Dubstep joins DnB down a dead end alley

[slothrop]

The stage is yours Blackdown. Please point out the mistakes and push us towards not making them again through your writing.

well, wrt dubstep i had a fairly detailed go here, which is what got quoted 11 pages ago.

in terms of jungle's mistakes, i'd suggest some of its pitfalls were:

1. falling into production formulas esp, rhythmically
2. severing yourself from your cultural roots (ie does the community who helped build jungle in '93 now care?)
3. trying to make each beat faster and harder than the next (at 180 bpm, they've isolated their sound by making it unmixable with anything except 90bpm hip hop).
4. mistaking sonic engineering and loudness for emotion and innovation
5. mistaking tepid for deep, and noisy and distorted as... a good idea.
6. every dj convinced they should smash it

i'm not saying in all cases dubstep is making these mistakes or that it will, there's many innovators in and around the scene and lots to be positive about, but the precedent is still firmly there.

But, accepting your caveat, is there anything that you / we can or should do if a lot of people in the scene or getting into the scene - including punters and DJs and producers - decide that they actually quite like loud hard boshy fun anthems all night and aren't particularly interested in - or even actively dislike - being constantly surprised with rhythmic variation, changes of pace and so on? Come to that, can DJ's and producers even do much to stop the majority of the music going that way if that's what a lot of people want to hear and make and play? Does there come a point where it's better for them to say "that's what they're doing, and it's fine but it's no longer the same thing that we're doing."

Analyzing the ups and downs of a scene on a message board kind of feels like talking about the weaknesses of the England football squad - it's quite interesting, but it's maybe optimistic to expect the manager or the FA to take action based on what we say.

[paulie]

The stage is yours Blackdown. Please point out the mistakes and push us towards not making them again through your writing.

well, wrt dubstep i had a fairly detailed go here, which is what got quoted 11 pages ago.

in terms of jungle's mistakes, i'd suggest some of its pitfalls were:

1. falling into production formulas esp, rhythmically
2. severing yourself from your cultural roots (ie does the community who helped build jungle in '93 now care?)
3. trying to make each beat faster and harder than the next (at 180 bpm, they've isolated their sound by making it unmixable with anything except 90bpm hip hop).
4. mistaking sonic engineering and loudness for emotion and innovation
5. mistaking tepid for deep, and noisy and distorted as... a good idea.
6. every dj convinced they should smash it

i'm not saying in all cases dubstep is making these mistakes or that it will, there's many innovators in and around the scene and lots to be positive about, but the precedent is still firmly there.

Entirely agree.

[corpsey]

Analyzing the ups and downs of a scene on a message board kind of feels like talking about the weaknesses of the England football squad - it's quite interesting, but it's maybe optimistic to expect the manager or the FA to take action based on what we say.

It's just discussion/venting though innit. Besides, a lot of people on this forum make music/put on nights/dj themselves and not to mention that still quite a few of the scene's big producers/promoters/djs post on here/read it.

In DNB I've noticed that forums seem to get mentioned all the time in interviews/articles. People are even doing tunes now about their detractors on forums. As you say doubt they have much effect really though

[Horza]

I'm not saying there's not good d&b records out there, but i stand by the view that it's 10% as interesting as it was in the mid to late 90s.

The relevance of dubstep to this, and my 'eyes open down a blind alley' comment that got quoted in the first post in this thread, is that countless people in dubstep went through jungle/d&b and are aware of what happened.

the question is whether dubstep can avoid these mistakes, or whether it will end up making them over again. i for one, through writing, radio and production, have no interest in pushing the latter...

...and in 10 years time dubstep will probably be only 10% as interesting compared to now. That is to be expected as more musical avenues are explored and colonised and producers become settled in their comfort zones.

Could you perhaps expound upon the mistakes made by the d'n'b heads with possible paths to follow for dubsteppers to avoid the same traps and potholes ?

You ever thought that maybe the mistakes what DnB made helped gave birth to the Dubstep scene. I know it came from garage, but the demise of an inovating genre surely would eventually lead to a new one or help to spawn a new one

[fractal]

this topic is a dead end alley

[epithet]

You ever thought that maybe the mistakes what DnB made helped gave birth to the Dubstep scene. I know it came from garage, but the demise of an inovating genre surely would eventually lead to a new one or help to spawn a new one

From a fanboy angle yeah, from a producers angle maybe not so much.

The good thing about cul de sac's is, you usually dont have to travel very far before you hit the roundabout and have to turn around and head back out, wiser for knowing it wasn't where you wanted to go.

