Reaction
There is something crucial about attaching the visual to music. By its very nature, music insists upon an influx of images into one’s mind, whether because of its lyrics, its sound, or its association with past experience. Menomena’s “INTIL” is so profoundly effective in drawing out past solemnity that my attachment to the song has become somewhat masochistic; Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks” epitomises my two Roses experiences; Parts and Labor’s “Nowhere’s Nigh”, my becoming editor of this humble magazine. I fundamentally believe that music strips us to our barest bones, and in doing so makes us significantly more susceptible to every other aspect of culture: the aesthetic that is art, the visual that is film, the intellectual that is politics, the imaginative that is literature. There is no greater relationship than between that which one sees and that which one hears – as Dan Cave, too, has recognised in this issue.
If this is the case, therefore, then music videos are significantly more important than people give them credit for. They are an under-appreciated art form, often assuming the appearance of a legitimate short films in their own right, as opposed to simply a music video – a term that inspires thoughts of Ke$ha’s “Tic Toc” or Nelly’s “Tip-Drill”. They display another facet of the artists’ creative mindsets, and give us another insight into what the song means, despite an often seemingly unconnected subject matter. In turn, they further an emotional connection with the music due to a visual sincerity, an ability to articulate the music in a way that we cannot. This is a brief exploration – too brief, for such a massive topic – into some of the best music videos in each area.
The Cast:
More and more credible comedians and actors are becoming involved in these films. In some cases, it acts to imbue the pieces with a very genuine emotion: Kristen Bell of Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame, for example, depicts a woman broken-hearted over the death of a deformed creature in Yeasayer’s “Madder Red“, keen to do so because of her association with PETA. You’ll have to go far to top The New Pornographers’ most recent video, however, which has a list of cameos as long as my arm. An accompaniment to the track “Moves”, it is a mock film trailer, overspilling with comedic actors, such as Paul Rudd, Bill Hader and Kevin Corrigan, and musicians such as The Mountain Goats’ Jon Wurster and Ted Leo of Ted Leo and The Pharmacists. Recognisable individuals are not necessary for a film – indeed, in many cases unknown actors are much more effective – but their roles often possess an underlying tongue-in-cheek prod at themselves. And it’s just really cool.
The Concept:
There are limitless music videos that conceptualise the music in a unique way, often treading on the heels of the bizarre and seemingly unconnected. Yet one cannot help but be drawn to the simplicity of such concepts as The Morning Benders’ “Promises”. Its lyric “I can’t help thinking we grow up too fast / I know, I know, I know that this won’t last / A second longer than it has to” is the foundation upon which the video is based. As the story of two kids in an adult, Bonny-and-Clyde-like relationship, the video ends on a pretty dark note – though I shan’t go into the details of the film. The concept is solid because of the idea of tapping into emotions that children don’t have. Everything addressed within the video is a symptom of adulthood – alcoholism, murder, sex – and yet this is depicted with a disturbing sincerity which accords with the theme of the lyrics. It is an accessible concept, easy to understand, and all the more potent for it.
The Director:
Spike Jonze directed The Arcade Fire’s music video for the eponymous track of their third studio album, The Suburbs. He’s known for having directed Being John Malkovich and Where The Wild Things Are, the latter being the first time he worked with the band. Jonze co-wrote this film, the dystopian story of a group of kids caught in a military-run suburban area, with lead singer Win Butler, using kids who hadn’t acted before from the local area to portray a grittier, more believable atmosphere. Theories have been bandied about no end regarding the video, which is somewhat ambiguous in its presentation of these kids. If anything can be classed as a short film, this is it. It has, fittingly, since been released as a half-hour short, and while I’m keen to see it, there is a lot to be said for the ambiguity and the questions that the music video alone raises. It’s moving stuff, enhanced by the plausibility of the change in group dynamic that we see them undergo, something which must owe to Jonze’ s favour for semi-improvisation. In few other cases has a music video altered my experience so strongly of listening to a song, so it is worth coming to understand it from your own perspective, before Jonze warps your view with his chilling vision.
