Just as dubstep seemed to be getting started as a form of music recognized by the scene lords of the online and offline music landscape, the someone who decides the science of genre ethics declared the genre dead, it seems. We now live in a post-dubstep world and 2010 does feel pretty good, to be honest. However, I personally never really figured the dubstep sound out. I was never really able to boil it down to its particulars. The elements that varied from one artist of the style to another. Of course there’s the mathematics laid out by BPM measurement and a focus on the ones and threes, but someone could have told me I was listening to dubby trip-hop and I would have been fine to move on with my life.
Of course, I can’t pretend to be an expert regarding the subtleties and constant iterative evolution of the UK electronic scene. Dubstep was born out of 2-step garage remixes that featured (what do you know) dub style production. If I knew what 2-step was, I guess that’d lead to some sense, but “dubstep” has become ubiquitous. I’ve heard it thrown around in regard to Robyn’s newest Body Talk releases as well as one American J-Dilla disciple, Flying Lotus, who was featured on Hyperdub’s dubstep 2009 compilation, 5: Five Years Of Hyperdub (as good a place to start researching the genre as any). It’s a common enough term in 2010, which seems to be the point of its demise, as if the addition of “post” is a broad enough distinction.
Also not a point of agreed upon lore in the epic dubstep chronology, but the closest the style has come to giving the world a household name to lean upon came after Burial’s 2007 Untrue, which it seems, almost everything under the genre banner hinges upon. I guess, once upon a time, you were supposed to be able to dance to dubstep, and if Burial wasn’t the first to employ non-danceable ambience, he more or less shifted the style’s venue from clubs to headphones. Maybe that’s the “post” seperation. Maybe not.
Anyway, with dubstep now on the lips of the most casual of music listeners, the style still seems to be destined to a vacuum of underground releases, which makes sense to me on some level. Burial’s legacy, not just within the genre, but apart of electronic music as a whole, is an intangible sense of isolation and (if artists do it right) an intimate relationship to the beat-maker’s psyche, and in the landscape of a scene (which is really all dubstep is) a lot of releases get left in their own little universes. The unique nature of each artist is dubstep’s simultaneous strength and curse. The legacy of the genre isn’t going to be what made it so special in the first place.
2010 has been a pretty good for the “post” side of things. James Blake’s CMYK and, the above-mentioned, Mount Kimbie’s Crooks & Lovers have both received some noteworthy press, all things considered, but there are a few overlooked gems more than worthy of attention. My pick is Scuba’s Triangulation.
Scuba is the first dubstep stamped artist I’ve come across that’s able to capture that Burial style isolation like a barren commute home through a sleeping city, while simultaneously infusing some danceable hooks into the mix. The album doesn’t belong in clubs by any means, or if it does, it inspires imagery of more than intimate interaction. But Scuba knows exactly what he sounds like. The sounds feel like they came from the empty subway tunnel on the record’s cover. And if a dance party is going to take place it’d be by yourself and in that very tunnel.
Scuba leaves a lot of space for his samples to breath and flex their way through submerged reverberations. Little synth grooves bounce through the space, held together by the intricate layered drum programming. There’s an extreme sense of atmosphere behind the bass hooks and synth washes that give the sound an addicting colorful contrast. Scuba does a fantastic job at creating a place that just feels great to occupy for an hour, and it’s almost incidental that he happens to be an extremely capable producer. One of dubstep’s more abstracted aspects, which also adds to the feel that every artist likes to wear his or her process on his or her sleeve, is almost every move made is a point of focus. Scuba, however, is pure grace and it’s possible to take everything in as a whole, though there’s enough for nerdier types to feast upon. The record almost flows like a dance mix with little ambient breaks here and there to alert the listener of that lonely tension, but there’s enough to just float on as there is to step back and forth.
My personal standout track, “Three Sided Shape,” is a perfect example of what Scuba does best. His game is addition and subtraction as well as variation on a theme. He’s able to surprise while giving listeners enough to hold onto. In said track, a busy pitch shifting lead keyboard sample drives the groove while tiny pseudo-rhythms cascade in and out of the stereo field and an offbeat double kick grounds the beat. Everything is stripped out near the middle while the keys wind down, only to slowly return with each loop one by one until the bottom comes back, the double kick exchanged for an “oh my god” single bass boom hook. It’s one of many “oh shit” moments on Triangulation. The take away/return pattern is one Scuba employs and varies enough to make interesting on the more academic side of things. A side that’s truly not needed for enjoyment, by any means.
I’ve personally come to terms with the arbitrariness of dubstep, which will probably birth nothing but frustration for future genraologists and those who need some definition before they step into a new musical realm. In the mean time, I suggest this overlooked gem of a record from the aptly named Scuba.
(Will Ryan is a local Burlington musician, notably of the recently deceased Neon Magus)