[shonky]

[
You ever thought that maybe the mistakes what DnB made helped gave birth to the Dubstep scene. I know it came from garage, but the demise of an inovating genre surely would eventually lead to a new one or help to spawn a new one

To be honest, I think it's the influx of people coming in from dnb that make dubstep sound like it does today. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on which part of dnb they're coming in from and whether you liked that style or not. The jump-up stuff and the overly tech-steppy geek ragers can quite frankly fuck off

[slothrop]

It's just discussion/venting though innit. Besides, a lot of people on this forum make music/put on nights/dj themselves and not to mention that still quite a few of the scene's big producers/promoters/djs post on here/read it.

I think maybe positive stuff can come out of internet talk but it's more to do with people seeing the potential to do positive things than seeing the error of their ways and not doing negative things, if that makes any sense. So while I think Martin's rundown of where DnB went wrong (tm) is spot on, I can't imagine many DJ's reading it and thinking "oh yeah, I've been doing that haven't I, now I realize I'm Killing Dubstep so I'll stop."

Particularly because those are things that a lot of people here care about but a lot of other people won't - is someone going to stop playing the tunes they like and putting on nights that lots of people enjoy because someone told them it's having a negative effect on the diversity of the scene? And even if they did, wouldn't there be half a dozen people queuing up to take their place?

But yeah, I don't not talk about football just because I'm not going to affect what actually happens.

[two oh one]

Too much emphasis on tight production, not enough emphasis on ideas.

Cheers.

[quark]

Im scared but on the other hand... Hiphop maybe went down A wrong way, it also went down the right way. Its what you make of it.

completly agree, genres do end up going several ways, cos people like different aspects and styles within the music.
dnb has been getting panned alot as sterile and souless but thats certainly not the case with Calibre, Survival, Lynx, etc... sure theres alot of crowd pleasing wobble around but some of the breaky stuff Kryptic Minds & Leon Switch have made is a world apart from that... and that teebee remix of ni ten ichi ryu was only out 2 years ago i think?
i also think that saying people overemphasize production values is a bit offkey within electronic music. people often overcompress stuff in a quest for the phattest tune (particularly in dnb) but production is a large part of beat making when writing electronically.

one other thing about presets which is a bit off topic; i'm teaching kids reason where i work and i'm pretty sure they wouldn't have the attention span if it wasn't for the built in samples and drum loops. not great for musical diversity but wicked for learning

[shonky]

is someone going to stop playing the tunes they like and putting on nights that lots of people enjoy because someone told them it's having a negative effect on the diversity of the scene? And even if they did, wouldn't there be half a dozen people queuing up to take their place?

I think the thing is that a lot of dubstep's new fans actually like the stuff coming out at the moment, even if it might be sneered at from this forum. Same thing with drum and bass to my mind, it still seems to be pretty popular even though creatively it's done little in the last ten years, and seems to be charmlessly moronic on the whole. Audiences mostly don't give a shit if they're dancing and enjoying themselves, and if they get bored they'll find something else to attach to.

The main problem I can see is if the dj's playing to the passing hipsters find themselves slagged for selling out and then can't get a gig with the dubstep die-hards with long memories in a few years time. Seems to have been career suicide in rap and "alternative" rock for years.

[joe muggs]

1. falling into production formulas esp, rhythmically
2. severing yourself from your cultural roots (ie does the community who helped build jungle in '93 now care?)
3. trying to make each beat faster and harder than the next (at 180 bpm, they've isolated their sound by making it unmixable with anything except 90bpm hip hop).
4. mistaking sonic engineering and loudness for emotion and innovation
5. mistaking tepid for deep, and noisy and distorted as... a good idea.
6. every dj convinced they should smash it

I absolutely agree with every single one of those points, and I would add one more, which kind of links to 2., 4., 5., and 6.:

7. Forgetting it is at heart SOUNDSYSTEM music.

That is - if I can simplify in a slightly idealistic fashion - raw, simple (DRUM and BASS first), competitive (every DJ has to prove themselves every time), powerful without having to be part of a technological arms race, and above all for the crowd.

For me, the only people in D&B who truly retained that spirit are - obviously - the Valve soundsystem, although they too fell into traps 1. and perhaps 3. of Blackdown's list. Otherwise it all got far, far too "studio", far too removed from the crowd (something which, like the production sheen, seems to go hand-in-hand with too much charlie in a scene). Yeah sure there are great producers now - I'll still hear the occasional Andy C or High Contrast record and go "ooof!", in fact I'm not even averse to the raucous teen-friendly stoooopidness of the odd Pendulum tune - but can any of them, however loud or shiny, come within spitting distance of the unbelievable thrill of hearing Original Nuttah coming over speaker stacks twice my height at Carnival? Can it fuck.

