Dubstep joins DnB down a dead end alley

feasible_weasel · Post by **feasible_weasel** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:53 am

Genres are just Era's of dance music
new technology or something does something that catches on and it becomes another era.
does it matter what its called?? the answer is No
its obvious that it will become more gineric as commercialism catches a sound, and everybody jumps on to get money and get invloved.
so lets not all get depressed, and just enjoy this era of dance called dubstep.
with all music, u have to do alot of wadding to get the good stuff. especially experimental music.

pure · Post by **pure** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:21 am

On the subject of Drum and Bass. I think its the same as it always has been but its just now we have the wobble jump up tunes thanks to twisted individual(who actually made some good wobble tunes) and people are getting older. Theres only so much inovative stuff you can do. Drum and bass has now done it all and now your bored with it and cant understand why and so blame producers and the scene.

darkmatter · Post by **darkmatter** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:43 am

Yeah the 'golden era' may have passed, but the people who feel that should spend their time making tunes, promoting events, building soundsystems, or repping good music on their radio shows/mixes.

However wise these words on a forum may be, they aint gonna make anyone dance.

dirtycash · Post by **dirtycash** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:10 pm

a big part of drum and basses problems started when it keep getting faster & faster...remember it started at around 150=160bpm...

lomax · Post by **lomax** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:31 pm

blah blah blah blah....

couldn't all this energy be better spent on actually producing some of the "innovative" tunes you all pine for?

corpsey · Post by **corpsey** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:36 pm

Are you joking, that would be well hard

I'm sticking to moaning about things thanks very much

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:51 pm

Corpsey wrote:Are you joking, that would be well hard

I'm sticking to moaning about things thanks very much

Yeah, Corpsey, it is the favourite national pastime after all

corpsey · Post by **corpsey** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 12:54 pm

I like bringing irony, that other great british obsession, into play by moaning about british people moaning all the time

The only thing I like more than moaning about something is attacking an old lady with a tyre iron and getting pregnant at the age of 12

ocr · Post by **ocr** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:11 pm

This is the last time I'm going to say this because the thread finished couple pages back. Anyone dropping in now at the end to offer their comments should read the thread B4 doing so.

No-one is bemoaning the loss of a golden era
No-one is sitting around whingeing on the internet rather than being proactive (i.e puttin on parties, producing music)
No-one is saying "where all the good tracks out there"
No-one is posting an "anti-wobble" thread
No-one is blaming Producers

This thread was to encourage knowledgeable people to offer their thoughts on how and why electronic music scenes rise and fall, in this case the starting point was inviting discussion on similarities (if any!) between the dynamic of the rise and fall of DnB & the current state of affairs in Dubstep. No-one's suggesting that Dubstep is following a similar curve, we were just correlating the two since they do share some family ties, and they have similar audiences, old and new.

I wanted to know what people thought, end of. I'm sorry if this is tired, familiar ground for the more self appointed hardened veterans of the forum,

& if this is so dull a topic, then why the huge amounts of posts, unless people have nothing better to do than drop in on a thread just to tell folk they're lame and their discussion has no merit, if you feel that way, why waste your time typing? just drift on by to whatever threads and/or discussions you do consider worthwhile.
Overcast radio wrote:

I also was unaware that the discussion of music was old and tired. I guess music has run its course huh? No, how to make a wobble or "What's better? DSAS v1 or v4" is old.

In light of the above, and despite people dropping in with derisory remarks after having not bothered to read the thread, it was a truly rewarding and interesting discussion. Marred only by those who are jaded by reading the same old posts over and over again. this wasn't one of these posts, you'd see that if you read it before posting. but i can see how you'd mistake it for one of "those" posts. If they bug you so much, dont contribute to them, you'll only prolong their lifespan! As is evidenced by this thread, some people still want to discuss this topic, let them do so in peace please. (& get it straight what's really being discussed before wading in with you're "whatver man! get over it" comments.

l3k · Post by **l3k** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 2:14 pm

ocr wrote:This thread was to encourage knowledgeable people to offer their thoughts on how and why electronic music scenes rise and fall

I've not gone and had a massive think about this, so it really is just ramblings, but to reply to your point:

The original ideas that get people interested have been saturated, copied, and ultimately diluted, to the point where the quality just drowns.

