Eddy Says

Eddy Says: You can ignore it but that won’t make it go away: why dubstep is here to stay

By | Published on Monday 28 March 2011

Eddy Temple-Morris

As I write this, I’ve just got back from my second Big Snow Festival in Andorra. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in the snow, both the snowboarding aspect, but even more the music, the crowd and the other DJs playing up there.

I got to play before one of my all time heroes, Goldie, in the most spectacular setting. Meanwhile DJ Fresh’s set, afterwards, was simply mesmeric, and it was very interesting to see and hear how this master of the art of drum n bass has expanded his sound to include lots of dubstep and even a smattering of electro-house. Without the benefit of eyes you could almost have mistaken his set for one of mine!

I got to warm up for Wretch 32 and Example & DJ Wire the next evening, and had one of the nights of my life, the crowd was heaving, sweaty and bang up for everything.

The fascinating thing was seeing the crowd’s reactions to certain tunes and genres. Even a year ago, my playing dubstep mid-set was perplexing to a good chunk of the dancefloor. But this time, my gosh, it was what they were all waiting for, what they wanted as the main attraction. Well, that and drum n bass. Looking back on the four days and six gigs I did there, the tunes that got the biggest reactions were all either dubstep or drumstep – ‘Blind Faith’ by Chase & Status, ‘Guilt’ by Nero, ‘Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites’ by Skrillex and that Bare Noize remix of Tinie Tempah and Ellie Goulding.

There will be people reading this and rejoicing, but there will be a few seething right now.

I had an interesting exchange last week with the singer of a band I like very much, who doesn’t get dubstep. His opinion, which is shared by many indie kids, is that it’s both “a fad” and “a cultural yawn”, that it won’t last and has no musical value in the long term because “it has no melody”. He even hit me with the old “you can’t dance to it” chestnut. Me! A man that just got back from watching a thousand people dance like loons to it only 24 hours previously!

What I found most perplexing about this was that this very talented singer-songwriter couldn’t hear the melodic brilliance in ‘Cracks’ (the Freestylers track remixed) by Flux Pavilion or ‘Scary Monsters’ by Skrillex.

I’m reminded of the days when drum n bass, or jungle as it was known then, was in its infancy, and people were saying “it won’t last, it’s just a fad”. Radio 1 producers and presenters were trotting that old line at me in the mid-90s, when my passionate speech at the Radio 1playlist meeting ensured ‘Inner City Life’ by Goldie was the first jungle tune ever to be playlisted on national radio. I remember Simon Mayo, a very nice man and fellow Spurs supporter, being so outraged by our supporting Goldie’s magnum opus, that he refused point blank to play it, even when it was scheduled in his show.

So, when all the doubters and haters were saying “it won’t last”, how long do you think they would give it? A year, two, surely not even three…? If any of you reactionaries happen across this column, I’m delighted to say ‘I told you so’, and that was FIFTEEN YEARS ago! And dnb has never sounded better, bigger, or stronger. The new wave of young dnb/drumstep artists like Wilkinson, Loadstar, Dirtyphonics and Bare Noize ensure the scene will just keep going from strength to strength, and with the genre’s current grand masters like Sub Focus, Chase & Status and DJ Fresh still dazzling with their productions and melodic skills, all of them inspiring young producers, who come in with new hunger and fresh ears, to keep pushing things forward.

That is the key to why dubstep’s longevity is assured and why every voice that says “it won’t last” will inevitably be proved wrong in time.

Dubstep took a while to ‘bed-in’ because the producers that first started it didn’t really know how to produce, they were just finding their feet, and when those feet were located, they started inspiring much more experienced producers from other genres like breakbeat (SkisM, Pixelfist, Vent, Nero) and drum n bass (DJ Fresh, Adam F, High Rankin) to have a go, thereby diversifying the sounds and making the genre more accomplished, more exciting and more accessible to a wider audience.

That in turn inspired another wave of – without trying to sound patronising – ‘child talent’. Kids with computers, and hunger, and a fresh approach. While much of the old guard were used to looking for sounds to sample, these tyro (I love that word, I’m not going to get all Stephen Fry and expect most of you to ignore it or look it up in the dictionary, it means ‘fledgling’ or ‘up and coming’ in this context) producers are all about creating unique sounds, bringing ‘new blood’ in an almost literal sense, to a genre that could have come and gone like, say UK garage, bound for a reload in a decade, when the cultural wheel turns full circle.

Flux Pavilion was still at school when I first met him. So was Jakwob. Skrillex is the same age. All of them are producing work that is so musical, so melodic, so exciting that they’ve entered the pantheon I call ‘Remix Hall Of Famers’. These guys, and many more in dubstep, have a virtual bronze handprint in Leicester Square, as far as I’m concerned. They have made some of the best tunes in my collection, and for that reason, I know it’s not a fad.

If you’re just listening to Radio 1 in the daytime and basing your judgement of dubstep on bed wetting pop music like Katy B, then no wonder you think its a transient cultural anomaly. I implore those who feel this to look deeper and open up their ears and minds to the astonishing electronic music that’s coming from labels like Circus, Never Say Die, Suicide Dub, Dub Police, Tempa, Digital Soundboy and even Ed Banger getting in on the act.

I was stopped in the street in Andorra by three sweet, eighteen year old kids from Donegal and thanked profusely for playing Skrillex. People were collaring me on the slopes and the chairlifts, and feeding back directly, about the tunes I’d played the night before. It really is all about the dubstep and the dnb at the moment. Of course interest in the genre will wane, these things are always cyclical, but mark my words, dubstep is rocking and will continue to rock, and diversify and get even more interesting, over the next decade. Just think of the NEXT wave of producers, now children, whose minds are being blown by Skrillex and Flux Pavilion, imagine what THEY are capable of, what fresh, bright red, richly oxygenated blood they will bring to the proceedings.

Personally, I cannot wait to hear it and I hope I’m still in a position to be able to play these tunes on the radio. And I hope you’re still there to hear that, we’re on this amazing ride together, after all, and I tell you what: I’m loving every minute.

With love and respect,
Eddy



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