Thankfully Dubstep emphasises this right at its very heart: D&B certainly used to be about raw soundsystem bass, but it never had this as part of its rhetoric - it was far more caught up in MCs' patter from the beginning. If you were asked what Jungle was about, you'd probably mention tearing cut-up breaks first - whereas in Dubstep there is still no doubt that it leads with the bass. So maybe, maybe that's a cause to think it won't go along the same path.

[shonky]

i also think that saying people overemphasize production values is a bit offkey within electronic music. people often overcompress stuff in a quest for the phattest tune (particularly in dnb) but production is a large part of beat making when writing electronically.

I think when production gets to the levels of anality it does with dnb whilst still essentially floggin the same dead horse musically, it makes a big difference. A lot of production doesn't necessarily improve the music that much and is pretty much the engineering equivalent of guitar solos - mostly pointless and add nothing. Great distraction for a shit riff if anything

[joe muggs]

There's such a difference between "good production" which is what you'd get taught on a sound engineering course or an apprenticeship in a big studio - which gives you maximum clarity and gloss and lets you fit more sounds in because everything's in the "right" place - and KILLER production like, say, Rob Smith, or Loefah, or Burial does. That's something that can't be taught because it's your own signature sound, and it comes out of understanding how it works on a soundsystem, not some abstract idea of what should work. It's the "Pirate sound" that Burial always goes on about; it's difficult, it's fucking mysterious and it's easy to forget about it and just work to rules - which is when your sound goes down the pan.

[epithet]

If you were asked what Jungle was about, you'd probably mention tearing cut-up breaks first

I'd probably mention re-contextualising conscious ragga first over tearing cut up double time breaks.

[shonky]

There's such a difference between "good production" which is what you'd get taught on a sound engineering course or an apprenticeship in a big studio - which gives you maximum clarity and gloss and lets you fit more sounds in because everything's in the "right" place - and KILLER production like, say, Rob Smith, or Loefah, or Burial does. That's something that can't be taught because it's your own signature sound, and it comes out of understanding how it works on a soundsystem, not some abstract idea of what should work. It's the "Pirate sound" that Burial always goes on about; it's difficult, it's fucking mysterious and it's easy to forget about it and just work to rules - which is when your sound goes down the pan.

That's the best explanation of the difference between the two I've seen so far. Don't think I've ever been hit by a tune because of the production values alone, more that the producer was able to convey the music well. Cinema equivalent would be well acted, low budget movies, with emphasis on character and plot development against some megabucks CGI fuckwittery I think.

[shonky]

I'd probably mention re-contextualising conscious ragga first over tearing cut up double time breaks.

Ragga wasn't the be-all and end-all of jungle, and conscious ragga certainly wasn't. Still intellectualize if you must

[quark]

I think when production gets to the levels of anality it does with dnb whilst still essentially floggin the same dead horse musically, it makes a big difference. A lot of production doesn't necessarily improve the music that much and is pretty much the engineering equivalent of guitar solos - mostly pointless and add nothing. Great distraction for a shit riff if anything

i know what you're saying definately, but electronic music is not exactly about moments of inspiration, more to me about the excitement of experimentation. you can have great concepts for tracks but i find that often changes slightly as you're making it. I don't know any producers who aren't alive to the possibilties which the production process suggests... some of the best things i've found are when i've put something on the wrong channel or reversed it by accident, happy mistakes, which would never have happened without being obsessive about the production.
you're right though, people are often too anal (myself included) about whether their snare peaks at 190 or 200hz, which has no real effect on the overall track. but i do have a certain respect for that sort of geekery, its one of the things which gives producers their sound. if they weren't that anal maybe everything would sound even deader and unoriginal than it already does?

[umkhontowesizwe]

I'd probably mention re-contextualising conscious ragga first over tearing cut up double time breaks.

Ragga wasn't the be-all and end-all of jungle, and conscious ragga certainly wasn't. Still intellectualize if you must

haha, beat me to it. in fact i'm struggling to think of one ragga-jungle track that used 'conscious' samples.

this thread really is quite interesting.

[two oh one]

People can hope and wish all they want for some magic to happen, but 'that sound' is often way beyond the control of whoever is pushing buttons on a track. Things sometimes just fall right, which is part of the joy of making electronic. You're not just the player, you're also your own audience, in a strange way.

If people made their shit about something, rather than just doing another self-serving scene tsecni tech fests, then there is something to the track regardless of if the magic sound voodoo happens or not.