american vs uk dubsteps

http://www.psychographicmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/Dog-Crap-On-Shoe.jpg

"which is worse" polls are the worst type of trolling.

my type of poll

British hoodie beardstrokestep is one of the worst things imaginable, and the fact that a microuniverse of aging Animal Collective fans convinced themselves that sulking to Burial is somehow better than robotripping to bowel-rattling heavy metal sawblade drops with sexy girls out in the desert is maybe one of the most embarrassing things about our generation of critics and music fans since cosigning the Pippettes

there it is

Whiney you make it sound like people have to get behind one of these.

maybe one of the most embarrassing things about our generation of critics and music fans

top 5 plz

Worth pointing out that many beardstrokestep types were all raving about (and to) proto-brostep in 2007, then started getting snooty about it well before any big US producers came along.

dubstep is surely due a critical reappraisal

xp

is that like the Caspa hate? yeah that was happening b4 i knew what a skrlllex was

Worth pointing out that many beardstrokestep types were all raving about (and to) proto-brostep in 2007, then started getting snooty about it well before any big US producers came along.

― Tim F, Sunday, 30 October 2011 21:31 (6 minutes ago)

yah i think it's more a qn of some colonial upstarts selecting the most efficient strategies from the 2k8 dubstep playbook and running with them to make a more refined product, a fire-laced methanol distilled from the porridge of surly selfregarding blogstep

can't front tho, don't really know what any of this stuff is. am all 4 sulky music as long as tools are not proclaiming it as the future.

what is the genetic common ancestor of these two - what is the dinosaur of which these two are rare and exotic bird descendants

most of this stuff sounds like if venetian snares and other wastrels of that ilk had decided to go commercial some time round 2002

i don't think i have heard skrillex but i have seen a tumblr with pictures of him

this falls down because a lot of the worst wobblestep is produced by english dudes, many of whom actually made some of the canonical records of "proper" actual good early dubstep.

shit like this fo example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzYF5g-4yAU

what is the genetic common ancestor of these two - what is the dinosaur of which these two are rare and exotic bird descendants

― dayo, Sunday, 30 October 2011 21:43 (2 minutes ago)

the rephlex GRIME compilation from 2004ish

it was all

about saying

yeah was gonna mention that, but obv that has roots in the comedy/aggro end of late 90s IDM too

look, there is more to grime than this lady sovereign or that dizzee rascal

i think it's good that this stuff is out there roaming the prairies getting 14 year-old boys all excitable and lairy tbh

brostep is this generation's punk rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJo6RX9ngU&feature=related

precursory?

is brostep popular among hispanic americans

how does this stuff interbreed with stuff like Pendulum b4 they become some camp eco-goth rock band>?

stickily, in cloakrooms

grandaddy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KZoWLot0g

what is the genetic common ancestor of these two - what is the dinosaur of which these two are rare and exotic bird descendants

― dayo, Sunday, 30 October 2011 21:43 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

Loefah IMO.

poor vex'd. always the bridesmaid.

maybe it should have been 'which is better', but it is probably better to be honest than condescending, the plainspoken candour of an oliver letwin rather than the sugarcoated evasion of a jonathan aitken

which to say, dubsteps are inherently tory musics -- not for them the whig teleology of the hardcore continuum, each year bringing further refinements to the grand communal march unto the sunlit uplands, instead dubsteps tend towards rituality, mannerism, endogamy, always with an unbreakable sense that their way is the right and only way

in this sense the korn dubstep album is probably evidence of the end of dubstep, the end of all dubsteps, perhaps the syncretic moment than finally saw dubstep reduced to a few tradeable presets, brostep as manifest destiny.....

plastic man and mark one and crew were definitely when i started thinking this stuff was going to turn out to be the surly bro dnb of the 21st century. but vex'd was one of the first times i remember the fat mid-range riff really being the main draw.

forgot vex'd yeah truth

obviously the nasty noisy post-mentasm stuff turning into "grimy" ibizia bullshit seems to be the main american contribution here

what is the genetic common ancestor of these two - what is the dinosaur of which these two are rare and exotic bird descendants

Caspa !!!

