A few weeks ago, while watching megastar DJ Z-Trip rock a tailgate party for a few UCLA Bruins fans, the jocked excitedly told me that a sweet freshman girl, big cheeks painted with yellow and blue team logos, requested he play some dubstep. As the crowd of clearly mainstream coolege football fans went bonkers to the low end beats, I was struck that this genre’s time in the “phenomenon” spotlight is almost up.
A new film, Bassweight, is coming out in the UK this month. With dubstep superstars Mary Anne Hobbs, Skream, Benga and Kode 9 all partipating, the film is doubtlessly a credible look at the music’s near decade-long history. But the angle being reported by The Guardian is that Bassweight focuses not on the past, but on the predicting the future of dubstep. And while I’ve not seen the flim, nor heard the postulations therein, one doesn’t need to look far to take an educated guess at where dubstep is headed.
Since it’s inception, dubstep has mirrored the pop-cultural arc of drum’n'bass almost identically. And not just because the former is pretty much a half-tempo version of the other. Here’s a breakdown of the parallel timelines:
Drum’n'Bass / Dubstep
Begins in working class Britian
Bristol / South London
Seminal club nights evolve
AWOL (A Way Of Life) / FWD>>
Pirate broadcasts spread the sound
Kool FM / Rinse FM
Seminal artistic albums are released
Goldie- Timeless / Burial- Untrue
Sound takes off in the U.S.
Dieselboy / Rusko (UK Expat)
Mainstream stars adopt the style
David Bowie / Britney Spears
What happens next is just as predictable. Within a year or so, dubstep will fall out of favor with the forward looking music fans who raised it into popularity to begin with. The media will move on to new genre’s as well. However, the music will continue to thrive amongst purist communities and, surprisingly, in frat houses across the country (trust us, d’n'b was huge on college campuses throughout the ’00s). After a fallow period, a revival will occure somewhere around 2016 before the music finally normalizes into just another category in your iTunes playlist—like lounge, IDM and jungle.
Cycle of life kiddies. Trust me.
co-sign @ George
dubstep isn’t all about 140bpm midrange wobbles
yeah this is pretty bad analysis overall. just because some college kids like rusko doesnt mean they are checking for the underground stuff. remember when ‘the bomb’ or some classic house song was played at college parties, that certainly didnt mean that people were checking for house, it just meant that the song had a larger appeal than other house tracks. same with dubstep songs. btw, rusko is a homie and the aforementioned comment about him was not a slag.
Uninformed, badly written and patently wrong… you should learn to write better firstly, then maybe develop knowledge on chosen subject.
Didn’t you know Timbaland invented dubstep? Bloody Americans, arrogantly asserting and assuming over things they know little or nothing about, business as usual!
what a shockingly bad article
dude! your totally full of shit, dont know bout america… fuck yeah! but in the uk dnb has been massive since its ‘inception’, + likewise with dubstep, getting regular plays on the radio etc. in fact dubstep is played more regularly on the radio now than it did when it first came about, showing its popularity is only grown…
im afraid to say that u r chatting shit buddy…
article = FAIL!
peace x
half tempo?
how many D&B tracks you have that are 140bpm?
what a ridiculous article. In UK DnB is still huge, selling out numerous venues countrywide, including fabric on a friday, on a weekly basis. The idea that dubstep will die out and people will look for something new is ridiculous. in the UK dubstep is huge and will continue to be, it is such a un-definable forward thinking music, then it will certainly spawn many new mutations such as UK funky, however it will remain a big deal, both mainstream and underground, in the UK and beyond for a long long time. For good dubstep, not just jump up wobble rubbish (which is people like rusko) check out Phaeleh, synkro, DJ RUM, Kryptic Minds, Digital Mystikz, VVV and so on and maybe you will understand why dubstep is not nearly over!
Newsflash! Musical genre peaks in popularity after several years! Forward minded fans move on and American frat boys have lousy taste!
Details at 11.
