Tag Archives: dubstep

Event, inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Wobble @ Night Owl

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16/05/09

I’ve never been to Wobble before. I must admit I never really wanted to go either, as I was a little afraid of the name. You see, I knew it was a drum and bass and dubstep night, and although I enjoy those music styles, I’ve never really appreciated wobbly drum and bass. It was too cheesy, too repetitive, and I always thought to myself it wasn’t worth going to a night that basically played that all night. Luckily, I was wrong about the show, and have learnt yet again one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Well… for the most part.

I love Night Owl as a venue, although was a little confused as to why we were forced to use the back entrance. I like the fact that there is a decent sized dancefloor with the amazing Heartical Hi Fi Sound System, plus numerous comfy couches for old folks like myself to sit down and have a rest now and then. Not that there were a lot of older folk there, which was something I hadn’t anticipated and I was rather bemused about. There was also a more varied crowd than I expected, comprised of ravers, emo/hipster types, and the dreadlocked peeps, all of whom seemed to be having a wonderful time throughout the night.

So anyway, I found the bar, a pint, a comfy chair and proceeded to sit down and judge the show. I didn’t stay sitting for long… AC23 is a DJ I’ve been hanging to see ever since he sent me a mix of dubstep a few years ago. Somehow on that mix he managed to trick me into thinking dubstep was something it wasn’t… and he did the same again on Saturday night. He plays a variety of dubstep, with different tempos and sounds I don’t usually associate with dubstep. It was excellent and for the second time in as many weeks I’ve found myself really enjoying a dubstep mix. It was helped by the excellent MCs, probably two of the best I’ve heard in Melbourne, who loved the rhymes and calling for the rewind.

Afficks was next up on the wheels of steel, and this is where my interest waned. He’s a great DJ and kept the floor jumping, but the dubstep tunes he played all sounded the same to me, with the wobble bass and slowed down dnb beats. Some of the tunes were just awful – Ready Or Not is a classic tune and it was torture hearing the dubstep remix. However, there were some decent tunes in there as well, such as the Chase and Status track Saxon (I think! I’m not too au fait with dubstep I must admit) and The Special’s Ghost Town.

I was a little worried that after the hours of dubstep that Adelaide’s DJ Fiction, stepping up to drop some dnb, wouldn’t be able to hold the floor. I needn’t be concerned though, as, in my opinion, Fiction is one of the best dnb DJs in Australia, and knows how to rock a party. And rock the party he did, slamming down some new stuff and seamlessly mixing it with older stuff, then jumping forward again. Fiction was having a lot of fun, and the crowd lapped up his expert mixing, cheering nearly every tune and dancing like loons, throwing their hands in the air like a good crowd should.

Cubist followed, getting a little harder and a bit more wobbly in his dnb compared to Fiction, although not quite as wobbly as me on the dancefloor, as the amber liquid had been flowing all night, and sadly I could only stay for about half an hour of his set. But the crowd was still going off when I left, which is always a good indication of a great night!

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Baobinga and ID – Big Monster Dubstep EP

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Baobinga & I.D’s album is one of the best releases of this year – of any genre. If you haven’t got it, go out and get it. Anyway, this ep features dubstep remixes of some of the tunes by ID, Hektagon and DFRNT. All up, it’s not bad, But when the originals are as good as they are, it’s pretty hard to stuff them up.

ID’s remix of South Manchester Weather sounds more breakbeat than dubstep to me. It’s kind of like Freq Nasty’s earlier stuff, just not as full on crazy. The bass is big, but the traditional dubstep vibe isn’t quite there.
Hektagon’s remix of The Water Park is nothing special. It strips back the original, but doesn’t do anything great with it to make it a standout track.

Many dubstep tunes feel as though they’re trying too hard to be different. However, DFRNT’s remix of In the Air is nice and mellow without being too wanky and experimental, and is one of the best remixes on the EP.

Similarly DFRNT’s remix of The Machine is good. It’s almost like old school trance at the start, but gets more dubsteppy in the main meat of the tune. I like this tune the best, but the original is a fucking awesome tune anyway, so it’s not hard to like it so much.

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Tectonic Plates

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What is it about commercial dubstep compilations? Sure, I’m not the hugest dubset fan, but I’ve enjoyed many set from locals such as Jayar in Adelaide and Same0 in Melbourne, to international luminaries such as Benga, who delivered one of the performances of last year in my humble opinion. I’ve downloaded and grooved away to sets containing Lex’d, Digital Mystiks, and Skream before. And I really tried to enjoy this compilation of dubstep, but unfortunately I found that Tectonic Plates just isn’t overly likable. It’s too slow, plodding, minimal and repetitive to really get much enjoyment from.

