Rupture pulls together a few interesting strands on the current state of dubstep.

Scene development has to be one of the most frustrating things in existence. The trail from bright and inclusive to hardened shell stifling internal life seems to have become a key feature of music culture in the time I’ve been following it; especially the steps from house to jungle/drum’n'bass to big beat (for anyone who can remember how exciting and all-encompassing that scene was initially) to 2step to dubstep/grime. It’s almost as though the scenes needs the explosion/implosion dynamic to amass the energies required to catalyse these musical leaps. Or is it just a generational thing, from bright and excited to jaded and functional?

Rupture quotes a Kevin Martin/The Bug interview:

Because for me the beauty of dubstep were the producers that I met in the beginning, the fact that they were influenced by a lot of different music; Kode 9, Mala, influenced by jungle, influenced by dub, influenced by classical music, soundtrack music. That’s brilliant, I could hear that on the tracks but now i think that there are new producers that are coming into dubstep and they only listen to dubstep and for me that’s when jungle became drum n bass, that was the problem then.

Talking about the differences between dubstep and grime, in terms of how they’ll be remembered, and how they’re setting themselves up to be remembered, Rupture says:

The subject of a dubstep documentary – any documentary – is ‘dubstep’ itself (the integral objecthood of the docu’s subject); not the content of the scene but only its most obvious, exterior shell, the part of it which has hardened into visibility and no longer moves (maybe the dead part). Once people outside your scene recognize your scene as such, (talking in money terms here) they recognize you as a potential market, something they can invest in or advertise to: you exist.

The hardened shell of the scene? Has it come to this?

Regular collaborator/crew with the likes of Hrvatski, DJ/Rupture, DJ C and Wayne Marshall (Riddim Method), Tony ‘DJ Flack’ Flackett was in the country to catch up with his sister (in Brisbane shooting a movie with Jodie Foster), but found time to carve a swathe through the city’s music scene playing at both radio stations and nights like Void and Wamp Wamp.

(Paul Gough/Pimmon and Dan Zilber give Flack some love)

(Eli freaks for Sub Bass Snarl’s set)

Here’s Flack’s drop-dead dubstep bounce mix from Void. Wish I was there. I ended up having to make do with his (killer) live set on FBI as my life was exploding with busyness at the time. Check Flack’s comprehensive post-tour report here.

Woebot excises Todd Terry from his once upon a time ‘Todd Is God’ mythology. It’s a good read if you’re interested in tracking back through the roots of house music.

This cult of Todd, with its apparently very shallow roots, managed to blind me to the exact nature of his work. Even when I had a few good examples of his stuff (of the discs below I’ve had Royal House’s “Yeah Buddy”, “To the Batmobile Let’s Go”, the Static and Tech Nine singles, and “Bounce” and “Daylite” for well over a decade) I was unable to grasp the significance of Todd’s work, and to get a handle on him. Put simply, the whole UK Hardcore continuum probably owes more to Todd than anyone else. If the equation of Hardcore was House multiplied by Hip-Hop, then Mr. Terry had done his sums years before anyone in Britain.

I like Simon Reynolds’ take on Terry’s work:

In the late Eighties and early Nineties, it’s almost like he’s barely conscious of his own creative issue, just poops the stuff out and pockets the cash. What I love about the Royal House stuff especially is how it’s at once slammin’ and ethereal. On “Party People” and other early Terry tunes, the production has a curious cavernous, clanking quality, making you feel like you’re in a bunker-like space full of sound-reflections and muffled noise. Whether deliberate or a by-product of lo-fi studio conditions/fast-money-music wack ‘em out carelessness, the effect of playing them in a club must have been to double the “in the club” feel. It’s like they’ve been pre-vibed.

Silver Bone Tone – Bendy
Funkedub vs Messian Dread – Rockers Dub
Moving Ninja – Dwaer
Jamie Lloyd – You and I
Tony Allen – Moyege (Mark Ernestus Mix)
Round 3 feat. PaulSt Hilaire – Acting Crazy
Sub Version feat. Paul St Hilaire – The Light
Paul St Hilaire – Fortunate
Rantoboko feat. Promoe & Timbuktu – I Love Music
Real Elements – Amazing
Stoopfresh – Knock the Breath
Mashy P – All Sytems Go
Kathy Diamond – The Moment
Georgia Anne Muldrow – Leroy
Pattie Blingh & The Akembula 5 – Reallytho
Victor X-Ray – Half Step in Hell
Francis Plagne – A Broken Tale
Earl Gray – Only Just Met You
Blue King Brown – Comin Through
Rootdown System – Chant at Dusk
Silver Bone Tone – You Want To
Luminarsi – Brainfreeze Dub
MRK1 feat Sizzla – I Got To
Lump – Dub Under

This thing’s been on three years now. First post appeared in July 2004 – fortunegrey.blogspot.com at the time (I transferred the posts to this standalone domain a while later, but lost all the early comments). It goes up and down, but just when I think it’s lost steam I’ll have another burst of energy for it. Big thanks to people reading, it’s great getting a bit of feedback/comments from time to time.

To justify the post, here’s a mix from North Carolina DJ Misty Touch. Delicious disco and old school… (think everything from Model 500, Fresh and Warp9 to Barrabas, Run DMC and Lonnie Liston Smith, with plenty of Atmosfear, Visage and Konk for good measure).