About a year or so ago, I said to a good friend "dubstep will make a comeback, and it will be huge, and better than ever", and, I was correct, but, unfortunately, the latter part of that sentence let me down massively.
People get awfully defensive when someone uses terms like "dubstep", "post dubstep" and "brostep", telling you "YOU CAN'T CATEGORISE THEM LIKE THAT" or something else stupid that they've basically just twoked from Pitchfork or some other hugely anit-mainstream, one step ahead of the game, hipster website, when actually, I think its perfectly fine to try and set apart these artists into categories, if just for simplicity. However, dubstep, I feel has let a lot of people down.
If you send yourself back into the bedroom mixers of the 2000's, in particular, Skream pushed dubstep into the frame. The slow rhythm and heavy basslines filled garages and house parties across the nation, but it remained relatively untouched and untarnished as a sound, and as a genre. Depite it being rather cliche to be using Skream as a prime example, it was his ear for a melody that allowed him to send the genre further than the back bedroom of some teenager in central London, and put it on the airwaves. Skreams debut EP set the tone for dubstep, and is a sort of bar for what was to be achieved at the time.
Despite Skream selling dubstep to the nation, the thrill soon died out before a huge resurgence in the past 2/3 years, but thats where for me, it's all gone pear shaped. Luckily, there's artists out there that are still encapsulating what dubstep is about, taking the forward thinking, unusual and uncomfortable sounds, and merging them into a melody that catches and sticks, but something you don't know how to react to, something that makes you listen to the subtle tones, the bass melodies and the hooks on which the samples are placed, layered one on another. But whats most special about this, is that each artist is master of their own instrument, each having a different ability, making each artist, and each song, entirely different. What i'd say was this, 'elite' band of, almost purist like artists, is including of the poster boys of "post dubstep" such as Jamie xx, James Blake, Jamie Woon, Burial, Four Tet, Joy Orbison, Ifan Dafydd and Mount Kimbie. For me, these are true dubstep artists, sticking firmly to their roots, defying the industry and its mass money for the joy of making the best music they can, and keeping a dying genre alive. They are dubstep.
Then that brings me onto what people are now referring to dubstep, that infuriating "wobblewobblewobblefunnynoisewobble" mess. A genre typified by Skrillex, his music holds no rhythm, no passion, nothing. This dubstep is just there, in my opinion, for people to jump up and down to, and make fools of themselves. There's almost a feel to it like a money has just hit a MIDI keyboard plugged into Logic repeatedly until some sort of noise is made. The music itself, bares no resemblance to the roots of the genre it comes under, its just a musical mess, but for some reason, it sells like wildfire, so much so in fact, that house artists such as Deadmau5 and even Skream has sold out the roots of what he is founding father of, in the interests of some wobbly bass and a shed load of money, and while I can't blame them for wanting the money, its a shame that this is what the industry is. Its like dubstep has lost its way, and the real artistry is being left in the shadows for hopeless bloggers like me, to try and shout out the message, to get the true musical talents recognised and respected, because theyre the ones who deserve the money and the fame, not the fools like Skrillex and their, frankly repetitive, generic and abrasive sounds.
If you need convincing of anything more, just listen to this babe:
