Rephlex - Grime 2 tracklisting & audio

note to all south crew: pls stop using 'eastern' samples/sounds,cinematic/moody vocal snippets.

why ambrose?

i wonder what difference it would have made if this album was called Dubstep? i suppose a whole bunch of bloggers just wouldnt listen to it, oh well

from what i've heard of it, if you liked Dubstep Allstars you'll like this one i reckon

ha ha, almost as funny/tedious as the 'grime [as opposed to any other minimal instrumental music] without mcs is boring' refrain

You are all assuming that i am the leader of the "grime - mcs is not grime; death to false grime" pack! i'm not, i dont give a shit what rephlex called it.

i prefer the champagne gold to the silver tho.

thats basically vocal 2step you're looking for then Tim

and the problem with the 'enervated vibe' is?

I wouldnt even call 'Ring the Alarm' dubstep, its a jump up breakstep track

i'm not sure criticizing dubstep on the grounds of it not having hooks or being catchy is really fair, as this is clearly not a big priority for the sound

regarding eastern instrumental samples, there hasn't exactly been thousands of dubstep releases doing this, i think the laments about it are somewhat over the top

No, I'm looking for tracks like "One You Need", or Zed Bias's remix of 2 Banks of Four's "Hook and a Line" - what Jess once called "oceanic" 2-step, but which is basically lush dubstep with vocals; it's certainly not the perky R&B/house/pop sound of most vocal 2-step (which I love too, mind). I accept that this is unlikely to happen, but I think it demonstrates aptly how comparatively restrictive the dubstep scene is that while grime has happily rediscovered songs and non-MC vocals, dubstep doesn't even countenance it.

And it's not like "dubstep" doesn't include a lot of "breakstep" tracks in its borders (indeed for a long time this was *the problem* - few things were more depressing than watching Darqwan's descent into breakbeat tedium during '02) up to and including the really crappy breaks tracks on the new Horsepower album; that "Ring the Alarm" is, I dunno, more tuneful and inviting and dancefloor friendly than most should hardly invalidate it (it's also got much better "swung" beats than most even dubstep-affiliated breaks tunes).

"i'm not sure criticizing dubstep on the grounds of it not having hooks or being catchy is really fair, as this is clearly not a big priority for the sound"

Clearly not, but I can think of very few genres where the studious avoidance of hooks is a productive methodology. I'm not saying that it should all be perky upbeat pop, but a good deal of this stuff (not all, or even an overwhelming majority, I'll happily admit) seems to be satisfied with a parsimonious impersonal grimness. As it stands most of the really good dubstep or dubstep-affiliated tracks *are* (or, at least, *were*) packed with hooks - Exemen's "Far East" (the definitive eastern samples tune); Horsepower's "Django's Sound" or "Fists of Fury", most of El-B's output, Menta's "Sounds of the Future" and "Ramp", the better DJ Hatcha and Markone material etc.

threads like these are a helpful reminder of why i broke off from contact with the "mainstream" of dance fandom in the first place.

Ha ha x-post!

i'm not sure if weed has ever produced good dance music (for very long anyway).

I still maintain that Mis-Teeq's "Eye Candy" (the song) is best-practice dubstep gone pop.

"the whole dubstep thing is a false idol anyway since there were plenty of "dark" 2-step tracks as early as 98..."bad funk", "black puppet" (hell ANY dem 2 dub or groove chronicles track really). "

Oh totally - *especially* Dem 2's "Baby (Dub)" whose greatness and strangeness I had forgotten. But I think initially (back when it Kode9 I think was calling it "nu dark swing") there was a feeling that this secret history of dark 2-step thread was gonna be expanded upon in really interesting ways without necessarily having to sacrifice the weirdness and sexiness and fun of 2-step proper. Right up to and including that "dubstep" mix kode9 posted in early 02, I was still excited by that sense of possibility.

Ha ha you're joking right?

parsimonious impersonal grimness has me interested! (even if it's suggestive of a beginning of the end for a similar genre)

with this i think you've completely missed what dubstep 04 is about. there are no "lush" tracks because the scene has fully severed it's links with the rave/ecstacy flavour that still infests d&b, or the idea that jazz/jazzy/housey is more "intelligent" that broken beat and deep housezzz inhabits.

dubstep's sonic palate describes a new tempered middleground between the two extremes of d&b and house n g (surely dubsteps closest ancestors). this middle ground fits perfectly with the tension, the vibe of living in London right now. no one leaps around like a goon on dancefloors, or smiles like a misguided gurner because things dont feel like that living here. there's no oceanic 'taking you away' synths because that lushness is unrealistic when faced by these surroundings and the pressured realities of london living.

i often take friends to dubstep nights and they often ask when it's going to "go off." it won't. that's the point. sometimes though, they stick around long enough and start to get it.

what an amazing Hatcha set can do is take hold of you and drag you under, just as say d&b would. but instead of the huge releases from the d&b breakdowns or "oceanic" synths, hatcha sets just hold you there, overwhelming you with the sub bass, indefinitely. instead of the enjoyment of release, i've found to learn to love the pressure, just as i've learned to love the pressure of living in london.