The ending:
Liars produced an incredibly haunting track in the form of “Scissor“, and it is a sentiment paralleled in the discomfort of its video. The ending, a denouement after the track itself has ended, falls into the uncomfortable realm of being simultaneously laughable and agonisingly poignant. Again, to go into exactly what happens would cheapen it for you – I want nothing more than for you to be as stunned as I was. Needless to say, rocks are involved. Lots of rocks. The significance of the conclusion is not precisely in what happens, but in its dramatic impact. It is a display of the grotesque: an example of the blurring of the line between humour and suffering. As Blaise Pascal once said, “Nothing produces laughter more than a surprising disproportion between that which one expects and that which one sees”. One may laugh at the absurdity of the conclusion, but the brutality of the events up to that point and the haunting accompaniment of the song render it all the more resonant long after having watched it.
The Performance:
To say that the best music videos are simply those that employ a cast and conceptualise the music in an obscure way would be incorrect. There is something marvellously simple about watching a band simply play music. The Gaslight Anthem’s “Great Expectations“ does exactly that, in an environment that pays testament to the novel from which it got its name. There is a lot to be said for watching a band invest themselves in a song without the distraction of other elements. Sometimes the band simply has to go back to basics, and this can be impressive enough.
Cloud
Essentially, the Amazon Cloud Drive is a huge dumping ground for whatever pieces of data the user chooses to upload onto it; a dumping ground that is eminently accessible and easy to use, making it a far less complicated task to organise the reams of data flooding through our internet-connected devices by consolidating all that information in one place. Just imagine: you upload a picture of your favourite band onto your laptop at home; on the train you download their album via your mobile; then you are able to access the lot on a friend’s laptop later without the hassle of syncing to ultimately reach the same end: all your information in the same place. The possibilities are potentially endless.
However, it is the possibilities within my outlined scenario that are currently causing ripples of concern to spread throughout the blogosphere, as a result of the combined ire of the four major record companies (including Sony Music Entertainment and EMI). Rumours of a possible fee for users who attempt to upload music onto the Amazon Cloud Drive have been met with anger from the users of the Cloud. Fortunately in this case, rumours are exactly that. What really has the recording companies het up is the issue of licensing, and whether the current licensing that Amazon has with Sony et al truly covers the Cloud drive’s system of usage; a system that the Big Four are claiming would essentially make it a streaming device. So, although the charge won’t really be passed down to us as music consumers, it would mean grief for Amazon, as under their current licensing agreement streaming devices are strictly prohibited. At first glance then, it looks like recording companies like Sony are trying to make a quick buck on an innovative system that could revolutionise the way we store data. ‘Honestly’, most of us will ask ourselves, ‘who really cares what label you’re giving something this amazing?’ In the most simple of terms, it once again boils down to: music companies bad, cloud-users good.
However, things aren’t really that black and white. That the Amazon Cloud Drive can’t be clearly categorised as either a storage device or a streaming device poses a huge dilemma. Now, the problems associated with it being the latter encapsulate issues that have been plaguing the music industry as a whole since the earliest days of the internet, and quite possibly even before then, issues that are quite handily summed up in one word: piracy. File-sharing is the thorn in the backside of an industry that has seen a steady decrease in revenue over the years, as more and more people turn to illegal downloading and music conversion websites that take advantage of the plethora of free music available online. Although the global digital music market is estimated at a total value of $4.6 billion as of 2010, an increase of more than 1000% since 1994, over the same period the global recorded music industry (a measure of total revenues, including digital and physical) has shown a 31% decrease in profits; the $15.9 billion that was calculated as 2010’s global recorded music revenue, although a huge figure to most of us, still puts it firmly below the $30-40 billion profits reported less than a decade ago. No wonder then that the music industry is so nervous about the Cloud Drive. With both Google and Apple soon to release their own versions of the Cloud, it could possibly be yet another nail in the coffin of an industry that has found itself waning in the face of self promoted artists, independently produced singles, and a decline in the popularity of albums. With the shape of music changing at an ever increasing rate, there is the very real possibility that the traditional role of the music company could quite soon be defunct. What it really comes down to is the fact that if consumers could store their illegally download music and access it anywhere, why would they want to pay for any music at all?