I have to admit that the mix CD grew on me over time. I instantly disliked the slow pacing and the dull repetitiveness at first. After a few listens in the comfort of home on my loud system, I grew to like it a little more. However, the dull start of Cyrus’ Indian Stomp and slow pacing that follows it for over half the album is really hard to get into for someone who isn’t already the hugest dubstep fan. I think it’s the minimalistic approach to this compilation that really gets on my goat. It’s just too simple, too repetitive, and that makes it boring to me.

Individually, the tunes aren’t too bad, and as the disc comes in mixed and unmixed form, I guess the package isn’t a total waste. The real well known names deliver the best tracks – Loefah & Skream’s Fearless, Skream’s Bahl Fwd, and Vex’d Third Choice all being the stand out tunes. Armour’s Iron Man is pretty banging, and Nightmares by Hijak would be one of my favourites. There is some double up of tune across the two discs, but the unmixed CD gets a bigger “thumbs up” from me, but it’s still a very small thumb..

If you’re a debstep fan and into the really minimal side of the genre, then you’ll probably love Tectonic Plates, but if you’re new to the sound or just a casual listener, then there are much better sets available, and you’ll just have to hunt them down yourself, because I’m yet to find a commercial release outside of the big named artist albums that really takes my fancy.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Benga

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Now, I don’t make these types of calls often as I hate coming across as a wanky music journalist, but it’s not very often these days you witness the birth of a movement of fresh sounding music. Sure, there are sub-genres of the popular standards that do very well and can sometimes evolve their own scene, as witnessed with “emo”. And there is music that simply sounds like older music, like “nu-gaze” which imitates and expands the genre a little but keeps so much essence of the original to be unoriginal in and of itself.

But it’s my opinion that Dubstep is a new form of music, different enough from its roots to be its own genre, and fresh enough from all the other music out there to not be a subgenre of something else. Although it has been around for a number of years, Dubsteps roots lie in UK dance genres Garage and Drum & Bass, but the music expands from its influences so much that it finds a wider and different audience, and is becoming more popular outside its UK homeland, expanding its reach into Europe, America and Australia.

One of its leading lights is Beni Uthman, better known as DJ Benga, a South London DJ who along with DJ Skream is at the forefront of the Dubstep movement. Uthman started off mixing Garage from an early age, but also listened to a lot of Drum & Bass. “I never really had a preference – I liked everything. When I started mixing it wasn’t because I liked garage more,” he explains, “it was because I had more garage around me at the time. All my brothers were MCs, and would MC to garage, and that’s how I got into it.”

He also got a lot of help from the guys at Big Apple Records in Croydon, South London, his home town. “Whenever I went in there when I was younger they were like “can you DJ, can you really DJ?” and I could. I remember one time it was quite late and it was shutting hours, so I said to them let me have a mix. So they let me have a mix and they were shocked because I was only 12 or 13! I could barely reach the top of the counter,” Uthman laughs. “They came out and saw me DJ out as well and were so impressed they gave me sponsorship and that,” he smiles.

Knowing the sounds he liked, they helped Uthman find tunes with the subbass and broken beats he liked. This was found mostly on B-Sides of garage and grime tunes, but wasn’t exactly to his liking. He had a passion for the darker sounds of drum and bass, but loved the dance beat of garage, and couldn’t find exactly the sound he wanted to play on other people’s records so with DJ Skream he started producing his own material, releasing tunes on the ‘Big Apple Records’ label. “My sound, I would say,” he muses, “come from drum and bass style synths, drum and bass style baselines, with a garage tempo drums. Because of my UK garage influences I have the rolling drums, but I still have that half-time beat… with a little bit of techno in there as well,” he chuckles.

Radio has been very important in promoting dubstep to a wider audience. BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs championed the sound on her show ‘Dubstep Warz’ in 2006, and Skream’s own show ‘Stella Sessions’ on the infamous pirate radio station Rinse FM also fills the airwaves with the subbase synonymous with dubstep. But it also reaches a global audience via the internet. “When people couldn’t lock into a show, barefiles would host it so they could download it at any time,” Uthman says, talking about www.barefiles.com, the probably-not-legal website which hosts radio shows from around the UK. “Because of this, I’d go to Amsterdam, and be shocked because the people would know the songs I was playing. I expected to have to warm them into it, but they already knew what was big and that sort of thing.”

It’s Uthmans first time to Australia, and he’s looking forward to coming. Being the first dubstep international to play Adelaide, he’s especially keen to pop our dubstep cherry. “I remember Skream (who’s played in Australia but not Adelaide) telling me the people are really friendly and the scene will get bigger and better because the people really love bassline. Bassline’s an international language,” he laughs, “Everyone loves bassline, innit?”

Benga plays at Rhino Room on Sat 8 Sep alongside DJs Jayar, Stagga4wrd, Bennie Raw, Macro & Audioopticon