warning. i somehow wrote a novel. my thoughts on the subject...
the main elements of house are generally extremely pleasing to the ear, making it unlikely that electronic music will get bored of it: 4x4 beats, good basslines, heart and soul (hopefully), the buildup/release tecnhnique down cold... there's so many ways to put a twist on it that while you can argue that it has suffered lulls in popularity and quality - despite considering how many different types there are and that nobody could possibly listen to all of it - it's really the "most immortal" of all styles of electronic.
"classic" dubstep is very different from house stylistically. we get sub-bass, different style synth hooks, a slow rhythm that logically should be faster than house music (at 140 bpm... and some is, ie drumstep). but house is never tricky with its tempo; 130bpm means just that, and it hits us differently; it lends itself IDEALLY to dancing though i'm not saying one cannot get their skank on proper to dubstep. no denying which is more danceable however. in any case they are quite different as the OP pointed out with his examples, yet this is what is being made now and picking up steam like other bass music subgenres have...
it's really interesting that it DID get to this point, but you can link the connection between strict halfstep and four-to-the-floor-acid-rinsed or 808-driven & juke influenced tracks made by those same producers. sort of in between is garage, and the same with uk funky. different beats in each but still all tied deeply to dubstep, all with their distinctive styles only made possible by huge amounts of musical influences, and popular because it builds off what we know...
imo because dubstep came from garage and influenced uk funky, it's natural that producers who are surrounded by all this and are forward thinkers when it comes to production would bridge the gap. what we're left with is still underground music - because it's progressed not in conjunction with, but in spite of predictable and noisy dubstep that we know started to become all too abundant and identical.
when i'm talking to other people such as local djs who know their stuff more than a lot of club patrons/people at shows, and people describe what they play, you hear so many different words if someone tells me they're going to be playing "future garage" i know exactly what they mean, but not exactly what to expect - even if that tells me more than just "bass music". always a good thing when you can be consistently surprised.
last night i played a lot of this house/acid/808 stuff at a house party and referred to it as "housey acidy stuff" to the guy playing before me because it's assumed we all play bass music at the club events and parties i go to. i think that's fantastic, and the word dubstep's getting used slightly less and less when describing what i like to play amongst those I talk to who got into dubstep earlier than 2010, and who know what you mean by future garage or UK funky. thankfully. when i have to explain it to someone with no clue whatsoever beyond who Skrillex is, i say it's club music which creatively draws different types of electronic but emerged from certain kinds of dubstep producers, the same types of people who played and made it back in the day... when that name, dubstep, began to apply to a completely different genre in casual conversation (generic 140bpm filth or what have you), i started being very careful about what i label dubstep. the word has a negative connotation among many people who don't care at all or are not naturals at finding their own music and as a result have only been exposed to Datsik, Caspa, and maybe the occasional Emalkay and the like. i know girls who "like dubstep", but they are stuck in 2009.
i'll usually avoid any one genre name besides bass music (that's pretty agreeable), and say much of what i play can be called house but has dubstep and garage roots (a lot of people get lost right at that part); and also a lot of percussive 808 and unique synth layering. only thing i am sure about is that in 2011 it has been blowing me away
i just talked about GENRES for much too long, overlabeling's a a blight on music discussion esp in the bass community, it steals focus from the music and some of the best stuff quite simply CAN'T be labeled so people just call it 5 things at once.
doesn't matter how we got here, but old dubstep midrange bangers stuck around in one form (compare old and new Skream, Benga, obvious examples sorry)... deep, atmospheric, dubby etc tracks have as well (Kryptic Minds, Mala), and things have emerged beautifully into completely new styles that pioneer even more unique new music without even having a name (Ramadanman, Addison Groove).
all of this is part of it. dubstep producers trying to break away; people who, according to some hilarious writing in an XLR8R article about Coachella "have run out of ideas after doing dubstep and eventually just start making house"; people with straight up crazy influences and serious talent changing things entirely as a result... dubstep has remained and there are classics being put out still (DJ Madd? anyone?) , despite the very large amount of identical sounding dogshit and the state of shows depending on your area. the best thing about this supposed transition from dubstep to house is that everything is still being made - UK funky was supposed to die, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Garage is still alive and well even if it's not as it was before dubstep took over. so...now in the modern age anyone can make music, there should be room in each offshoot for a whole bunch of producers...but when you like all of it to an extent, why would someone want to separate the genres (at events, various types of radio)besides for simplifying pure high volume of quality artists? why wouldn't you want to do your own thing and create something that, like I said, is really really tough to label?
better wrap up this book...to summarize, i think dubstep is no longer the driving phenomenon behind the screen, it's better to call it bass music or uk bass (though Distal, DJG, Djunya, Brainfeeder crew and many many others give that genre name a run for its money, so maybe the uk part isn't needed anymore like it was for garridge - sorry, i mean UK garage. that said, it's natural to describe your flavor of bass music with whatever qualities it entails. Like I sad, if I play a lot of Boddika, I call it house-y, acid &/or 808 bass music. It's mostly accurate, and gets the point across for anyone who cares while keeping it short for everyone else.
in trying to be creative (which they are, no doubt, how could they not TRY?), producers/djs who are making and playing this this house/juke/808 style club (Loefah, AG, Boddika, almost all Night Slugs artists...) actually ended up making something something not as "original" by definition but still new and refreshing by putting their own twists on it, influenced by many places and genres. people who are originally inspired by dubstep but came to crave new sounds after it was no longer as fresh, like it was when it was first picking up steam as a new and interesting genre rising from garage and grime, are basically musical thrillseekers, trying to never do the same thing twice. they stopped making dubstep, so what they end up making is club music from a blender, and what comes out is house, even though the stuff we're talking about is much richer than most modern kinds of house, involving the sub-bass aspect and inevitable crossover influence. the result: it feels natural, it sounds good, and it's a brilliant style to produce - it's still changing, but how many places can dubstep go compared to house? if electronic genres were parts of the body, techno would be the brain, house would be the heart and dubstep would be the THC receptors. Oh, and jungle would be the giant cock hanging off this imaginary person made of music.
so this is a lot of text, and i hope i don't sound redundant and didn't write the same paragraph over and over. anyone get anything from this wall of text? sheesh, i gotta stop myself next time i start doing that
personally:
don't care about having something to call it besides bass music, but that sometimes makes it too nonspecific so it's okay that we have all these genre names as long as they're relevant and meaningful.
it's all arbitrary...make up your own genres as long as it stands apart...and when you produce, don't make dubstep or house, make music
if you're still reading, i am so so sorry. i just never found a good stopping point and then ended up with this novel
