and vibe within the music - like a 're-marriage' of sorts, that leads to many bastard children (sub genres that were never meant lol)

And what about a producer coming in who might never have been into jungle or garage. Sometimes that's where the freshest material is born - without a past context to latch onto.

Plasticman touched on this by stating he only ever listened to Garage and pop music - according to this claim, no other form of music would have influenced his beats.

This frame of mind (and experience of life) is just as valid as someone who might be into many types of music - from techno to punk to reggae to hip hop to grime to classical. I don't know where Im going with this now, but there you go!

[gutter]

I think you'll find that d'n'b/jungle casts a MASSIVE shadow over the whole dubstep thang. You say there's no 'breaks' influence with Loefah, but his roots are totally in jungle - i saw him play an old skool jungle set recently..it's in his fuckin blood, man. and he told me that he's thinking of incorporating breaks in his productions soon., though just little snippets of things...little hits and edits rather than full rollin' loops.

Plasticman is pure UKG roots...and if you can't tell the difference between his shit and Loefah's, your ears are fucked.

[blackdown]

it's interesting at this point to look at the difference between producers who have loads of musical history and those that have little, and then compare what progress they make.

some producers are weighed down by the records they love in the past. others are inspired by them. some producers with no musical knowledge make mistakes already made the past, some crash through boundaries and make startling innovations.

to give examples i think mala and loefah DMZ are two people who have made massive progress from building on their past musical loves.

lots of Todd Edwards fans never escaped their love of his records and hence the music stayed the same. also breakstep isn't my thing because it's too similar to the hardest of early '00s drum & bass.

i think grime is also an example of where massive progress has been made by people who have little regard for the past ( '01 garage to them is 'old school).

grime's also made mistakes in ignorance of the past, like Ruff Sqwad's 'Uptown Girl' - which re-hashes some of commercial hip hop's worst pop moments.

you can never predict which outcome will occour but you can always spot it in hindsight.

[dubmugga]

I kinda parted ways with jungle after bad company started up the techstep thing and congo natty went bush, then all the lil shits started taking over DOA wasn't feeling that whole liquid thing either...

got into the breakstep thing after garage imploded cos it was still steppy but were never really into the running basslines or the rolling breakz and vocal garage just shitted me no end so too did a lot of MCing. Flirted with nu skool but that was more just an appreciation of and being inspired by tipper, si begg and uberzone and to a lesser extent our countryman freq who showed us we could elevate beyond our confines but he still had to travel to do it

...there just wasn't much else going on apart from zed bias, oris jay et al but even then those pioneers were pretty hit and miss, thank fuck for tempa is all i can say

consequently, we're not really interested in following the well trodden path, more into excursions of the beaten trak, pushing the envelope. Don't quite know how or where we fit in but we do, we have to cos once beyond the fringes its no mans land and you run the risk of no one being able to connect with your shit. We like many others are just continuing the electronic journey into the 21st century but without having experienced the UK/rave/e/pirate/dubplate culture thing

...the other thing is we'd be lucky if we get or got to hear half of what's out there so miss out on the really obscure white labels and one hit wonders but then again maybe it acted as a sort of bullshit filter as well...dunno eh ???

having a bit of knowledge on the roots of modern electronica and being able to observe the influences means we are trying hard too avoid cliches or cloning. Being in NZ does help for that with nu stuff but without the net we'd be fucked for getting shit out there so we have to develop experiments in promotion and distribution as well

sorry bout the hornblowing there so anyway...

...i reckon the d'n'b converts are too used to just rinsing a break, adding edits and fills so their beats tend to be a little less adventurous on the dubstep tip but on the breaky stuff they have a definite advantage where as the garage heads tend to construct their beats from ground up and the drum sounds themselves are more unique/individual/subtle in their variation

it's so easy to just loop a 4bar halftime thing and let it roll so we try not to without fucking with it ever so slightly or covering it with a wobbly bass

...i think we might add some pasifikan flavours next, maybe log drums and native birdsong, haka and war chants, maori flutes that sort of thing just to infuse it more with where and who we are

the dark urban thing is starting to depress me and though i 'd love to immerse myself in it, London or NYC styles for a little while, i don't think I'd like to be trapped or confined by and be defined by it...

it's still all about dancing isn't it, making people want to shuffle and nod ???

...or is it more about getting irie, chinstroking, trainspotting, merking and brapping :shock:

one implies intelligence the other just stupidly simple booty shakers

would like to hear some of the bigboy producers histories, none more so than the hyperdubster hisself, the cybersonic samurai, kode 9

[r33lc4sh]

^^^ bad company started techstep thing
who the fuck told u that
when first techstep tunes were released guys from bad company probably didn't knew what dnb is
first techstep releases 1995/1996
bac company formed in 1999 - actually they formed when techstep was pretty strong

[gutter]

...i think we might add some pasifikan flavours next, maybe log drums and native birdsong, haka and war chants, maori flutes that sort of thing just to infuse it more with where and who we are

Yes, you should def do that!

[r33lc4sh]

...i think we might add some pasifikan flavours next, maybe log drums and native birdsong, haka and war chants, maori flutes that sort of thing just to infuse it more with where and who we are

Yes, you should def do that!

i'm really suprised that he hasn't done it yet