Either way, companies like Sony are not going to go quietly. They are currently in the midst of a legal battle whose outcome could have huge implications for the future of the Cloud Drive. Claiming that their current licensing does not include the distribution of music via cloud, Sony is demanding that Amazon pay up or shut down. In response, quoted from an interview with director of music at Amazon, Craig Pape told The New York Times that, “We don’t need a license to store music; the functionality is the same as an external hard drive.” Whether or not his argument will persuade a judge remains to be seen, but it is clear that regardless of any future ruling, the face of music is once more changing. The only question is can the industry machine keep up.
Shaffi Batchelor
Pollution
A quick browse of the iTunes top singles leaves me feeling a mixture of both annoyance and nausea – a smattering of club-focused synth “anthems” next to a few singer-songwriters, polished more for the media than the music. It all seems so similar and yet there’s seemingly no end to its popularity. But it’s not just the homogenous content that puts me off, the whole sordid system is a corruption of all that we should value. Let me go into exactly why pop music does my head in.
- Firstly, the barrage of plays it gets. Waking up to the radio with the same songs that were repeated endlessly in the club the night before is not enjoyable. Hungover or otherwise.
- I’m clearly in the minority with my distaste for the flood of factory-fresh spam singles, and I’m left to ponder how, when we live in an age of music where we couldn’t get much closer to the criteria of perfect information, does this happen. The internet has produced a market which demands the most while expecting to pay the least, and thanks to the threat of illegal downloading continues to do so. This generally means we have loads more music available to us than a decade ago, and it’s right at our fingertips.
- Something’s not quite clicking, though. We have services such as Spotify attempting to compete with consumers’ expectations, but recently even they have had to cut back the extent of their free service due to an impossible business plan. Those who are against piracy would say that the illegal side of things only makes the situation worse; taking more money away from the industry and giving rise to its substitutes, such as DVDs and games. But the free sharing and distribution of music – legal or illegal – has lead to many success stories that would never have had the opportunity before the World Wide Web.
- And who is it snaps up these overnight sensations to take them to stardom and beyond? Chances are it’ll be one of the big four labels: Sony, EMI, WMG and UMG. These labels, with their huge influence and hundreds of satellite labels under their wing, know a thing or two about turning hype into cash. If the winner of the last X Factor isn’t immediately splashed over the majority of magazines, they will be after the companies have spent some of their huge advertising budgets. Their choice cocktail of rap-dubstep-acoustic-pop will be all over the airwaves in no time.
-
I lament our past attitude. Go back a few decades and the wider media (outside dedicated music mags) had little-to-no influence on what made it on to the airwaves and into people’s lives. There was no Spotify or iTunes to download tracks instantly from, music was harder to get hold of and – dare I say it – more sacred. The Boat That Rocked, a light-hearted and rather nostalgic take on life in a pirate radio ship in the 60s, does a great job of illustrating just how crucial the radio was when it came to people hearing new music. It states 25 million people in the UK per day as listening figures, twice that of current Radio One reach. Have we, by making music available everywhere, also reduced its value in people’s eyes? My example may be a dated one, but in the last 50 years have we been losing some of the magic of music?
More annoyingly still, this doesn’t lead me much closer to my first question: why the variety of music available is not reflected in the charts. Maybe it’s the extra role the media plays in a musician’s career, or maybe it’s just a phase every generation goes through, and soon we’ll all be listening to Americana-trance music, trying to remember what came before. But what seem to have changed the most are people’s attitudes to what priority music takes. You’re unlikely to sit down with a Lady Gaga album, listen to it from start to finish with your full attention, basking in its subtlety. What you might do is whack it on, down a few vodka cokes and get your groove on. Sure, you might pay attention for a two-and-a-half minute supercharged pop ballad with that rapper what’s going out with the one from Dancing On Ice, but a whole album? Think when the last time was that you did nothing but listen to 40 minutes of someone’s thoughts, emotions and creative outpourings, all crammed into verse and a chorus. As far as I’m concerned, it probably wasn’t recently enough.
