Dubstep

Dubstep is one of the biggest phenomenons in electronic music currently, it and New Rave have come to take over the youth culture of electronic music and, especially in New Raves ranks, is finding cross over mainstream success, which hasn't happen at this level since the mid-90's. Always on the look out for new artists I stumbled upon the world of Dubstep around 2008 accidentally and completely unintentionally.

it started as I expanded my collection of hardcore drum & bass producer, The Panacea, and stumbled upon an amazing remix of an unknown artists, Enduser. At that point I wanted to find out more and did some internet digging for Enduser and was incredibly impressed with what I heard. Wanting other artists, but not sure what to call the style I did some more internet digging and found Mary Ann Hobbs from BBC 1 Radio. After listening to a few streams of her show, in which I read she was showcasing Dubstep artists/dj's I found more artists like Enduser and all as well.

However, further digging and other source look up brought me to other less invigorating or interesting producers such as Benga and Skream. It didn't take long to realize that Enduser was NOT Dubstep and that Dubstep is the D&B progression from Two Step/UK Garage/Garage that took the UK by storm at the turn of the century. While the signature wobble bass was intreging it didn't carry my interest much beyond listening to a few other artists and learning how to do the wobble myself in my own 'studio'.

Scroll to a year or two later and it seems every New era cap wearing adolescent and newly adult is listening to Dubstep. The internet is flooded with Dubstep mixes and mash ups, the utter majority I tend to duck and weave beyond.

Early on I developed a theory onto the meteoric rise of Dubstep and it's proliferation based upon the internet and software emulation. So, know rather easily legally or illegally, you have anyone with a computer with the ability to produce electronic music. Through the spread of social media and the blogsphere has allowed for large sub culture tribes to interact effortlessly across the entire world.

So here is the scenario I envisioned that propelled Dubstep: a kid in London hears a mix on Radio 1 and wants to make Dubstep too. He gets the needed software, looks up some Youtube videos and pounds out the best his abilities off the bat allow. He's proud of what he has done and kicks it out to the web to show off. Meanwhile another kid in London is doing the same thing, through various connections they hear each others production. Because it reminds them of what they did, they attach themselves to it, propelling each other to other individuals of like mind and bent. Eventually you get a large network through Europe and North America of people making mediocre techno in mediocre ways all self congratulating each other and self publishing through the internet. As more people latch on and stumble upon it they search for more and gravitate towards doing the same thing as well as finding the lauded producers who have record contracts and DJ jobs, hence the more polished professional tracks flooding the internet.

Dubstep is not new in terms of limited production or limited tonal range when it comes to electronic music, some of my favorite genres fall into this category. I shy away from Dubstep more because of the culture that has built up around it than for my distaste in it. I do enjoy some, but not much of what i have heard and s of yet have not wanted to invest time finding stuff I would thoroughly enjoy. I have come across some American artists who have taken some of the techniques of Dubstep and made more interesting music so I don't see the pure form as remaining strong but being filed into a quality technique for production tricks.