It’s 2015 and no one can disagree that electronic music is alive and thriving in the U.S. More and more we’re getting radio hits from the likes of Zedd, Calvin Harris, and David Guetta that are creeping into the mainstream music culture. Although it is breaking into the mainstream, to say that electronic music is a new phenomenon wouldn’t be correct. There have been elements of electronic dating back to 70’s disco and the 80’s with The Talking Heads being a great example.
However, there is one area of electronic music that hasn’t been dragged into the mainstream and tainted by attempting to appeal to the lowest common denominator, Dubstep. If you’ll excuse the minor blip of Skrillex winning a bunch of Grammy’s in 2010, there hasn’t been much success with dubstep in the mainstream despite it’s growing popularity within the scene. There can be a lot of debate about why, but we feel that this Bassnectar quote succinctly explains the polarizing effect of Dubstep,
“Farting basslines will never be mainstream”
Despite the inability of Dubstep to break into the mainstream (besides Skrillex), there is still a hardcore following here in the states (see Nectar selling out MSG last fall). We believe that 2015 may see a revitalization of old style of dub, good examples being Rusko opening Basscenter VIII with a set that was all pre-2009 stuff and Benga reemerging to open for Bassnectar at Red Rocks and playing two sets at Infrasound.
With the potential for old Dubstep to make a comeback, we thought it appropriate to get into the finer details and do a brief history of Dubstep. So what genres inspired Dubstep? Where did it originate? Who were the minds behind creating and pushing the sound? We get into all of this and give you some mixes that any bass fan can appreciate.
Inspiration: Drum and Bass, Two-step, UK Garage, Grime, Proto Dubstep
The graph above does a great job of outlining the influence of dubstep beginning with Drum and Bass (D&B) in the mid-90’s and continuing on into today. The font is a bit small so we’re going to lay it out quickly below
Drum and Bass: Mid-90s drum and bass puts fast breakbeats (typically between 160-180 bpm), heavy bass, and sub-bass lines at the forefront of rave music.
UK Garage: Influenced by drum and bass. House music gets faster, with heavier bass and sub-bass.
Two-Step: Takes the speed of garage template and adds shuffled, syncopated rhythms held together by deep basslines. Diva vocals and traditional house instrumentation abound.
Grime: Derived from the same ingredients as dubstep, but with an emphasis on the MC. UK garage, British hip-hop and dancehall all play a part.
Proto-dubstep: Producers start to strip down, toughen up, and space out UK Garage. Dark and predominantly instrumental.
The Influential Players and The Shop That Started It All
Benga and Skream at Big Apple Records as kids
As you can see from the above graph, Dubstep originated in the UK and has had a strong following since the early 2000s. So it stands to reason that the major players at the beginning of the movement would be from the UK, more specifically the town of Croyden in South London.
We begin in Croyden with the first record store to push dubstep, Big Apple Records. It originally opened in 1992 and stocked Progressive House, Techno, and Jungle (D&B). With all the competition in the area, the shop needed to diversify so owner John Kennedy hired his friend Arthur (Artwork) to take over the top floor as his studio. Garage exploded and the shop began to thrive. Around this time Kennedy hired a young DJ by the name of Hatcha to work alongside him, and Hatcha brought with him new customers and radio DJ’s playing on pirate stations.
Big Apple pushed the deeper sides of Garage, one of the precursors to Dubstep, in particular productions by artists like Sounds of the Future, Zed Bias, Wookie, Oris Jay, and El-B. These influences played a huge role in the younger kids coming through the shop, especially two aspiring producers who would go on to be the biggest names in Dub, Benga and Skream.
The proliferation of music production software cannot be overstated when talking about the earlier days of Dubstep. Before Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Ableton, Logic, or Reason, electronic music was made with expensive hardware in studios that were a huge barrier to entry for a lot of aspiring producers. Around this time, DAWs like Fruity Loops (1997) and Reason (2000) became more widespread and allowed anyone to start making music on their computers.
Benga and Skream were in their early teens when they began producing on Fruity Loops and taking inspiration from Hatcha and the scene at Big Apple Records. Benga released his first song on the Big Apple Records label in 2002 at the age of 15.
There was a lot happening in Croyden and the Big Apple shop in the early 2000s. Around this time the term “Dubstep” was coined by Neil Jolliffe (founder of the Tempa label) and publicized in an XLR8 magazine. Skream, Benga, and Digital Mystikz were releasing tunes on the label, and there was a response in the local scene to push the sound. Unfortunately, with the explosion of the internet and digital music, Big Apple’s sales dove and John Kennedy closed up in shop 2004.
We tried to keep it brief and focus on the early, most formative years of Dub. Other notable events were the beginning of The Dubstep Forum in the mid-2000s that grew from a population of a few hundred in 2005 to between 20-30,000 by the end of 2006. The easy access to information that the forum provided was a huge step in the proliferation of the sound along with the Mary Anne Hobbs BBC show “Dubstep Warz.”
Around that time we see Dub becoming more and more accepted and embraced. Benga and Coki’s track “Night” was released in 2008 and is considered one of the most influential Dubstep tracks of all time along with Skream’s “Midnight Request Line.”
After these formative years the metaphorical “snowball” had begun to roll and Dubstep became more mainstream. The amount of important events aren’t nearly as defined or evident, which is why most of this history is focused on the beginning years.
Classic Mixes
With all this discussion of the sound it wouldn’t be proper to end this without providing some examples of old mixes from some legends. Take a listen below while picturing being in the Big Apple store with the hype swirling and the palpable excitement of discovering something new.
Hatcha – Dubstep All Stars Vol 1. (2004)
Benga – BBC 1 Essential Mix (2008)
Skream – BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix (2007)
Caspa – Essential Mix 2009
Rusko – Essential Mix 2008
Editor’s Note: Just a quick note about the current state of Dub in light of the history that was just laid out. I love bass music and heavy womps and wobbles, but I think at some point some producers went too far and took the enjoyable elements of Dubstep (heavy bass, big kicks and claps, ripply mean synths) and took them too far. Now it’s all about “50,000 watts of bass” and who can make the grossest (often worst sounding) sound and blast it in your face. Older Dubstep was much more rhythmic and melodic, something that I think a lot of people would appreciate if it came around again. Hope that wasn’t too hipster sounding. Much love fam.
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