Pitchfork this month featuring...

[dj $hy]

Hmm well I must be the only person here who thinks that edition of pitchfork was way off!

"An exciting strand emerging within dubstep is a mutant jungle strain within the sound"

WHAT? Are you joking mate? So what have people like S&D, SLT MOB, Reso, Urban Graff, HOD, Elemental, Quietstorm and all the old timers been doing? What about all teh new produers KILLING that sound? IS that their sound you’re now reporting on? Yet I don’t see any of them mentioned in it.

You’re talking about Cluekid n LD like they created this Jungle influenced sound using breaks... Hmm. Didn’t this all start many years ago? Didn’t the producers of them get shunted to one side, then being labeled "Breakstep" producers rather than Dubstep? Breakstep was a term used SOLY to keep the sounds apart cos certain people did not want that music interfering with their Dubstep. I mean reading this when I've come from back in the day and was there when Breakstep DJ's were not getting ANY love I find it very bad reporting on your behalf. How you can talk about Cluekid n LD as if they are pioneers when you have a wash of producers who have been coming with that sound for years is beyond me!

I feel sorry for all the hard working producers who must have read that and thought what a wanker! Why the change? Why didn’t you include or even mention the real pioneers of that sound? Don’t get me wrong here, Cluekid and LD are on it, I don’t need to say on here that I love both their production styles because I've said it to them directly but I cant help reading this and thinking people are not being told the truth and as so many people read your Pitchfork column you have a responsibility to deliver the truth.

My god if I’d read that 3 years ago on Pitchfork I’d have died!

[blackdown]

As I pointed out in the piece, to me there's sonic differences between breaky tunes and one that sounds like Remarc-doing-jungle. I'm into the latter, not feeling the former too tuff. Same as it ever was...

[dj $hy]

Thats it? To you there's sonic differences... But Martin you’re a journalist... Doesn’t that mean you shouldn’t be thinking about what you like and report the facts? I mean I was just shocked that none of the old timers got a mention, why is that?

I read your pitchfork and always very much enjoy it but as a reader I felt you were way off and should have at least mentioned something about the producers that started it. New people to Dubstep read that and come away without knowing the history behind it. Shame cos you’re normally on the ball.

[blackdown]

Thats it? To you there's sonic differences... But Martin you’re a journalist... Doesn’t that mean you shouldn’t be thinking about what you like and report the facts? I mean I was just shocked that none of the old timers got a mention, why is that?

I read your pitchfork and always very much enjoy it but as a reader I felt you were way off and should have at least mentioned something about the producers that started it. New people to Dubstep read that and come away without knowing the history behind it. Shame cos you’re normally on the ball.

there's a whole paragraph on the early breakier producers, which i didn't have to include, as cluekid and LD sound like they're building on jungle ideas, not breakbeat garage directly (i asked...).

"Of course the dark garage scene has long since used breaks, with the influence of DJ Zinc's seminal "138 Trek" sparking the breakbeat garage era circa 2000, that spilled into everything from the Stanton Warriors and Oris Jay to Zed Bias' peerless drum programming (check Daluq's "Superfine" or his mix for DJ Zinc's label Bingo). Other artists then took up the charge, a highlight being Toastyboy's "Splash"."

[epithet]

Call it what it is Blackdown. BREAKSTEP. I know you got an aversion to that but fuckit man, you're beating round the bush like like a blind drunk trying to find a lost coin.

as for the term 'breakstep' i avoid using it because the guys it's used towards dont generally like it. i didnt invent the term, but if people dont rate it, i'm happy to avoid it.

I meant to ask. Who are these guys you speak of ? As an example, it doesnt stop you from talking about say shackleton or kode9 who have an aversion to being lumped under the D word moniker. I know Dr9 doesnt rate the word so maybe you should avoid talking about hyperdub in your column also ?

[blackdown]

Kode was joking...

[epithet]

I get the feeling he was more pissed off that dubstep got adopted as the genre name and not hyperdub. If he was joking about that then i'd assume he's taking the piss with burial too

[blackdown]

i think he was frustrated - like many of innovators can be - at the constrictions the term had come to imply.

but it's chicken and egg: the wider he releases music - from quarta 330 to burial to ikonika to the bug to burial - that is bought en masse by the dubstep scene, the wider and less constrictive the term is.

