It only takes five minutes inside Crash Mansion, the current host of NYC’s dubstep party Dub War, to see the telltale signs of a new scene taking form. Everyone is learning to dance again; midair hand chops and a pseudo-skank bounce replace years of codified junglist head bobs. The music sounds rawer, more unpredictable than most of these people are used to; a sludged-out bass crawl one moment can flash into a bleepy synth arpeggio the next. Even the DJs seem as psyched as the crowd-when certain tracks drop, these grown men suddenly look like 10-year-olds with a PS3.
On this night, Dub War’s “FWD vs. Dub War” lineup represents a cross section of the success both the UK and U.S. dubstep scenes have experienced over the last year. Youngsta and Hatcha represent the UK’s FWD weekly, which, aside from the massive DMZ parties in Brixton, are the closest thing to mecca for fans of this music. Meanwhile, stateside DJs like Baltimore’s Joe Nice and Dub War organizer Dave Q are symptomatic of the scene branching out from its provincial South London home into the great unknown.
The strange part is that this recent success seemingly came out of nowhere. However, dubstep belongs to what writer Simon Reynolds refers to as the “hardcore continuum” (tracing back to stuff like Prodigy and Smart E’s and running up through two-step garage and drum & bass), so the concept of this music isn’t exactly new; proto dubstep tracks stretch as far back as 1998. So what exactly made this all magically work in 2006? To explain that, dubstep’s journey from insular spin-off to a melting pot of influence speaks volumes.
IN ROUGH TERRITORY
A little over 10 years ago, drum & bass mattered. You could hear its polyrhythmic skitter crop up in everything from car commercials to David Bowie albums. Scene figureheads broke into mainstream consciousness-Goldie was dating Bjˆrk while becoming an “actor”; Adam F, Roni Size and Photek made albums that practically defined ’90s music innovation. But then something happened-or rather, didn’t happen-to the genre at the turn of the millennium. Sounds that were at one time crucial to Goldie’s “ghetto blues” aesthetic became clichÈ, but rather than change up the game plan, the scene settled into a big pair of comfy pants.
“Really, it just lost all its danger,” says Jamie Vex’d, who, along with friend Roly, make up the production team Vex’d. “Instead of having no idea what would happen next, suddenly you knew exactly what was going to happen. Every drop was coming at the same point.”
Around that time, UK garage producers El-B and Noodles came together to form Groove Chronicles. Their 1998 track “Stone Cold” served as a rallying cry for the frustrated junglists as well as a taste of things to come. By stripping the metronomic kicks from the mix, all that was left was swing and Reese bass, cut with a haunting female vocal. “The inspiration [came] from early drum & bass labels [like] Reinforced, Ram and Moving Shadow; early Naked Music, Peacefrog and Cross Section records, to name a few,” claims Noodles, who worked in a record store at the time. Stone Cold was “using the energy of drum & bass with the deep melodics of house.”
The formula proved wildly successful. The record, considered the exemplar dubstep track, is also seen as a starting point for two-step. Quite simply, it was one of those all-too-rare records that got producers thinking, emulating and trying something new again.
Fast-forward a couple of years to the rise and fall of two-step garage. As crews like So Solid dominated British news headlines for ridiculous stabbing incidents and generally “poor behavior,” producers like Zed Bias, Horsepower Productions and El-B furthered their deviation from the rest of the UK garage scene. Focusing on the minimal swing blueprint of “Stone Cold,” their collective work began to define the roots of dubstep. A number of brilliant records ensued on imprints like Locked On and Ghost, but after Horsepower released In a Fine Style on Tempa in 2002, it seemed like the small stable of producers was unsure what to do next.
Meanwhile, a strange white label began floating around London record stores that would make a seismic impact on UK garage. The record was Dizzee Rascal’s “I Luv U,” which, along with Wiley’s “Eskimo” and Musical Mobb’s “Pulse X,” completely rewrote the rules. By the time 2003 rolled around, the music that would later be referred to as grime had almost completely silenced dubstep’s momentum.
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