Well, Id be hard pressed to try and find a way to defend dubstep. Overall, I dont like it. I am pretty open to music in general, especially sub-genres within electronic music but I can’t dig or understand dubstep. The few tracks I found appe…aling had a noticeable degree of complexity and had refined samples but what it lacked was that obnoxiously heavy bassline that every dubstep fan seems to love. Same case for drum & bass. So many tracks just sound unintelligent and tend to be very uncomplicated/repetitive/silly. But there are a great number of producers who take the time to refine their sound and produce intricate and beautiful tracks. I think the problem with dubstep is that it is popular in a time where music production equipment/software is very accessible, relatively cheap, and the constructs of what music is defined as, have been broken down. that’s my explanation for the saturation of bad music (dubstep/drum & bass/and other genres alike) out there….anyone who has the slightest interest in becoming a musician can and will, which in turn drastically lowers the quality of any given genre.
and to comment on the idea that drum & bass was popular on college campuses:
no, no way it ever was. drum & bass was kept in US urban settings until cities ejected the entire rave culture out and ‘raves’ started popping up in corn fields and other adverse settings. but with that migration, the sound changed and drum & bass got really really dumb. ak1200, dieselboy, and a number of other prominent US dnb producers tainted a genre that was refined by mature producers like klute/ltj bukem/blame. not hating on dieselboy entirely, because ive seen some great sets of his but still, i dont like his production skills much.
You seem to be judging dubstep (and bass music as a whole) solely on the badly made chainsaw style dubstep.
If you’d done some basic research, you’d learn that dubstep was never intended to be made with some LFO’d bassline, some drums and nothing else. Here’s a fun timeline of what dubstep evolved from, and what it sounds like now. Proper dubstep that is, the stuff with sub bass and no chainsaw bassline.
Garage roots:
1999 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAULh9Puv4g
2000 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QewPPl9wJ0
2001 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjiXPi2uQJk
2002 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzgTa9Z5Ukw
2002 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-4Cq1kW1Rk
2003 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLeFs0NZ3ak
Now here’s where the sound starts getting more defined and stripped back, much bassier –
2004 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMghwdG6SOE
2004 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-pLVMQxS54
2005 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMyIflrVDK8
2005 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5agKIN7B_sk
2006 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Xxw0QP4I4
2006 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFdIU12GyVk
2007 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tdktw5Srx4
2007 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT2hqexPyl0
2008 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSgojSE9xDI
2008 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxoqQTpc4D8
2009 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–ZFUxISrPo
2009 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa_PDKKc2_A
Now here we are in 2010. Bass music as a whole is better than it ever has been, despite what people may tell you. UK Funky is exploding, garage is being revived in to it’s new wonderful form. The entire genre of bass music at 125-140bpm (and also 90-110) came about because of dubstep. It’s spawned so many new genres and people don’t even realise it. People just go to some mainstream club, hear some chainsaw tune and assume that terrible over the top wobbles are all dubstep has to offer.
2010 dubstep is incredible, in all it’s bpm ranges. From house, to garage, to dubstep to half step drum & bass, the genre is better than ever –
House – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYhsQJPXIU
Garage – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo-In-Dj18c
Hip-Hop – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YdH18U2OLM
Deep house – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USMc06Y3qA0
Halfstep DnB – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NObj85esYtM
Detroit house – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYeGtAcWE-c
Stripped back piano ballads – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBsJ09RhqZw
Standard 140bpm dubstep, like it sounded back int he day – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCCM76LOeUE
UK Funky – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqTXIqf8uEo
80s Prince sounding epic electronica – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWuNNXLL93M
Epic Tribal House – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJoQERWjgb8
Grime – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUml94UEk8
Super aggy dubstep – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ixSyVoKW0
2step garage – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAnRWbcqjbQ
The whole 140bpm with half step beats and swathes of sub bass may be dying down a bit, but the genre has evolved and the bass music that has spawned from dubstep has taken over almost the entire underground club scene across europe.