[epithet]

A joke in frustration is often not funny, can blowback and come off as arrogance and condescension. Remember kramer and the N word

But anyway, where's the harm in including 'breakstep' as a term ? Given it does have some history and bearing on dubstep just cos come guys don't like it. Seems a lot are happy to be included under that banner and don't think i haven't noticed how you sidestepped naming them either

[pete_bubonic]

I've gotta say when I first started off making this music, Breakstep was construed, on the whole, as a derogatory word. A method of keeping heads like Search and Destroy, Elemental, Toasty and others differentiated from the dubstep movement as a whole and out of the popular dubstep raves. Criminal imo.

Dunno if other people feel/noticed this at that time. I personally think it's still ongoing even now, admittedly less so. I think it's to do with a lot of this scene's abhorrence of DnB, the fact that so many people are determined to be a seperate entity from DnB, even though at the core, the two genres share so many qualities. Maybe it'll take the big names like cluekid and ld to encourage more of the breakier and jungle inspired sounds back into the fold?

[blackdown]

But anyway, where's the harm in including 'breakstep' as a term ?

because some of the acts people use it to refer to, like it. others dont. while it's imprecise, i'm happy not to use it too much.

[epithet]

I've gotta say when I first started off making this music, Breakstep was construed, on the whole, as a derogatory word. A method of keeping heads like Search and Destroy, Elemental, Toasty and others differentiated from the dubstep movement as a whole and out of the popular dubstep raves. Criminal imo.

Dunno if other people feel/noticed this at that time. I personally think it's still ongoing even now, admittedly less so. I think it's to do with a lot of this scene's abhorrence of DnB, the fact that so many people are determined to be a seperate entity from DnB, even though at the core, the two genres share so many qualities. Maybe it'll take the big names like cluekid and ld to encourage more of the breakier and jungle inspired sounds back into the fold?

Yeah i felt it. I remember an old thread where blackdown and scuba were almost at each others throats Funny thing is there isnt an abhorrence of d'n'b. Just check out the skewed wiki definition. If anything its more accepted as a foundation of dubstep, more so than breaks, of which a lot of proto-dubsteppers were toying with given it's closer bpm range to dubstep. Halfstep is after all half a breakbeat but not at jungle speed.

Do you reckon maybe that's why toasty has been less than prolific recently and scuba moved to berlin or quiet storm became caspa and one of S&D became scarecrow ? Frustration at the lack of inclusivity and the exclusivity of the london hardcore continuum based dubstep lineage.

For me toasty and scuba are wayyyy bigger names than cluekid and LD

[chef]

Some serious day dreaming and big assumptions that are wrong being made in this topic.

[threnody]

People have their own sound worlds and will write about them in spite of their journalist title. I write match reports for Maidenhead United and i will NEVER give the man of the match award to a player from the opposition regardless of how much better they were than any of our players.

Similarly if i was writing about dubstep, breakstep or whatever i would focus on who i was feeling and write about that so I think Blackdown is entitled to write what he wants about who he wants. His version of events is well read but it is not the bible and other people are always welcome to write whatever they want. If i don't like jump up dnb and i have an article to write on dnb then i won't include jump up simple.

I think it is well explained that he views this sound as different to breakstep which is fine. Of course LD and cluekid are not the first to use jungle rhythms but if 'breakstep' has always been viewed as a separate entity to dubstep then why should it share column inches. http://www.breakstep.net is catering for that side of things anyway. Maybe a shame that their wasn't an earlier split as some breakier producers have been suffocated by the rise of dubstep and are not being represented. Having said that it is fine for people who like dubstep to also like breakstep in the same way as people can like whatever they want.

Blackdown isn't the voice of breakstep and although it can be frustrating to read about other people using similar sonic elements to breakstep being mentioned as pioneers of breaky dubstep/junglestep it does not have to be expected.