From his days as a DJ named Quiet Storm fronting for the Label Storming productions. Where breakstep morphing out of nu skool breaks met dubstep morphing out of nu darq swing, which is a massive head nod to Darqwan's contribution.

heres a tracklist where you can plot the progress in a non linear fashion with a couple of anomalies thrown in to account for the uncertainty principle

1. Protocol X - Our Storm
2. Vex'd - Thunder
3. Distance - Koncrete
4. Emalkay - gut feeling
5. SPL - Lust
6. Lone Wolf - The Plague
7. Scarecrow - Snakes And Ladders
8. Aaron Spectre - Music is the Weapon
9. King Cannibal - Aragami Style
10. Milanese - Sight beyond Sight
11. Toasty - The Knowledge (vexd rmx)
12. Coki - Spongebob
13. 16Bit - Chainsaw Calligraphy
14. Reso - Armored Core
15. Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites (Noisia rmx)
16. Noisia - Alpha Centauri (Excision & Datsik remix)
17. Pendulum - The Island (Statelapse Remix)
18. Plan B - The Recluse (Nero Remix)

the future and present of dubstep morphing into its next 'what do you call it' moment is best tracked through Scuba and Hotflush Recordings.

Oh if only Toasty hadn't retired undefeated...

oh shit yeah darqwan. "said the spider" is definitely on the premonitory tip here.

But don't believe me just cos i lived through it...

here's what the legendary Gutterbreakz had to say in 05.

http://gutterbreakz.blogspot.com/2005/07/sunday-session-biggin-it-with-quiet.html

for those that don't know Oris Jay is Darqwan.

Caspa is obv a key progenitor to brostep (and also was much better when he was Quiet Storm!) but I don't think he's really anything other than a peripheral figure in the beardstrokestep lineage.

Vex'd is a good nomination. Distance would be another one.

The proto-brostep sound was then codified by N-Type circa 2006.

Storming productions could possibly have been the first brostep label and Quiet Storm the first brostep DJ. This was before N-type.

Quiet Storm has been working hard to push the music scene and its immense versatility of sounds since 1999. After hearing early productions from Oris Jay, Zed Bias, El B and DJ Narrows, as well as following labels such as Resurrection, Texture and Ghost, Quiet Storm was immediately hooked. Always pushing the underground sounds with passion and drive for the music, he quickly became a regular DJ on 'Groovtech' and alongside various other world wide Internet stations. He began to hit the production in 2002 on a free software package called Fruity Loops. Quiet Storm sent a demo out to the DJ and well known producer 'J Da Flex.' J Da then began to push Quiet's productions on his BBC 1xtra show 'Underground Knowledge' and in local and international clubs and venues. DJ Lombardo, a long term friend of J Da, soon became very interested in this new and up-and-coming artist. Lombardo promptly signed him to the label, Fragile Beatz. This is where Quiet became close with fellow label members, Search & Destroy and Dub Child. In 2003, he received a phone call from Rinse FM management offering him a prime time set on Tuesday evenings in between well known DJs Hatcha and Slimzee. Quiet took this opportunity on board, and spent most of his spare time chasing producers for new tunes and spending endless amounts of money on dub plates. Making his presence known on radio and throughout the scene, recognition and bookings slowly started to roll in. The only downside to 2003 was the record label 'Fragile Beatz' was no longer running. With endless amounts of dubplates and talent in his bag and barely any labels releasing vinyl due to lack of faith from distributors and label owners, Quiet Storm decided to take things into his own hands. In 2004 Storming Productions was born. Setting the label up, Quiet was determined to push through quality artists and their music. The edge and passion of forward-thinking music has always been the label's priority. Because of all these important factors, Storming has quickly built a strong and robust reputation of consistent and quality releases from artist such as: Search & Destroy, Dub Child, Oris Jay, Toastyboy, Mark One, Bogey Man, Protocol X, DJ Narrows, Reso, Marlow and Distance. Now running three labels (Storming/Dub Police/Sub Soldiers) and helping to manage two others for various artists, there seems to be no holding back this determined DJ/producer."

Now if only i knew what beardstrokestep was ?

skrillex is to dubstep what dieselboy was to jungle...

The Storming sound wasn't the same as brostep though; it was basically a straight continuation of post-Darqwan breakbeat garage. Caspa circa 2008 is quite different to Quiet Storm circa 2004.

I won't deny that a lot of that stuff is very relevant to the brostep sound, but if you're going to make that claim you may as well say that Bad Company (d&b) was the first brostep, or etc.

