Tomorrow's Quick cover story focuses on dubstep, a electronic-music genre that started in London but in recent years has spread, mostly via the Internet, to almost every major U.S. city. Our very own Dallas has two regular dubstep events.
Dub Assembly -- spearheaded by Mundo and Lifted MC, left -- celebrates its second anniversary on Saturday with a bash at the Green Elephant. Absinthe Lounge has also hosted a monthly for the past year or so, courtesy of the local Dub Commission crew. (Shout out to Dragonman for answering my questions so quickly.)
The music can really be anything the producer wants -- hip-hop influenced, grime influenced, techy, sci-fi, reggae -- as long as it's laced with a deep, "nasty," as Mundo likes to say, sub-bass.
The story didn't delve into any influential dubstep artists. But Joe Nice, a Balitmore DJ who's often referred to as dubstep's American ambassador, was kind enough to list 10 for me, for folks who want to learn more.
Here they are in chronological order, starting from dubstep's beginnings in South London around the turn of the millennium:
1. Horsepower. Joe says: "They were originally three producers, then there was two. They were really credited with being the first producers and production crew to really create the sound that we now call dubstep. It had a UK garage sort of feel to it. But the basslines were a little bit deeper and they were clearly dub-influenced. I guess that's part of the reason that it was called dub-step."
3. Skream. "Along comes a 14 year-old-kid named Skream. And he had another friend named Benga who was also doing production at the time, too. Both of them are still very active in the scene now. They started making a lot of the early dubstep that's kind of linked to what you hear now. It comes from those early days, back in 2001, 2002."
4. Digital Mystikz. "Mid- to late-2003, along comes Digital Mystikz and another producer in that crew named Loefah. Their sound was a completely different shift in dubstep. They brought a whole lot more of dub and dub-reggae influence to it. They brought a stripped down, slightly minimal approach to the sound. It changed not only the possibilities of dubstep, but the possibilities of what you could do with sound, and what you could do with sound as it relates to music... It was like, whoa, these guys are on some other business now, let's really start paying attention to them."
5. Distance. "Right about that same time, Distance was making tunes. His tunes had a much more aggressive, rock-music, heavy-metal feel to them. Distance's approach to the sound wasn't necessarily from drum n' bass and jungle... he used to listen to heavy metal. He was playing, I don' t know, Pantera CDs at his house and decided to making his own tunes. They a had very thick-string, death-metal feel to them. It was like listening to Madball or Megadeth or Slayer, where it's just hard, head-banging stuff."
8. TRG. "His sound feels like two-step, like the old two-step from years and years ago, but it's significantly heavier, and it's a little bit busier. In all reality... it sounds cleaner. It's much more danceable music, and it's much more listenable and much more palatable than what we're used to hearing."
9. 2562. "I'm not even sure 2562 really even listens to dubstep a whole lot of the time. His sound is very different and very far removed than a lot of what I'm hearing right now... when he sits at the computer and creates something, it's not influenced by what other people are creating. What he makes is what he feels and it just works."
10. DJ Pinch. "Pinch was the godfather of introducing the Bristol sound of dubstep to everyone else that was into dubstep. For years, Dubstep has always been London baased. It's always been london london london, more specifically, south london. Pinch started created something a comopletely different sound, a differnet feel. It's more minimal, it's more melodic, it's less brooding, it's less moody. That was introduced as an element of the sound. You're seeing now there's more producers coming from Bristol... it's becoming really another hotbed for dubstep worldwide."
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