Dubstep has pretty much become the black sheep of urban music, if it’s even possible to get away with calling it that. It’s hard to imagine that it has been almost ten since the earliest dubstep records were being made and the FWD>> club nights were just starting up. Fast forward a few years and the likes of John Peel and Mary Anne Hobbs are playing it on mainstream radio, with acts such as Skream, Rusko, Benga and Coki starting to finally make singles that broke through into the mainstream. But more recently, the dubstep scene has been completely split up, with most people either going into the darker and heavier stuff with producers such as Dub Police and Caspa who are calling it "brostep". Then you’ve got the leftfield sound which is being called "joystep" and is represented by the likes of Joy Orbison, Martyn and Flying Lotus. A 'step' at a time, ay? (Pun intended).
Joy Orbison had one of the biggest club anthems of last year with ‘Hyph Mngo,’ that track had the whole of the dubstep community baffled because they didn’t know what genre it was at first, but it was obvious that it had the foundations of dubstep. The name ‘joystep’ is a dreadful word and I personally hate it with all my being. Using sub-genres, it’s clear that this sound is a lighter, more garage influenced sound over the heavier ‘brostep’ sound of the horror samples and stomach churning bass. This is more intellectual club music all together.
A lot of the dubstep purists also seem to think that the sound has become let down by poor bedroom producers doing remixes of pop songs and uploading them to YouTube and having absolutely no real talent. On the other hand, bedroom producers have also made some key remixes in the scene without even playing one gig. Blogs have also allowed dubstep makers to send songs out for free and this has shaped a different array of talent from the old school dub heads who still play on vinyl records and stick to the more reggae/garage influenced dubstep.
At the moment, the UK underground music scene is being pushed into new areas of progressive dubstep with new talent and other producers cropping up everywhere with similar sounding styles. Pirate station www.rinse.fm is leading the pack, hosting more leftfield dubstep shows with DJs such as Brackles, Braiden and Bok Bok & L-vis 1990.
Flying Lotus is another name in the dubstep scene that is looking to add more to it than just bass and wobbles. He had the BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix of the year in 2008, which was a real shake up on the station, because previous to that it had only been big club room and trance DJs that took the gong home. It’s clear to see that dubstep is one sound and style that has various offsprings and this will probably continue for some time.
There is even a documentary on the producers who are making this new progressive dubstep sound called ‘North/South/East/West’. It was put together by bleep.com, Shaun Bloodworth and Stuart Hammersley and I would highly recommend checking it out, as it looks deep into the new sound of dubstep.
As for the future of dubstep, who knows? But it’s clearly in safe hands with people such as Jakwob, Headhunter, Rustie, Cooly G, FaltyDL, Plastician and Geeneus taking the sounds of early 2000 dub records and adding their unique flavour to it.
The future is bright. The future is dubstep.
Words: Benjamin Hill
Online editing: Joseph 'JP' Patterson