Rises in popularity of music obviously encourages commercialism. This again dilutes the scene, both in a musical sense and in a social sense.

Also, as the music increasingly gets diluted, perhaps the talented producers get fed up with it and take a break for a while, then when they come back, they produce things that help evolve the music again.

Fuck knows, you know.

Anyway, there'll always be great tunes out there no matter the genre, there WILL always be something we love, which is great, and why we we are all music-heads.

fiasco · Post by **fiasco** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 3:34 pm

drum and bass died when pendulum brought THAT screaming lead sound. everyone in a attempt to get volume now uses the highest loudest sounds possible, not the drums and bass which founded the scene. lets hope dubstep learns from drum and bass's mistake

slothrop · Post by **slothrop** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 5:23 pm

I think this sort of thing is kind of inevitable really. Different people want different sorts of things from clubbing, and in particular some of them want a mad new surprise round every corner and others want something fun and exciting but don't really care whether it represents a dramatic inversion of conventional rhythmic structures as part of a hegelian dialectic of dance music or whether it's fundamentally quite similar to what they heard last week but with a different tune or maybe a better bass sound. (Plus there's loads of people who like a bit of both / something in between of course.)

I guess a lot of people who got into dubstep (or any other genre) when they first heard it and thought it was mental (whether that happened in 2002 or 2008) are going to be in the first lot, and a lot of people who didn't like it when they first heard it but have kind of got used to it over a couple of years are going to be in the second lot. But in any case, there are both sorts.

So I kind of see it as inevitable that dubstep's going to split into two crowds and two scenes (or at least two sets of nights) (probably still with a lot of overlap and probably both producing some great tunes) at some point down the line. I don't think mulling over the history of DnB is likely to change that. IMO what we could hope for is to sidestep some of the bullshit snobbery and resentment that DnB managed to get stuck in, eg avoiding that thing of people who like 'deep' tunes looking down their noses at anything remotely fun and ending up with fairly unexciting music.

ocr · Post by **ocr** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:09 pm

what we could hope for is to sidestep some of the bullshit snobbery and resentment that DnB managed to get stuck in, eg avoiding that thing of people who like 'deep' tunes looking down their noses at anything remotely fun and ending up with fairly unexciting music.

yeah, shit, i remember this night i was resident for and the promoter was this elitist guy with very focused, blinkered vision, who fussed around when i was playing, insisted that no 2 step or amen breaks were played. Jeered at me if i did & encouraged the guests we'd booked from Partisan or moving shadow or whatever to do the same, it used to take its toll on my concentration and enjoyment. He lost interest toward the end and just sat upstairs having elitist music conversations. The dance floor picked up no end! And whilst i was a bit of a snob too and played more experimental stuff, i would have to inject a bit of fun into the dance when i could see i was losing people as i went off on a self indulgent, deep tangent!

pk- · Post by **pk-** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:28 pm

FiASco wrote:drum and bass died when pendulum brought THAT screaming lead sound. everyone in a attempt to get volume now uses the highest loudest sounds possible, not the drums and bass which founded the scene. lets hope dubstep learns from drum and bass's mistake

yeah i have to admit i don't like how things're getting noisier and noisier, it's one of the (many) things that put me off dnb

there's still plenty of stuff around with lots of space between the drums and the bass though, so it's not an emergency or anything

two oh one · Post by **two oh one** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:29 pm

I saw the thread title and thought "oh no, not this again", even though I wouldn't have been able to resist joining in anyway.

There are some good points brought up in this thread.

To look at things positively, I don't think we should really be looking at Drum 'n' Bass and its short fallings. I think we should be looking at the genres that have stood the test of time and try to fathom why they're still around today.

House (mid 1980s)
Techno (mid 1980s)
Industrial (mid 1970s)

These are still around in one form or another after years and years.

My points to ponder are:

How have they changed vs what has stayed the same about them? Have the changes been for the better or worse?

Are these styles of music based on basic aesthetic, or something much deeper?

Is it about something other than the sound? Has the culture attached to them kept them alive or has the advances in technology?

Does progression keep something thriving or just serve to hasten its eventual decline? Can a genre burn through all its options too quickly?

