Article from pitchfork... Hold tight Dubway!

[emcee child]

Good article on dubstep and Rinse taken from ptichfork:


Column: The Month in Grime/Dubstep
Story by Martin Clark

It's been a curious month in dubstep. First the scene has been adjusting to Dubway's forum, a new place for dubstep online that has quickly far outstripped its predecessor Dubplate.net in activity and reach.

In many ways it feels like a tipping point in the progression of the sound. For years, dubsteppers struggled in vain to generate momentum for the scene. Truly great producers, like El-B and Zed Bias, came and went without receiving global recognition. The sound achieved self-sufficiency-- not to be sniffed at-- but hardly explosive expansion. (And on reflection perhaps that's no bad thing if you saw 2step garage's boom and bust).

But recently the scene has gained the beginnings of a global following, something that Infinite has also recently noted. France, Germany, Spain, America, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary, Brazil, Slovakia, and Australia are all repping the sound.

Why this has happened now is curious. Certainly it can be down, in part, to the success of DMZ. Digital Mystikz and Loefah's determined collectivism has brought a successful label, night and expanded the sonic palate of the scene-- an idea Skream took and ran with, showering 2005 in a glorious spectrum of dubs. DMZ success was in turn aided by the Rephlex Grime compilations, the second volume of which they starred on. Perhaps the delay was caused by people recovering from buying a dubstep compilation called "Grime" with no grime on it. Nonetheless the international distribution of this album was surely a factor.

Given the expansion, what then happens when you take a scene from its environmental birthplace? Discouraging results can be seen with drum & bass, where the move from a London based urban culture to a global cyber-based dance music has resulted in either catastrophic misjudgements in quality control or time-sealed pockets of backwards-looking revisionism.

DMZ's Loefah, in a yet unpublished interview, reinforces the necessity of dubstep's link to London, describing it as "essential." The environment, the state of mind, the musical heritage-- it's all found in London and therefore in London's music. Every sound has its calling cards, its sonic definers. Rap has that boom bap, drum & bass it's energy and tempo, trance its sense of epic euphoria. Perhaps this is dubstep's cornerstone, an essential, core component?

The problem is scenes that become resistant to change, fail to evolve. Artists are at their best when they're imagining what isn't rather than what already is, what could be rather than what should (just compare the evolution of 2step garage from 2001 to date with that of grime). And dubstep itself owes its current form to just such visionaries, to people who foresaw where we are now.

What our current visionaries foresee, isn't clear. Some are tipping the return of jungle drums to halfstep's minimal template. Skream's "Ancient Memories remix" suggests a direction with energy rooted in mutating b-line. Coki DMZ's "Stuck"-- one of the tunes of the year-- uses both b-line energy and uptempo 2step swing. Perhaps Kode 9's dysfunctional/discordant dread-pop aesthetic herald's a new direction? Certainly Mala DMZ's unrestrained vision-- taking in bouncy 4/4 beats and uptempo DJ sets-- holds great potential.

Speculation aside, some dubstep releases to keep an eye out for are D1's "Degrees", "Identify", and "Molecules", on Tempa, followed by the first volume in Skream's "Skreamizm" series which features "Glamma", "Smiley Face", "Rottan", "Lightning Dub", and "Hag." Loefah's mighty "Root" and "Goat Stare" is out on DMZ. His collaborations with Skream, "Fearless" and "28g," are out soon on the increasingly essential Tectonic label from Bristol. Also due on the imprint is a Random Trio's four tracker featuring the deeper-than-deep "Indian Stomp". Finally surprise gem of the month is Appleblim's "Cheat I" (Skull Disco), which features the most insane reverbed-delayed-phazed dub-drop since Lee Perry burnt his own studio down. What with Shakleton's "Limb By Limb" remix, these boys have clearly raised their game.

It's also been a bad month for grime's lifeblood: pirate radio. A recent press campaign by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom announced a series of measures that had been taken, and reasons for those measures, against pirate radio broadcasters. The press was then rife with stories insisting how dangerous and shady the world of pirate radio really is.

No one is disputing the fact that pirate radio, as the law stands, is illegal. But kept outside of the law, the pirate radio community are left open to be criticized by any kind of allegation, without the right to reply.

Rinse FM is without doubt the world's leading grime station, and the medium that broke Wiley, Dizzee Rascal and large parts of grime as a whole. They currently have a near monopoly on the best talent in grime. In an exclusive interview for this column, Rinse management have spoken out to refute some of the allegations made by recent newspaper articles.