Rory Foster
Rory Foster’s The Nonsensical to the Commercial
The BBC’s “sound of” feature occurs every year around the same time. It is the BBC’s attempt at guessing what new bands will ‘make it’ in the coming year, and it’s normally able to push a few of its 5 shortlisted artists into the limelight. However, two artists in particular are giving the public a greater glimpse of what the so-called ‘post-dubstep’ genre is and where it’s going.
The two of particular interest in this top 5 are James Blake and Jamie Woon. Both young London-based producers come singer-songwriters, and both taking sounds grounded in dubstep and twisting them further than other musicians have ever tried. But many critics have had difficulty in covering these artists, due in part to the categorisation of their music. A lot of people consider the phrase ‘post-dubstep’ ill-fitting or just incorrect. So why have some latched onto this term, while others detest it?
You might have guessed from the name, the genre owes a fair bit to dubstep. Not the sort that has boomed in popularity over the last year or so in clubs; real dubstep goes back to artists such as Skream, Scuba and Kode9. Their attempts to fuse two-step garage with techno and drum and bass, resulting in around 135 to 140 beats-per minute, have gone on to not only influence the people who are pushing their ideas forward, but to also help fund them; all of the above artists now run labels showcasing some of the best upcoming London beatmakers, such as Mount Kimbie and Darkstar.
The first producer that can be seen as the bedrock of the ‘post dubstep’ sound is Will Bevan, a.k.a Burial. His mercury-nominated album, ‘Untrue’, released on the Kode9-run Hyperdub label in 2007, was born from a deep-city melancholy that that shapes a lot of what post-dubstep is about. The chopped-up vocal samples are choked with emotion, yet you can barely make out the words, the beat shuffling them on before you can grasp them. This sound is the Yin to J Dilla’s yang, the sunny west-coast strips replaced with the potholed alleys of midnight London. Flying Lotus, a popular hip-hop beatmaker based in LA, said of Burial’s music in an interview with Giles Peterson, that “it’s not a club record, it’s the record you listen to when you’re still awake at 4am with your headphones on.”
But how does this relate to Woon and Blake? Both known best for their singing rather than their sampling, Woon is more connected to post-dubstep through fortune than his influences. The popularity of bands such as The xx has helped to set the scene for the kind of minimalist pop Woon’s music is turning towards. The xx are nevertheless a great example of this minimalist sound appealing to a much wider crowd than one might expect. Following Mumford and Sons’ technique of release album/ wait a year/ album peaks at no.3 in the UK, The xx’s eponymous debut peaked at the same position 11 months after it was released, the week following its mercury music prize win.
Blake on the other hand is currently riding two different waves of success. The first of these is the avalanche of critical acclaim from the blogosphere for his consistent progression and quality over the space of 4EPs he released in little over a year. He gained quite a following before he even started singing properly – the second bout of success. His most famous release to date is his cover of Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist’s ‘Limit to your Love’, stripped down to little more than a trembling baseline that will make your house quake. To further his crossing into more popular tastes, his just-released album is influenced more by Joni Mitchell and Bon Iver than Burial. Blake’s classical piano training rather than knowledge of producing software allowing for a fantastic rethink of the 70s original.
But all this is criticism of pigeon-holing music rather than listening to it is ironic since that’s what I am trying to do with Blake and his contemporaries. After conversing with a more musically-informed friend at 4am over the exact intricacies of “post-dubstep”, we came to the conclusion that it is hilariously ambitious to attempt a full account in a page. What I’ve offered then is a sort of pot-holed discography of the torrent of music coming out of London and what impact it continues to have on the commercial surface in the form of Woon, Blake, and a few others. What for the rest of 2011? Probably a Mercury Music Prize nomination for both, maybe a win for Blake, then as long as he can force his way past the dangerous levels of anticipation that will no-doubt arise, maybe another album that critics can spend hours categorising rather than appreciating.
The Importance of a DJ
One of the questions I get asked the most is ‘what is the point of a DJ? Can’t iTunes do the same job?’ There is a huge community of music aficionados who despise modern disk jockeys; I’ll try to explain why the world needs DJs and what we actually do.