Have these genres exploded in popularity and gone 'commercial' at any point? Have they stagnated? How did they survive this?

ocr · Post by **ocr** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:10 pm

two oh one wrote:I saw the thread title and thought "oh no, not this again", even though I wouldn't have been able to resist joining in anyway.

There are some good points brought up in this thread.

To look at things positively, I don't think we should really be looking at Drum 'n' Bass and its short fallings. I think we should be looking at the genres that have stood the test of time and try to fathom why they're still around today.

House (mid 1980s)
Techno (mid 1980s)
Industrial (mid 1970s)

These are still around in one form or another after years and years.

My points to ponder are:

How have they changed vs what has stayed the same about them? Have the changes been for the better or worse?

Are these styles of music based on basic aesthetic, or something much deeper?

Is it about something other than the sound? Has the culture attached to them kept them alive or has the advances in technology?

Does progression keep something thriving or just serve to hasten its eventual decline? Can a genre burn through all its options too quickly?

Have these genres exploded in popularity and gone 'commercial' at any point? Have they stagnated? How did they survive this?

Excellent, good stuff, thats what i'm talking about, thankyou. Solid points.

You're right, examing DnB isn't really the way forward on this one, i just started there cos its decline was something i was disappointed with when i was younger, so i just wanted to look at the wider reasons (as outlined above thx two oh one), the cause & effect of it all.

It hasn't not occured to me that some may not feel it had declined at all, & "whats with the moaning" and that its only snobby types who insist that the genre declined when all the clever intricate drum programming gave way to amen breaks tunes that were knocked up in a morning.

Which was indicative of all the talented artists getting bored & moving on to something else. I might have to hold my hands up to being one of those snobby types

corpsey · Post by **corpsey** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:47 pm

I don't know much about house/techno - are they any less down a dead end than DNB?

There's still a lot of DNB coming out now that I'm into, it's just (IMO) lost a lot of its creative options by speeding up so much and being so much about intensity. I suppose if house and techno are still moving somewhere then its because at that speed there's a lot of room to manouvere.

shonky · Post by **shonky** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:59 pm

Corpsey wrote:I don't know much about house/techno - are they any less down a dead end than DNB?

There's still a lot of DNB coming out now that I'm into, it's just (IMO) lost a lot of its creative options by speeding up so much and being so much about intensity. I suppose if house and techno are still moving somewhere then its because at that speed there's a lot of room to manouvere.

I think it's got a lot more to do with the subgenres and people moving across to those and mining that seam until they get bored and move on. Although a lot of techno and house hasn't really moved on in the last 15 years or so, there's still people doing new things. Figuring that techno could mean acid, minimal, dubby, gabba, tech house, hard, or even trance there's a hell of a lot of variation behind that 4/4 beat. Same with house - it could be anything from St Germain to Eric Prydz to Masters at Work to Jesse Rose - all sounding completely different to each other.

As much as people slag this stuff off for all being 4 to the floor, there's a hell of a lot of differences within each blanket term.

ufo over easy · Post by **ufo over easy** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 8:47 pm

Corpsey wrote:
There's still a lot of DNB coming out now that I'm into, it's just (IMO) lost a lot of its creative options by speeding up so much and being so much about intensity.

With me it's more that I think there's great stuff coming out, it's just that there's no one playing it or putting nights on. It certainly isn't selling either, I don't envy the label dudes constantly battling for distro.

robphobos · Post by **robphobos** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:18 pm

UFO over easy wrote:[
With me it's more that I think there's great stuff coming out, it's just that there's no one playing it or putting nights on.

Nail on the head sir !

I very much doubt after 8 or so pages I can contribute, but coming from a long time producer stand point of different genre's of music I can identify with the original posters question.
As stated by someone else, music, fashion, trends ect have a ying yang effect or if you prefer - peaks and troughs. Sometimes its over a very short period, then sometimes it rises or falls over a decade or more (like Rock/Metal).
The main problem tends to be (in this genre of music) is that the DJ playing may not be willing to experiment with different tunes, and thus if you are heading out to partys a lot... it can get samey real quick. There will always be pioneers in all genre's of music that will keep them going, its only the immitators that oversaturate it and tend to bring it seemingly back down again.

Its nothing to be concerned about.

Dubstep joins DnB down a dead end alley

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