OK, I don't want to go in too hard on Benjamin Hill who wrote 'The Future Is Bright, But Is The Future Dubstep?' Commenters on the article have already rightly picked him up on inaccuracies like suggesting Dub Police is a producer (it's a label), that dubstep is “urban music” (I thought we were past dodgy racial euphemisms like that, and even if you were to take it literally, dubstep was born in the suburbs), that Flying Lotus and Rustie make dubstep (they just don't) etc etc. Benjamin is young and he'll either learn from the experience the value of doing a bit of basic research before offering up your opinions online, or he won't. If he does, maybe there's a future for him in the glittering, lucrative and highly-sexed world of writing about electronic music – if not, I dunno, maybe he can go into advertising or something. Whatever.
But I do think it's worth having a look at the central thrust of his argument, because it's something that bothers a lot of people – that thrust being an attempt to polarise dubstep into its harder and softer sides, implying that there is some sort of split going on. He characterised these polar opposites as “brostep” and “joystep”, the former a pisstakey name for the hardest, most wilfully stupid and punky dubstep sounds which does at least have some currency inasmuch it's bandied about pejoratively on music forums and suchlike, the latter a completely made-up term for a random selection of cheery club music which thankfully nobody bar Benjamin has ever used outside the offices of SuperSuper magazine.
The problem with any attempts at dividing whole cultures into dualities like this is that they are almost invariably bollocks. Far more established writers than Benjamin have attempted the same thing with dubstep and fallen flat on their faces, so he can at least take some comfort in knowing that he's not alone. The point being that it is not about hard vs soft or ravey vs headphone listening or instinctual vs intellectual (yeah, the moment someone starts referring to one strain of dance music as “more intelligent”, you know it's time to tune out), but about a massive and multifarious spread of sounds that orbit this strange attractor called “dubstep” that has established itself over something in the region of a decade.
For sure there are records and DJs and producers whose sound is extreme to one degree or another and who may even be in the process of creating a variant that will actually split off into some new genre. Rusko, the cheeky, cheery producer that serious musos love to hate, whose lairy, gurning colour-saturated riffs are as based in his love of skate-punk as in anything to do with dub, garage or other club forms is way over on one side, and with every step seems to be creating a kind of electro-trash style all of his own.
Rusko's old mucker Caspa, who is regularly slated for being about the kind of buzz-saw synth noise that people characterise as “brostep” seems lately to be more about sharp, clean, booty-shaking hip hop influences (see his remixes of Kid Sister and Ludacris). South Londoners Coki (of Digital Mystikz) and Cotti are increasingly pioneering a dense and churning ultra-tough sound that incorporates dancehall and grime influences (check out their recent mixes of tracks by the brilliant Brummie grime/reggae vocalist Badness). Bristol's Joker is making a massive success from a sound which also has huge grime influences but turns them into huge, anthemic synth-funk tracks, full of electric melodies and manic energy. And just wait 'til you hear what St Louis Missouri producer Tekfro is creating in collaboration with ghettotech legend DJ Assault...
All of the above are making tracks that are as tough as you like, but could you bracket them all together as “brostep”? No, no more than you could chuck house producer like Cooly G together with a psychedelic hip hopper like Flying Lotus and call it all “joystep”. Loads of music at the hardest end of dubstep is stimulating the most sonic innovation and excitement, just as loads of the more cheery, lighter-weight stuff can be formulaic and empty. It just doesn't work to suggest that aggro = dumb, or that friendly = sophisticated. It's lazy, and it takes us back to the bad old days of – God help us - “intelligent drum & bass”.
But there IS innovation in the less aggressive side of dubstep too. Of course there is – Joy Orbison is busy conquering the whole dance world one lush, sexy track at a time and rightly so. Brit-in-Berlin Scuba has just released his second album of moody, brooding high-tech soundscapes and it's like the soundtrack to the best shadowy sci-fi noir film never made. Cosmically-inclined north London crew LHF are finally about to start releasing the massive library of tracks they've been building up over the last few years that sound like Sun Ra setting up a pirate radio station in a post-global-warming tropical swamp London.
And right in the middle of it all, is there an obvious split? Like fuck is there. Go to any of the heartland dubstep nights, to DMZ or FWD>> or the Rinse nights at Matter, or to global outposts like NYC's Dub War or Berlin's Sub:Stance and you will most likely hear the full range from brain-tickling to skull-crushing, and a dozen different strains that are neither or both or something else altogether. Dubstep's biggest artist Skream can do everything from retro-rave tracks to pop anthems to psychedelic creepy-crawlers, and that's before breakfast. Hatcha, Untold, Mumdance are currently going right back to the genre's blurred shared origins with grime and creating old-new rhythmic templates to play with... it goes on, and on...
You don't need to create spurious micro-genre names, and you don't need to rope in vaguely connected artists from other genres, to state the weepingly obvious, which is that dubstep is, like, really diverse, man. I've just been involved in compiling a compilation for Ministry of Sound, their first explicitly dubstep mix, and it has been a real eye opener in just how diverse dubstep can be while remaining... um... dubstep. Some will, invariably, say that this compilation is the death of dubstep, but then those same people have probably been saying that each new variant on the sound, or each new influx of fans is the death of dubstep pretty much since the term was first used.
But dubstep has now been around since around 1999 as a sound, and around 2002 as a name, and it's big enough and old enough and ugly enough to take care of itself thankyou. It's been round the houses, and it is – to use Skream's excellent term - “mongrel music”; it's genetically tough because it's genetically diverse, and it can handle a bit more diversity yet. I hate predictions, and I'm no gambler, so I won't go so far as to say anything like Benjamin's conclusion that “the future's dubstep” - but with the Ministry compilation due, with TWO Get Darker compilations currently in the iTunes dance top ten, with Rusko producing MIA, with Digital Mystikz astounding 'Return II Space' triple vinyl pack coming up, with Skream, Benga, Magnetic Man, Joker and many more bringing out big albums this year, I am more than happy to go out on a limb and say that the PRESENT very much is dubstep.
Words: Joe Muggs
Online editing: Joseph 'JP' Patterson