Firstly there's the suggestion that pirate radio interferes with essential services' transmissions, specifically the fire brigade or aircraft. A member of Rinse FM management denies this. "In my whole career I've never heard of it," he says. It stands to reason that if planes were crashing into London every day, we'd all know about it. The issue relates to the accuracy of transmitters. Do they transmit at the frequency they're set to or do harmonics wander off into different parts of the spectrum (called 'sprogging')? "A few years ago this might have been true, but ten years on our transmitters are too good. They're phased locked to a frequency. I've never heard of a station interfering with an emergency service-- if they did the station would be shut down immediately! I'd like to see proof of all these allegations." As pirate radio broadcasters, they're not entitled to proof or protection from slander it would seem.

Another allegation is that pirate radio is linked to crime, guns and drugs. Rinse management strongly deny this too. "They're living in the past. I don't know anyone who takes drugs anymore. People I know are trying to get away from them. I have nothing personally to do with guns. I'm into music. Pirate radio helped people like me or Dizzee to get away from that kind of life, the life we grew up around."

Recent reports have suggested pirate stations make up to £400,000 a year. Rinse find this laughable. "That is a ridiculous sum. If that was possible I would have done it for a year and stopped. You can make about £500 a month, maximum. We lost £6,000 of transmitters in two weeks recently. Rinse runs at a loss, not a gain and all the DJs have to pay subs just so we can stay on air."

"They say the ads make us money, and perhaps in the old days they might have. But there are so many pirate stations on air some prices are as low as £30 an ad. Some people don't even pay for ads."

"They say by illegally broadcasting we are robbing artists of their PRS money. Most of the music on the station is made by us-- so are we robbing ourselves? We promote new music. The major labels come to us and pay us to play their artists because we make them look good and the legal station don't play their music. Heart, Virgin etc all the legal station play the same music."

If there wasn't an audience for pirate radio, people wouldn't broadcast it. And there is definitely a strong argument that pirate radio plays music people actually want but no legal stations will play. Commercial stations, with ABC1 advertisers to please, don't want to hear a diverse, new selection of music. They want a safe mass market sound, which is fine for that audience. But what about those listeners who fall outside the mass market?

"They say we shouldn't have a licence. I think they're wrong. The kids listen to us, not to legal stations like Kiss. We're looking to apply for a legal digital licence. We think more benefit would come from FM, but they say there's no space, even though there's room for 150 pirates on the dial. We've got three spaces [0.3 Mhz] either side, we're the only ones. They could give us that space."

"I'm not gonna defend everyone on the dial-- there's bad in everything-- but we think we make a difference. Certain people now think pirate radio is the worst thing ever. But our music will benefit this country's music industry. There's no real music coming from this country, it's all manufactured pop. We supply the real music, that's what we do."

Pirate radio has been the life blood of UK underground music for decades. As Rinse management points out, if planes were dropping out of the sky or fire bridges not getting to people burning in fires on a daily basis, it would be all over the news and the stations would be shut down instantly. The reality is they are being excluded from an FM dial that does not even nearly accurately represent or cater for London's diverse cultures.

"We're portrayed as so dark and different by the media but I've probably helped more kids than Tower Hamlets job centre. People I know who didn't do radio are in jail."

Reading this all over the world? Email Martin Clark on martin_clark7@hotmail.com
Check his Keysound Radio mix and debut single with Dusk.
For more writing, check www.blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com

Next week: Dave Steflox on the month in dancehall.

[rickyricardo]

Given the expansion, what then happens when you take a scene from its environmental birthplace? Discouraging results can be seen with drum & bass, where the move from a London based urban culture to a global cyber-based dance music has resulted in either catastrophic misjudgements in quality control or time-sealed pockets of backwards-looking revisionism.

I kind of take issue w/ this statement. It's kind of like blaming the lack of quality control on dnb's globalism. I hardly think that's the case, especially when you consider that most of the "shit" drum'nbass is coming out of London these days. If anything, an international audience has *sustained* dnb, despite the decay within it's birthplace. It's also led to multiple re-interpretations of the sound that feed off of the international producers respective environments, rather than trying to emulate a London sound. Thus why Brazilian dnb has it's own sound....Hungarian dnb another, and Canadian yet another.

DMZ's Loefah, in a yet unpublished interview, reinforces the necessity of dubstep's link to London, describing it as "essential." The environment, the state of mind, the musical heritage-- it's all found in London and therefore in London's music. Every sound has its calling cards, its sonic definers. Rap has that boom bap, drum & bass it's energy and tempo, trance its sense of epic euphoria. Perhaps this is dubstep's cornerstone, an essential, core component?

While I agree that there is something distinctly "London" about the environmental factors that make up dubstep (something i can't really argue with, not having been there), I find it hard to believe that those factors are necessarily unique to London....or that someone coming from the outside, reflecting their own environment into the music makes it any less "dubstep".