At any rate what we're talking about here is which producers can be identified as ancestors of both Skrillex and (say) James Blake.

BTW you're not pollywog, are you?

I want to start a new subgenre called boatstep - combining producers' longstanding affinities for steely dan samples and yacht rock with the broodiness of beardstrokestep and/or the caramelized overstuffed excess of brostep

i want u to do that

let me grow out my neckbeard first

neckbeard's castle, the boatstep opera

The storming sound evolved as much thorugh it's discography as Quiet Storm did to become Caspa and as much as Hotflush did from it's genesis to what it is now. Gary McCann though though i'd say was the first brostepper.

The point is, Storming Productions unified a strand of dubstep/breakstep that became the harder than life sounds of robots fighting which characterises brostep. Especially through promoting artists like Reso, who is capable of being the direct ancestor of Skrillex with tracks like Curse dub and Metal slug, but also through engineering Burial tracks and producing deeper dubstep with tunes like Onsen and Toasted which may have evolved James Blake.

And yes, I've never been one for drawing straight lines of continuity between genres ala the 'nuum. As for )Ei3( i'd put them down as maybe the first tech steppin d'n'b artists to split from jungle in much the same way as Reso, through the storming stable, split brostep from dubstep given he was never really adopted the Croydon mafia purists as a dubstepper. To say Bad Company were the first brosteppers is as silly as saying Loefah was anything other than the first halfstepper.

Ah yes, I thought the intellectual imperative to make nu skool breaks the founding godfather of all music through tenuous connections seemed familiar.

lol

i thought that would answer your question :)

the harder than life sounds of robots fighting which characterises brostep

does anyone remember what the music was like on 'robot wars'

there were both uk and us editions iirc

but i was there...i was there...when "138 trek" was dropped for the first time...i was there...when stanton warriors remixed craig david...

those parodies will never lose their edge

you don't have to tell me, man. i lived it.

It's not about the nu skool, it's all about the breakbeat...bow down

I always figured the first album to "break" the brostep/uk wobblecore sound was that Caspa & Rusko Fabric mix. Up until then any dubstep I'd heard was subby, eyes-down and contemplative.

But the answer to the "who is the common ancestor" question is of course Skream.

I'm going to side with the obvious and blatant trash over the faux-worthiness here.

Even as someone who isn't that invested in dubstep, the reduction of it to this binary is depressing.

xpost As mentioned upthread, it's a bit of a false dichotomy, because Skrillex is actually a continuation of ideas invented by Brits (and Aussies if you count Pendulum) given a US hardcore/nu-metal twist.

I'm only going to apologize for being a moody chin-beard blogger this one last time. BTW pollywog you better behave yourself.

One possible ancestor is this Plasticman remix of Rocker by Alter Ego

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEupv-oY_Jw

I love how the options here are either Burning Man or a bored man getting stoned in his bedroom.

So do people hate Burial now then? Surprised it's getting the "faux-worthiness" bum's rush here. The new trip hop after all.

i wouldn't choose to listen to burial because it sounds like dubstep, but he did/does have some talent, certainly

Other than the fact Burial's only released one single this year, this supposed split doesn't really take into account whole swathes of artists: Zomby, Nero, Burial etc don't fit into either category, so...

The question is becoming less "what is dubstep?" these days, rather "what isn't dubstep?". I'm sure a lot of brostep dudes wouldn't register Shackleton and Burial as dubstep "Where's the wob?" etc.

i saw a middle school kid in a "DUBSTEP" t-shirt the other day in the wilds of suburban pennsylvania. it was a little disconcerting tbh.

I've never knowingly heard any American dubstep iirc. The name Skrillex and everything the wise people of ILM have wrote about him is reason alone to not play his music, so I'm voting European.