I have been DJ-ing since I was about 16 years old, just in my bedroom with two CD players and Dad’s old CD collection; never before had ‘Status Quo’ been mixed so successfully with ‘Blue’. When I grew up, I’d ask for various bits and pieces of equipment for birthdays and Christmas. By the time I was 18, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself some vinyl turntables and 50 vinyl records from ebay. Crucially however, at this time I was more interested in creating my own beats and tracks. I nabbed some studio software from school and went about becoming the next Tiesto. I therefore know just how hard it is to become a respected DJ and how we work.
Back in the day, DJs would use 2 vinyl turntables and a mixer, allowing fade between songs. Even fading two songs together from vinyl records is an incredible challenge – anyone who thinks otherwise is more than welcome to visit F block at Barbara Scott Court and have a try! DJ-ing is in many respects, an art form. The trouble is, today there are easier solutions. Visit any club in York (with the exception of the ‘Breaks Society’ shift in Tokyo) and you will find CD players with a mixer that will automatically match the speeds of the two songs so you can easily mix them together. Additionally, it’s easy to obtain software from the Internet that will automatically mix MP3s into each other with nothing but a laptop. This, as far as I’m concerned, is hard to justify as being a step above the iTunes ‘auto mix’ function.
For years DJ-ing has been controversial; Deadmau5 shot to fame back in 2008 when in an interview he wrote “you need them [DJs] but they’re fucking cunts.” Ironically it was these very DJs who were directly responsible for his rise to fame in the following years. Even so, he said:
“It puts me to fucking sleep to be quite honest, I don’t really see the technical merit in playing two songs at the same speed together and it bores me to fucking tears and hopefully with all due respect to the DJ type that will fucking go the way of the dinosaur I’d like them to dis-a-fucking-pear.”
Joel himself ‘creates’ his tracks live using synthesizers, keyboards and all sorts of software. He therefore can’t understand why people would act as a glorified iTunes. In many respects I agree with him, what is the point of standing there pressing play and pause and occasionally mixing two songs together?
The most important function of any DJ (and the easiest way to tell whether a DJ is any good) is song selection. There is an agreed code amongst DJs that our job is to get women on the dance floor and then keep them there. When girls are dancing the lads will follow which means people are buying drinks and having a good time. Everybody’s happy. If you’ve ever requested a song when the dance floor is packed don’t be surprised if the DJ either doesn’t play it or plays it at the end of the night in order to keep people dancing. Don’t be offended: we spend hours planning our sets to be full of tracks and acapellas that work well with each other. This leads to a classic question DJs face from revelers, “When are you going to play something good?”
I was playing a block party the other night with 3 distinct groups of dancers on the floor: the mainstream top 40 crowd; the indie crowd; and the d’n’b/dubstep crew. How does a DJ choose one song to appease everybody? Impossible. You can’t be popular with all crowds unless it’s a themed night. In this case, I played to whatever the biggest crowd happened to be and tried (with varying degrees of success) a Bob Marley dubstep live remix.
Ultimately, it’s hard to judge DJs as there is such variety amongst us. Some will mix/mash up tunes live; others will simply let one song finish and the other one start. To me, the latter is not much of an art (especially if the DJ has poor song selection skills). Others will strive to create a live show atmosphere (Chase and Status etc.).
Either way, the world needs DJs to judge the crowd and choose the music. Chart artists rely on DJs playing their songs to packed dance floors. Whilst all DJs have their pros and cons, if you ever fancy listening to a truly horrendous one, take a visit to the Willow from about 12.00 am onwards. Vudu has some who are surprisingly talented, as does Tokyo. Always look out for Break Society events as they often feature some unique individualss. And when you’re next out having a night of drunken debauchery, spare a thought for the DJ who has been standing there for hours, sacrificed a night out and spent ages perfecting a set list, all to give you guys a good time!