Kode 9 and Daddi Gee "Sign of the Dub" (Hyperdub)
Loefah "Jungle Infiltrator" (Big Apple)
High Planes Drifter v Goldspot "Sholay" (Tempa)
Digital Mystikz "Chaimbah" (DMZ01)
Digital Mystikz "Pathways" (Big Apple)
DJ Distance "Dark Crystal"
Plasticman "Shallow Grave (original - check also unreleased Skreamz remix)" (Terrorrhythm)

http://www.bigapplerecords.co.uk/main.php?nav=2&cat=1
www.dubplate.net

[ps grime is still running it too... but that wasn't the question asked]

really reminded me of Cabaret Voltaire's 2x45

one track out of 10 (bombay squad) with a oriental female vocal does not a "theory of the oriental vocal in dubstep" make

reynolds does say he hasnt heard the album, but surely his comments bare little relation to the snippets i've heard of grime2, which really doesnt sound that grim and industrial in the slightest

martin i totally feel you irt describing dubstep (this has actually gotten closer to describing the point to me better than anything else), but it sounds like a god awful way to go through life. i'll take the "release" of house/rave/garage/jungle, even if its a "lie", every time.

However re "oceanic" - I didn't mean ecstasy "taking you away" feelings (remember that Reynolds originally used the term to refer to stuff like A.R. Kane) so much as a sort of enveloping fullness that even the strong bassiness of current dubstep just doesn't provide for me on a regular basis (that said being in Australia i've not heard it on the dancefloor; nor grime obv). I actually find the "Hook & A Line" remix to be quite subtly harrowing.

think martin captures the mood of the music very closely, but when Tim says that he hasn't heard any of this recent stuff on a dancefloor, i think it helps explain why he doesn't find it compelling. i think there is enough in the music that you dont have to hear it loud to enjoy it, but bass volume definately renders it a very very compelling music, as relevant, if much less humanist than grime mc's keepin it real. anyway there is more to music than enjoyment.

but i just dont agree that this is grim music [in the grand scheme of dark music, alot of this stuff is very rhythmically sexy]. anyway, i find it quite inspiring. big up rephlex for supporting it

the fascinating division for me now is the sparceness of the beats versus the weight of the b-lines and the speed of the tracks (138 bpm). one so fast, one so slow. this creates a tension, which again, i've learned to love.

to me the anchor is London btw.

also you ain't heard dubstep unless you've stood on the dancefloor by the DJ booth at Plastic People during a Hatcha or Youngsta set. ohmydays. anyone going tonight.... ? :)

mc crazy d

(btw I was at Co-Op there once and they dropped some dubstep-sounding stuff to a very different crowd and a very different vibe - so the music can clearly be 'repurposed')

but we're not talking about going out to a club to hear DJ's spin. we're talking about a CD. should i be forcing my brain to "reinterpret" everything i hear on the CD as i would hear it on a club system? seems like a helluva lotta work to me.

last time i went to co-op there was much whooping and leaping about to Zed Bias dubs, quite a revelation...

Martin OTM here, i'd go further and venture to say that for the past 9-12 months almost all aspects of dance music have been severing links with "rave/ecstacy flavour". Not in a sonic sense, but in terms of how people in London now approach a night out. Put it down to fragmentation, diminishing quality of ecstacy or just the fact that people aren't willing to "have it" anymore.

With the blurring of boundaries between dance/rock and DJs/live acts, i think more people approach a night out with an expectation of being entertained in a gig sense - ie passive contemplation as opposed to offering yourself up a night in a rave sense.

Increasingly when i go out for a 10-6am club i am struck that most people can't really be arsed anymore, and this is making the sonic "take me away" feel of the music redundant. People don't want to go any away and you end up with his weird, void atmosphere where nobody really knows how to behave.

Rather than embracing this as Martin does it find it frustrating and rather empty

i was thinking about the topic again this week, about how amusing it is, people trying to ever perpetuate the '88 and all that' legacy. If i'd been born in 1988 the last thing i'd want to hear about now is that the scene i was too young to remember was the be all and end all.

personally i've been really enjoying the severing of ties with tired old acid house/ecstacy etc. it's giving the noughties a chance to define itself on its own terms. and artist lead-r&b is a defining influence i'd say...

sometimes US r&b seems so insulated, maybe we only see the rave connections from outside. the producers might simply have been using their own imagination (rather than external inspiration).

a key shift has been the ascendance of the miami bass / booty party legacy, which has direct links to "Planet Rock" >>> Kraftwerk.

but another way to look at it is hip hop and U.S. dance's eclectic source material - eons of songs/breaks that 'just are' part of the american DJ tradition, givens for many without the conscious connection (unlike Detroit's heavily pro-euro (ok: + funk...) agenda).

the extreme of this here is the whole Jock Jams stadium anthems scene where everybody knows riffs like "Rock N Roll Part II" or "I'm Gonna Get You" without necessarily understanding where they originate.