I'm sure a lot of brostep dudes wouldn't register Shackleton and Burial as dubstep "Where's the wob?" etc.

yeah this is a thing, a friend was djing a whole set of that stuff and got asked when he was going to play some dubstep

haha, I can imagine it now: "No, I mean decent dubstep. Somethign we can dance to!"

we've already had like 9 threads on how equally hilarious it is that frostytip kegstand brobots don't know what 2652 is and head-up-ass Pfrok SBTWKRJT fans have no idea that like Skrillex plays to a billion people a night

http://www.google.com/trends?q=dubstep%2C+brostep&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

surprised quite how vertiginous the rise of dubstep has been, it must have tailed off in the uk broadsheet two or three years ago as a going concern

also dubstep seems to be popular in lots of faraway countries

"...and I know I wasn't the first person to listen to dubstep, BUT I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0dSWMAhF0c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyrHu96f2q0

Burial's more recent tracks have been cleaving closer to house, rhythmically at least.

I guess I don't understand what the 2nd category means here. The first is obviously epitomised by Skrillex but who represents Telegraph-reader blogstep? Unless you count (and dislike) James Blake, who's really off on his own thing, there hasn't been the same kind of excessively tasteful crossover album glut you had with D&B and trip hop.

Since critics started calling virtually all current leftfield electronic music post-dubstep I've lost my grip on what the genre even means anymore, outside the big, brash, primary-coloured brostep incarnation.

"Dubstep" is this decade's "electro" I guess. An all-encompassing catch-all that permeates and informs almost every style of music around, from Nero to Katy B to Korn to Radiohead to Peverelist to Horsepower Productions. The second category in this poll doesn't really make that much sense: don't think the Telegraph had really taken much notice of dubstep in any shape or form by 2008 (it was all Klaxons and Florence round those parts, James Blake only really coming to mainstream attention at the beginning of this year, much as that feels like a long time ago).

In my mind it goes like this: You had the OG dubstep running roughly 2002-2007 including Horsepower, the Rephlex Grime and Dubstep Allstars peeps, Kode9, Vex'd and ending with Skream. At this point I remember Mixmag mentioning they wanted to do a free dubstep CD but had assumed no one would listen to it.
Then dubstep kind of split into two rough factions, a bit like punk split into Oi/Hardcore & Post-Punk/New Wave in the late '70s. Caspa & Rusko picked up on some of Skream's wobblier stuff, The Bug's tear-out distorto-ragga and '90s jump-up d'n'b. Up to then, the relatively unknown act's Fabric mix went super-nova becoming Fabric's best selling mix to date.
Disgusted, labels like Hyperdub started releasing more experimental music, still at 140bpm but often displaying a more indie/hipster/Thom Yorke-friendly side, so you had James Blake, Darkstar, TRG, Martyn, Joy Orbison, Hudson Mohawke - some of whom would have you believe they're simply carrying on the OG dubstep line, but really ploughing furrows more in line with IDM and leftfield electronica etc. About the same time, that La Roux Skream remix started receiving major play on the radio and summer festivals, ushering in dubstep's commercial phase and opening up an American market. This begat Skrillex's nu-metal take on dubstep and Nero's poppy/vocal version here in the UK.

is this advert dubstep?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fe16XkwJkY

In my mind it goes like this:

and only in your mind...

Greensleeves Dubstep Chapter 1

Anyone heard this? Sick tracklist.

http://www.ebreggae.com/i595/MB132328W595.jpg

Greensleeves mid-90s Jungle remixes are a uniformly and shamelessly good fun and the remixing luminaries involved there were much lower profile. Curious to hear how this is.

An LD remix of Gyptian is something that pertains to my interests.

In my mind it goes like this:

and only in your mind...

Not that I agree with DL's version, but if you're going to make the obvious zing give us your take…

yes, very strange when people do this. obv the above is as truncated / generalised / potted as one can fit into a 100 word messageboard post with overlaps and exceptions all through. I'm sure lots of people disagree, but at the same time there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to the definition of dubstep/brostep - a lot of cynical chiding and snobbery that gets played up and I reckon people should just get over.

I guess this Bug "Bad Man Forward, Bad Man Pull Up" remix has been floating around for a little while, but it's amazing. Less impressed by the Coki-Busy Signal/Mavado remix which preceded it.

I guess this Bug "Bad Man Forward, Bad Man Pull Up" remix has been floating around for a little while, but it's amazing. Less impressed by the Coki-Busy Signal/Mavado remix which preceded it.

I guess this Bug "Bad Man Forward, Bad Man Pull Up" remix has been floating around for a little while, but it's amazing. Less impressed by the Coki-Busy Signal/Mavado remix which preceded it.

So nice had to say it thrice.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Glad this is close at least