Ali Paul on The Price of a Ticket
Eden wakes up to his manager rapping on the hotel door. “Half an hour till bus call – you better have rested your voice last night.” His manager is greeted by unerring silence. More frantic knocking commences. “I’ll get a taxi,” he grumpily responds. “There’s no way I’ll be ready in half an hour”. Eden lets his eyes creep across the room: TV left on with ‘Loose Women’ currently providing entertainment; plastic tumblers scattered across the floor; towels strewn everywhere – one totally soaked in what seems to be a combination of red wine and coffee granules; bed sheets on the floor; minibar relieved of its stock, other than a lonely bottle of Britvic orange juice. “What the hell happened in here last night?” he muses. His thoughts backtrack to last night’s gig.
After the management had taxied it back to their respective hotels, record label staff had been driven back to London and the crew had disappeared onto their tour bus, the party swung into action. The staging, lighting, catering equipment and musical gear was flight-cased and en route to the next venue, and the only remaining evidence of the show was the five band members, five newly acquired ‘friends’ of the band, two of the promoter’s employees (who were supposedly meant to ‘look after’ them) and a smattering of security guards at the venue’s various fire exits. All of the uneaten food from the rider was thrown to the side of the dressing room to make space for the abundance of vodka, beer and wine laid on for the night and, after an intensive two hours’ drinking, they left the remnants of the party for the venue’s cleaners to tidy up. A club called Roxy was the destination for the band and their mini entourage. The taxis were waiting.
From an outside perspective, the typical rock star lifestyle evinces a culture of indulgence and instant gratification. The cumulative financial costs of satisfying such a lifestyle and putting on a full-scale production every night are inevitably high. Moreover, the eventual ticket price charged to the customer is always artificially inflated, due to the layers of commission charged by each separate ticketing outlet, and the various promoters’ and agents’ fees. Financial costs aside, it is important to consider the environmental burden of putting on a full-scale tour and how this is amplified by the disposable lifestyle adopted by the touring party.
On a tour of any size, travel is the first cost to be budgeted, and this clearly has a direct impact on the environment. On a 20 day tour visiting the major UK cities and towns, for example, a band and their crew will cover an average total of 3500 miles per vehicle. Consider, therefore, how many miles are covered by the multitude of bands and artists embarking on US and worldwide tours. These larger scale tours have to incorporate air, road and sea into their travel schedules and the overall carbon footprint is considerable. Another inevitability of touring is the perpetual use of hotels. Doing a significant amount of environmental damage on their own, the system of a quick guest turnover and mass washing of bed linen, towels and crockery certainly isn’t frugal in its use of energy. Other environmental concerns include the mobile catering trucks which follow large-scale Eden wakes up to his manager rapping on the hotel door. “Half an hour till bus call – you better have rested your voice last night.” His manager is greeted by unerring silence. More frantic knocking commences. “I’ll get a taxi,” he grumpily responds. “There’s no way I’ll be ready in half an hour”. Eden lets his eyes creep across the room: TV left on with ‘Loose Women’ currently providing entertainment; plastic tumblers scattered across the floor; towels strewn everywhere – one totally soaked in what seems to be a combination of red wine and coffee granules; bed sheets on the floor; minibar relieved of its stock, other than a lonely bottle of Britvic orange juice. “What the hell happened in here last night?” he muses. His thoughts backtrack to last night’s gig.
After the management had taxied it back to their respective hotels, record label staff had been driven back to London and the crew had disappeared onto their tour bus, the party swung into action. The staging, lighting, catering equipment and musical gear was flight-cased and en route to the next venue, and the only remaining evidence of the show was the five band members, five newly acquired ‘friends’ of the band, two of the promoter’s employees (who were supposedly meant to ‘look after’ them) and a smattering of security guards at the venue’s various fire exits. All of the uneaten food from the rider was thrown to the side of the dressing room to make space for the abundance of vodka, beer and wine laid on for the night and, after an intensive two hours’ drinking, they left the remnants of the party for the venue’s cleaners to tidy up. A club called Roxy was the destination for the band and their mini entourage. The taxis were waiting.