Urban Graf, Combat, Storming, Destructive have long been leaders in that field and the time is coming now where lots of producers are working with these sounds. One look at the Urban Graffiti release sheet shows how diverse this sound is and how it has a great future but it is not and never was dubstep it just sufferd from not breaking loose at the same time dubstep and grime split from what was 8bar/garage.

The breakstep sounds are global already so don't have to conform to the nuum although it has strong elements of Rave, Jungle, Dnb, Garage and grime in it's genes. No reason why it can't just be viewed as a split either in the same way as dubstep and grime split....Funky can claim it's own space and if it bears out to be the next link in the nuum then so be it. They can do their thing and the London Urbanites can dance to it.

[pete_bubonic]

I've gotta say when I first started off making this music, Breakstep was construed, on the whole, as a derogatory word. A method of keeping heads like Search and Destroy, Elemental, Toasty and others differentiated from the dubstep movement as a whole and out of the popular dubstep raves. Criminal imo.

Dunno if other people feel/noticed this at that time. I personally think it's still ongoing even now, admittedly less so. I think it's to do with a lot of this scene's abhorrence of DnB, the fact that so many people are determined to be a seperate entity from DnB, even though at the core, the two genres share so many qualities. Maybe it'll take the big names like cluekid and ld to encourage more of the breakier and jungle inspired sounds back into the fold?

Yeah i felt it. I remember an old thread where blackdown and scuba were almost at each others throats Funny thing is there isnt an abhorrence of d'n'b. Just check out the skewed wiki definition. If anything its more accepted as a foundation of dubstep, more so than breaks, of which a lot of proto-dubsteppers were toying with given it's closer bpm range to dubstep. Halfstep is after all half a breakbeat but not at jungle speed.

Do you reckon maybe that's why toasty has been less than prolific recently and scuba moved to berlin or quiet storm became caspa and one of S&D became scarecrow ? Frustration at the lack of inclusivity and the exclusivity of the london hardcore continuum based dubstep lineage.

For me toasty and scuba are wayyyy bigger names than cluekid and LD

Hmm, I don't know about the specifics you mention mate. I know Scuba ain't the easiest person to get on with, so I can imagine he doesn't need much help with excluding himself.

Halfstep isn't breakbeat at all though. breakbeat is almost the opposite of halfstep (to my ears). That's the point of a 'break' 'beat'. Think more late 80's/early 90's b-boy hiphop. They were breakbeats.

And I wouldn't say DnB is the core foundation for Dubstep. It maybe that a lot of us came from DnB/Jungle for whatever reason, but Dubstep's heritage lies quite firmly in the garage lineage. That's why i mentioned the abhorrence to DnB, perhaps because Breakstep harks back to DnB more than Garage it gets excluded? DnB and Garage never got on in the first place (Jungle and Garage did though), so maybe this explains why LD and Cluekid are causing more waves than people would initially think?

London does exist in it's own bubble a bit though, you only need to drive an hour or two out of the city to hear Toasty and S&D played alongside Loefah and Mala.

I wouldn't point fingers at anyone and say,'YOU! YOU'RE EXCLUDING BREAKS! DAMN YOU!'. But I also look forward to the day I can hear the likes of S&D, Mala, Toasty, Loefah, Martyn, Protocol X and Peverelist all played in the same set by the 'big dogs'.

[foundational]

i'm not saying funky is sonically next level yet, personally i still prefer dubstep, desi and grime, but this set changed my view on it.

I would also like to have my mind changed however when I click on this link it goes to a bingo website and their ain't nothing funky about that!

[blackdown]

you not seeing Sendspace? i am...

[foundational]

you not seeing Sendspace? i am...

Nah its cool man, ive got it pon the d/l right now. By the way I thought the column was good despite the various sparks that have gone off in this thread.

[foundational]

In fact one thing I meant to ask is what do you mean by 'Quest, Geiom, and Mala's dark house influences'. Is there such a thing as dark house and if so what would recommend listening to?

[blackdown]

well, something like Mala's "Lean Forward" has that housey, organ-lead riff, but it's slightly dark and sour, compared to the warmth of lots of house...