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The UV Guide To Dubstep

Have you ever had this conversation:

A: Hey, wanna go see a dubstep concert Friday night?

B: What the fuck is dubstep?

If so, you’re not the only one. Recently, the dubstep zeitgeist has taken off in Toronto and around the world. Whether you care about dubstep, like it, hate it, or make love to it, you have to know what it isso that you can more accurately and knowledgeably hate or love or continue to ignore it.

So what the fuck is dubstep?

Like many pöp kulture phenomena, dubstep is notoriously hard to define. Most people resort to a specific artist or song to explain dubstep: e.g. Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. Others point to its general audience to explain dubstep: i.e. music that 19 year olds at music
festivals rolling on mdma listen to. These definitions are clearly deficientand not because Skrillex doesn’t do dubstep or that drugged up ravers at Electric Forest don’t love the stuff. They do.  (Ed: Can’t blame them)

Musically, dubstep is typified by a tempo around 140 beats per minute (‘bpm’). That is about the same tempo as Jungle/Drum & Bass the stuff from 90s raves. This tempo is faster than your standard ‘House Music’ that typically falls around 128 bpm. So if you’re on a stimulant of sortsi.e. caffeine, cocaine, mdma, ecstasy, amphetamines, Ritalin, meth, crack, and probably bath saltsa faster tempo meshes well with your faster heartbeat. However, dubstep often uses syncopated, reggae and hip-hop inspired breakbeats, which nicely slows down the pace. Chill beats, bro.

Instrumentally, dubstep tends to utilize bass heavy synthesizers that sound to most people like robots at war or sexing. Or both. Fucking fighting robots is the electric guitar of the 21st century. The wail of a Gibson or Fender is being replaced by the womp womp of dubstepand even alternative rock bands like Muse are starting to flirt with these soundscapes.  Dubstep is so pervasive a genre that even music scholars (Ed: Like those fuckheads next door who play loud crap during exams) are paying attention to itand so should you.

Describing dubstep is like naming the top five Robyn tracks (Ed: A surefire way to start a brawl in the Village). Dubstep is music that makes you question whether it is actually music or the sound of music being tortured. It’s music that sounds like lasers attacking a dial-up modem mixed with aggressive basslines. It’s the sound your vcr makes when chewing up a videocassette (Ed: Who owns a vcr still? Raise your hand so we can ostracize you.). It’s the type of music Mozart would compose if he were alive today but brain dead.

Dubstep is the sound your skull makes when someone smashes you in the face with an aluminum batin auto-tune. If Gotye is beer, dubstep is injection drugs. All of them. At once. It’s simultaneously in your face and not in your face because you’re not even listening to it. Dubstep is a bad one night stand that you follow up with a run of shame rather than walk. Dubstep is also a great one night stand. Those exist too. Ask a lot of law schoolers right after pub night.

Dubstep is the sound your law school debt would make if it made noise. And that’s what the fuck dubstep is. Understand?

YouTube these tracks for some big dubstep tunes:

Robyn – Call Your Girlfriend
(Feed Me Remix)

Blue Foundation – Eyes on Fire
(Zeds Dead Remix)

12th Planet, Skrillex & Kill The Noise – Burst ft. gmcfosho

Avicii – Levels (Skrillex Remix)

Knife Party – Fire Hive

Ed Sheeran – The A Team
(Koan Sound Remix)

Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek
(Mt Eden Dubstep Remix)

 

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