Don't take this as an attack the article....I def enjoy the Pitchfork columns. Those two parts just kinda bugged me. Thoughts?

[gutter]

It might not be dubstep in the purest sense, but I hear plenty of interesting things going on around the globe that follow on from whats happening in London, and I'm trying to document that. What I mean is, I don't think you have to live in London to make interesting valid music that borrows from that sound. I picked-up that L-Wiz Ep today. It sounds fuckin great. He's from Sweden, right?

I totally respect the viewpoint of Blackdown, Loefah, etc and what they're doing represents the core of this sound, but there's plenty of quality shit out there needs some respect too...

[blackdown]

firstly didnt we go through all this before when that piece came out last month? certainly we've been over these issues about four times recently.

but for the record the link between London and dubstep is part of an attempt to try to rationalise why the sound has developed the vibe it has over the last five years.

i'm absolutely not saying people outside of london shouldnt be making it. it's just that with a few exceptions over the years (Goldspot, L Wiz, Pinch, Joe Nice...) most of the work to build the sound has undenyably come from London, so it's natural to try and examine the links between the city and the sound.

but this forum has made it clear that there's lots of people outside of the capital interested in dubstep. And if they're heavy, like Joe Nice's DJing or Pinch and L Wiz's production, I'm gonna back it 100%.

[seckle]

Column: The Month in Grime/Dubstep
Story by Martin Clark

Given the expansion, what then happens when you take a scene from its environmental birthplace? Discouraging results can be seen with drum & bass, where the move from a London based urban culture to a global cyber-based dance music has resulted in either catastrophic misjudgements in quality control or time-sealed pockets of backwards-looking revisionism.

LOL.

discouraging results? you've got to be joking right? martin clark needs to exclusively interview goldie, roni, dillinja, peshay, randall or any of the original dons of dnb asking them if they'd call it's global expansion in the last 11 years.... "discouraging".

they make a bloody living off of it being global.

they've all flown around the world and bought houses & cars from dj'ing dnb.

[emcee child]

Just to clarify... these weren't my thinkings... I just copied and posted from the article.




Niceness

[seckle]

It might not be dubstep in the purest sense, but I hear plenty of interesting things going on around the globe that follow on from whats happening in London, and I'm trying to document that. What I mean is, I don't think you have to live in London to make interesting valid music that borrows from that sound. I picked-up that L-Wiz Ep today. It sounds fuckin great. He's from Sweden, right?

I totally respect the viewpoint of Blackdown, Loefah, etc and what they're doing represents the core of this sound, but there's plenty of quality shit out there needs some respect too...

here here.

[geoff]

the original dons of dnb asking them if they'd call it's global expansion in the last 11 years.... "discouraging".

they make a bloody living off of it being global.

they've all flown around the world and bought houses & cars from dj'ing dnb.

who cares what they think. they became history a while ago. if buying a car and a house is the index against which the scene should be measured then im out of here. I point about 'discouraging' relates to the spread of the music and how it effects the quality etc. not about units sold, mortgages taken out, cars bought. Youve missed the point Seckle.

[r33lc4sh]

the problem is that most shitty dnb is produced in uk hahahaha

[seckle]

the original dons of dnb asking them if they'd call it's global expansion in the last 11 years.... "discouraging".

they make a bloody living off of it being global.

they've all flown around the world and bought houses & cars from dj'ing dnb.

who cares what they think. they became history a while ago. if buying a car and a house is the index against which the scene should be measured then im out of here. I point about 'discouraging' relates to the spread of the music and how it effects the quality etc. not about units sold, mortgages taken out, cars bought. Youve missed the point Seckle.

my point wasn't purely about finances. i just don't subscribe to the notion that the internet being global makes things worse for underground music. i think it's a waste of time discussing that. things happen fast. everything is global. this is 2006, not 2001.

[fubar]

its not the spread of the music globally that is ever the problem its the increase in popularity and recognition which means alot more people are cashing into that 'sound' when that happens theres only so much good stuff can come out of it because if everyone is trying to make something based on one sound its bound to end up sounding like repetetive crap, I dont think the actual geography has much of an negative/positive effect or the cultural background of the area. D&B is just a name of a genre that got big so alot of people started putting up lables and alot of people started making it without any new ideas or musical talent/intuitiveness to add to the scene.

This doesn't mean its a particularly bad thing for any genre name to get big it will just mean you have to spend more time sifting through not so good stuff to find the good tracks.

[r33lc4sh]

This doesn't mean its a particularly bad thing for any genre name to get big it will just mean you have to spend more time sifting through not so good stuff to find the good tracks.

true true true

[ufo over easy]

..