Now, when i go out, there's this affected, self contained attitude whereby all that was actually quite liberating about ecstacy culture has been lost (eg chatting to people you don't know, looking out for each other, that exchange of glances with someone that says, Yes i am loving this too, whatever). People keep themselves to themselves.

I'm not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, but increasingly i end up thinking that clubs don't "work" anymore because people don't interact with the environment, space or music in the same way. And i suppose music/club programming will emerge to reflect that, but i don't think dubstep fills the void. It papers the cracks between dance and post-dance but doesn't deal with the central problem, namely, dance music (its internal logic, its drugs, its spaces) is no longer relevent. or am i going too far?

whereas i seem to be enjoying the new phase a bit more.

i'm enjoying the contradictions of a dance music that's 138bpm yet feels slow yet also pressured...

no I think you're spot on, but of course dubstep can exist as a different kind of experience (x-post add: what Martin's saying). not my fave style by far, but Plasticman and Mark One were well worth checking at the Kompakt vs Rephlex U.S. tour night here in New York. the music did require massive physical/bass presence so that the textural sounds & spaces could envelope listeners. in that context it was mysterious and quite fun (many Black Sabbath fans would relate instantly) and they hit some primetime grime like Wonder's "What" and Dizzee Rascal - "Hoe 4", which both fit perfectly (although they easily stood out).

to counter that positivity, some of dubstep's fave earlier records would fit on my Top 10 most overrated UK garage list. none more so than E.S. Dubs - "Standard Hoodlum Issue"* and DJ Zinc - "138 Trek"**.

*(biggup Zed Bias anyway that does not apply to most of his others)
**(same deal as with Bias, "Super Sharp Shooter" and yes even "Kinda Funky" (but not "Go DJ" good grief) are classics)

also, Lewis 'El-B' Beadle was at his best when warping R&B. that some of his accolytes (and to some degree he himself) would purge the vocal angle seems to miss the point of what made those tracks great.

same with other Metalheadz, No U Turn wannabees. the usual argument (re: 2-step) is that was then this is now, but for a likewise contrast check this - I've given Grime first volume strong stock presence across U.S. (and will Vol.II too) but even with listening station support it's still a hard sell. and we sold the isht out of Techsteppin and Torque!

I think people have talked about micro scenes on here before, with micro values and that's definitely the way things are going, where the individual and your friends etc form the base of your night out as opposed to any meta rave collective ideal. This can of course be viewed as liberating (most of the collective ideal was shit) but, as dave notes, the price you pay for that personal liberation is that you close down opportunities to escape yourself.

Spinning off from this, I think things are going to get a lot darker across genres

that said i'm sure radio playlisters will have something to say about the "dark" flavour though.

(on that thought does anyone think Lethal B's hectic "Forward Riddim" [no relation to the dubstep club] will be played on national radio/chart etc?)

advice to Relentless, make a killa video

ha ha I saw Wiley on TOTP - well out of his element
which one was that - "Champagne Dance"? how high did it chart

(wasn't a classic FWD last night. loads of headz missing. no chef, hatcha, slimzee, geeneus, plasticman, dougz, paul rose, beezy... really odd that).

By contrast a label like "dubstep" pinpoints pretty precisely both the sound and the organising principles of the music it refers to. Which is not to say that the music is somehow restricted to reflecting the genre title, but I definitely think the relationship between the title and the music "makes sense". Perhaps some of my reticence w/ more recent dubstep (as opposed to that era when the term was still coalescing, alongside "nu dark swing" which in retrospect forms a handy test for determining which stuff I do and don't like - ie. if it fits under the second term I like it) is that it's music that knows exactly what it's doing. Which is surely not a bad thing! But I must be attracted to false consciousness in music.

ha ha, like that, didnt much understand the rest tho :)

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i fail. that wasn't funny or clever :(

Is there a rough-guide to dubstep?

SO SO SO SO SO SO SO TRUE
when i hear dubstep with samples like that it sounds so wanky, like some bad industrial world music experiment
fucking hell, please stop it you idiots
the bongo percussion in dubstep nees to stop as well

life in london can be oppressive which is what a lot of dubstep sounds like to me, really heavy (in the literal sense), bludgeoning, and oppressive, but a lot of dubstep guys just seem to get bogged down in that stuff, in all the gloom and doom, at least with dark jungle/D&B there was some energy to it, it wasnt all plodding and monotonous, but it still reflected london life

dubstep refuses to let any glimpse of light or energy or movement peek through most of the time
its joyless
which is partly what makes it so good in a way - and its at least not regurgitating a lot of hip hop production tricks like a fair amount of grime which is why beats like cha, plodder are so good when used by MCs - theyre a lot more extreme and defiantly un-american and really london-esque, but at times, it seems dubstep artists just revel in being as difficult and monotone as possible

i still wont concede that film dialogue in any tune, ever, is a good idea. espeically not if its about martial arts