You and the person who wrote this article have no clue. Learning all your knowledge of underground genres from frat boys is generally a mistake. “Brostep 4 lyfe” and whatnot
…If you’d done some basic research, you’d learn that dubstep was never intended to be made with some LFO’d bassline,
While your comment is rich in the history of dubstep coupled with very good examples for each year and style (I will actually use your very post as an example to my friends who have no clue what’s what in dubstep), it seems to have proven the author’s point. While this article seems to suggest that dubsteps evolution is linear (untrue for every genre), and it has a very muddled timeline of this so-called progression of dubstep, it’s strange of you to say that a genre was never “intended” to be made a certain way. No matter how uneducted this article’s author seems about the genre, it does appear that the chainsaw wub wub, LFO modulated basslines of neo-dubstep are what’s gaining popularity in the mainstream and to say otherwise is just foolish. Now I live in the states and I’ve encountered many people at my University who are in no way, shape or form well accquainted with electronic music genres- let alone any music beyond the top 20 on their local radio stations- who just love the “Filthy” grooves made by the more mainstream dubstep artists.
While the future of the myriad of evolving dubstep genres that at least we seem to enjoy looks very bright, unfortunately it seems highly probable that the future of mainstream dubstep lies in the hands of chainsaw-wub-wielding brittney’s and snoops of the current generation- which may very well be the eventual playlists of the drunken bro’s and ho’s of American (possibly international) university students.
I’m sorry, you have a very good awareness of dubstep’s past, but you know nothing of it’s future. Why don’t you compare the popularity of Joy Orbison and Tunnidge to heavier artists like Excision, Datsik, Cookie Monsta, and Downlink. Nothing more needs be said about your ignorance of the genre’s progression in terms of popularity, and your idea of good dubstep is very narrow-minded.
[...] + phenomenon), which has so quickly exploded in popularity and breadth of sound. Maybe enough to propel it into frathouse ubiquity, but who [...]
yea, I’d be VERY surprised : )
You’re obviously really into music – else you wouldn’t end writing for Urb. I’m guessing back in college your social circle included others that were passionate music fans. So when a few people mentioned that \everyone\ was into d’n'b, they probably meant that they knew others in their respective social circle that listened to d’n'b.
As Eddy (above) alluded to, 95% of the people on a college campus don’t seek out new music. I’d say they’re not even that OPEN to new musical styles. I went to Berkeley during d’n'b peak years, and beyond some DJs at KALX and some headz, there was ZERO awareness of d’n'b. Think about it: Goldie, Roni Size/Reprazent, LTJ Bukem, top-tier d’n'b acts in terms of name recognition — none of them ever played large venues in the Bay Area. No d’n'b club night ever made it to the main floor on a sat night at a large club. D’n'b stayed at little DJ bars in the lower haight. So, I’m sure if a vocal d’n'b track was played at some college parties, I don’t doubt that it was well received. But that hardly makes it \huge on college campuses.\ And I’ll bet my left arm that if more than 3 tracks of d’n'b were played at a coors-lite fueled frat party, there would be an immediate demand for more Dave Mathews.
All of that said, I do agree with your prediction for dubstep’s trajectory.
I am back at school at UC Riverside, and I can say for certain that no one here knows what the hell dnb, dubstep, uk funky, garage or grime is. Out of 100 people I have spoken to about music I’d about 5 like any form of \techno\ at all. This is a so campus an hour from LA.
“trust us, d’n’b was huge on college campuses throughout the ’00s”
that’s complete, total, utter bullshit. d’n'b never had more than a small, niche audience in the US. if d’n'b was huge on college campuses it would have reflected in d’n'b DJs/producers landing bigger and high-profile gigs throughout the country. but that never happened.
You’d be surprised Andre. I never knew about it either until multiple people I encountered—who would be considered “mainstream” college kids—talked about how everyone is into d’n'b. Mind you, these are not people who live an active music lifestyle. They don’t buy a lot of CD or attend concerts/clubs. But when music is involved, say at a social function, you’d be surprised what is favored.