From an outside perspective, the typical rock star lifestyle evinces a culture of indulgence and instant gratification. The cumulative financial costs of satisfying such a lifestyle and putting on a full-scale production every night are inevitably high. Moreover, the eventual ticket price charged to the customer is always artificially inflated, due to the layers of commission charged by each separate ticketing outlet, and the various promoters’ and agents’ fees. Financial costs aside, it is important to consider the environmental burden of putting on a full-scale tour and how this is amplified by the disposable lifestyle adopted by the touring party.
On a tour of any size, travel is the first cost to be budgeted, and this clearly has a direct impact on the environment. On a 20 day tour visiting the major UK cities and towns, for example, a band and their crew will cover an average total of 3500 miles per vehicle. Consider, therefore, how many miles are covered by the multitude of bands and artists embarking on US and worldwide tours. These larger scale tours have to incorporate air, road and sea into their travel schedules and the overall carbon footprint is considerable. Another inevitability of touring is the perpetual use of hotels. Doing a significant amount of environmental damage on their own, the system of a quick guest turnover and mass washing of bed linen, towels and crockery certainly isn’t frugal in its use of energy. Other environmental concerns include the mobile catering trucks which follow large-scale
Dubstep: The Internet’s First Child
Dubstep, let’s face it, sounds like a monster with tourettes having an epileptic fit. Upon its creation it was completely alien to anything anyone had heard before, and still mostly only attracts the male half of the population. So, how has it achieved such a wide fan base and (after being a little diluted) pretty impressive mainstream chart success? The answer is: the internet.
Diluted Grime, admittedly, broke into mainstream just before Dubstep, but with Grime’s similarities to Hip Hop, it was really more of an internet guinea pig rather than a fully-fledged first child. After all, once Dizzee Rascal dropped the aggressive atmosphere, violent lyrics and occasional bass line, he became about as grimey as B.O.B in “Magic”. But with freestyles and “beef” being uploaded by unknowns in the Grime scene every day, it really hammered home the influential power of the internet for new artists, and new genres. Quickly, websites dedicated to Dubstep emerged (such as Dubstep forum and DarksideRiddem.com) which greatly increased Dubstep’s exposure, and the amount of traffic these sites received. For instance, on YouTube, UKFDubstep is the 46th most subscribed to channel in the whole world of all time, 9th most subscribed to channel of all time in the UK, and 2nd most subscribed music channel in the UK.
Part of the secret of success with these websites, and with Dubstep as a whole (before 2009), was that any fans that did either stumble across them, or actively sought them out, were charmed by the idea of being one of a few who were musically superior enough to appreciate it. We all know the warm feeling you get when you realise you’re part of an elite group. The instant friendships that formed from having Dubstep in common spread new tracks and artists around even faster, and much of that was before Facebook; with the advent of the social networking site, things moved even quicker.
However, the most influential way in which Dubstep was adapted and influenced by the internet was the surge of amateur electronic musicians creating their own takes on the genre. With music software such as Fruity Loops and Reason becoming easily available, and easier to use, anyone interested in music could have a crack at it themselves. Given that Dubstep was the new genre bouncing around the internet at the time, forums for these software sites were swamped by in-depth threads on how to make, for instance, the perfect “Dubstep wobble” or the perfect build up to a bass drop. Dubstep remixes of popular songs popped up, and still do, in the hundreds per week on YouTube, which of course led to a more open attitude to music as a whole, but also widened the genre so much it almost became indefinable. The line between Dubstep and Drum and Bass was already boiling down to a difference in tempo. Foreign Beggars successfully demolished the boundary with Grime, and the popularity of these pop remixes is now starting to encourage pop artists to have a Dubstep dabble themselves as part of the dance revolution (check out Britney Spears’ Hold It Against Me – no really, check it out).
So here we are today, with the first child of the internet already breeding with every other genre it lays eyes on. Some of the most obscure musical styles are emerging as a result of this wholly modern phenomenon, and it is testament to the artisitc limitlessness of music. My prediction is that with so many amateur musicians around on music sharing sites like YouTube and Soundcloud (the next MySpace) new genres are going to come thick and fast, and even more alien. Personally, I can’t wait.
